Infrastructures.org is a great resource for anyone that needs to administer multiple Unix style machines and is looking to do so more efficiently. The principles laid down there are fantastic, and they stick to open source tools in their descriptions of how to put systems together, and even have a release of their own code called ISconf. It is hard to try to work like an infrastructure architect rather than a system administrator. But when you do the long term benefits are astounding. I’ve been places where everything was so ad-hoc that trying to setup an infrastructure around their software was futile, but even then the setup paid off in terms of keeping the base systems up to date. Any admin should at least read over the stuff. Even if you think most of it is complete bunk, there will probably be a few points you can use.