The state of the storage administrator role is in flux — but just how close to the brink of extinction or to a dramatic career re-imagining is up for discussion.

The reasons for the change are familiar. They include the rise of hybrid cloud data centers through the adoption of virtualization, along with the ongoing uptake of newer technologies such as containers. Together, they are bringing the role of the storage administrator to a professional flashpoint.

Historically, the storage administrator position involved a gray-collar mix of duties such as installing and maintaining storage hardware in data centers while provisioning storage services for other IT teams through command lines or other specialized vendor software.

Now, some storage admins feel their positions are imperiled by vendor managed services, but CIOs hiring for the role see a job reformatted into new responsibilities such as data stewardship, data placement and infrastructure cost management.

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