About Project Runspace
Project Runspace was created to elevate and educate the next generation of server and systems administrators. As experienced administrators ourselves, we see several problems facing newcomers. We hope to provide resources to remove barriers and support everyone that wants to succeed as a sysadmin.
When we started in the industry, companies hired people for entry level roles such as help desk and provided training and advancement for an entire career path. That practice has largely disappeared. If you don’t have a way to build experience, you need education instead. Such education carries a high price tag and doesn’t fully prepare students.
Challenges don’t end once you pass the gates into systems administration. The field has multiple vibrant communities, but little formal regulation. While that helps knowledge spread quickly, it does little to guarantee the quality of knowledge. Many administrators follow practices that have no proven value. At best, they waste time. At worst, they allow or cause harm.
We started Project Runspace to provide freely accessible and vetted information and resources for anyone seeking to succeed in the field of systems administration. Whether you need to build sufficient knowledge to enter the field or you want to improve yourself, we want to connect you with the tools that you need.
Our Name
When a modern operating starts an executable program, it creates an entire virtual environment that shields its process from other software. Ordinarily, scripts cannot enjoy that kind of protection because they must execute within the context of their script processor. That restriction can also apply to so-called “managed code”: software that depends on a generic runtime environment, such as Java or .Net. Advanced script processors and managed code execution engines create isolated environments for scripts and managed code much like an operating system creates for native executables. These environments are called “runspaces”.
We chose the name “runspace” because it is the part of the computing world used almost solely by systems administrators. Developers create software, and users interact with the final product, but administrators live in those consoles and operating environments. “Runspace” also serves as a metaphor for the environment we have built for our sysadmin audience.
Our People
Project Runspace currently consists of its two founders, Eric Siron and Andy Syrewicze.
Eric Siron
Eric Siron has over 25 years of experience in the IT world. He operates Project Runspace to connect with and lift others that want to find their own place in the technical world.
Eric Siron
Andy Syrewicze
Andy Syrewicze has been involved in the IT Community for 17 years. He is a multi-year awardee of both the Microsoft MVP award and the VMware vExpert Award. Andy has a strong passion for helping others learn how to use technology no matter their personal situation or background. As such, Andy works with Project Runspace to bring technology to all who want to learn how to use it.
Andy Syrewicze
Our Content
Each piece of content hosted on Project Runspace was created by its named author. The general content, such as the Home and About pages, were created as a collaborative effort by Project Runspace’s members. We do not allow material written or created by artificial intelligence (AI), although we use it for supporting activities such as grammar checking and code suggestions.
We use the Hugo static site generator to build the site from source written in Markdown. The site uses the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font for normal text and IBM Plex Mono for code and some decorative text. The site title uses only HTML and CSS. The logo was created from screenshots of the site title manipulated in Paint.NET. Greenshot is the tool that we use to capture most screenshots. Other graphical items are created or composited using Microsoft PowerPoint, Affinity, or draw.io.
An article by Silvia O’Dwyer provided the concepts that resulted in the visual effect of the Project Runspace title. The “copy to clipboard” functionality on code blocks was adapted from source provided by Danny Guo. Expanding image functionality was adapted from source provided by VR Soft Tech.