System administrator

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A system administrator, systems administrator, or sysadmin, is a person employed to maintain and operate a computer system and/or network. System administrators may be members of an information technology department.

The duties of a system administrator are wide-ranging, and vary widely from one organization to another. Sysadmins are usually charged with installing, supporting, and maintaining servers or other computer systems, and planning for and responding to service outages and other problems. Other duties may include scripting or light programming, project management for systems-related projects, supervising or training computer operators, and being the consultant for computer problems beyond the knowledge of technical support staff. A System Administrator must demonstrate a blend of technical skills and responsibility.

In many respects a systems administrator might be considered a swiss army IT professional - they normally have a very broad knowledge and skill base, though it may not be as deep as some specialists.

Contents

[edit] Skills

The subject matter of systems administration includes computer systems and the ways people use them in an organization. This entails a knowledge of operating systems and applications, as well as hardware and software troubleshooting, but also knowledge of the purposes for which people in the organization use the computers.

However, perhaps the most important skill to a system administrator is problem solving -- frequently under various sorts of constraints and stress. The sysadmin is on call when a computer system goes down or malfunctions, and must be able to quickly and correctly diagnose what is wrong and how best to fix it.

System administrators are not software engineers or developers. It is not usually within their duties to design or write new applications software. However, sysadmins must understand the behavior of software in order to deploy it and to troubleshoot problems, and generally know several programming languages used for scripting or automation of routine tasks.

Particularly when dealing with Internet-facing or business-critical systems, a sysadmin must have a strong grasp of computer security. This includes not merely deploying software patches, but also preventing break-ins and other security problems with preventive measures. In some organizations, computer security administration is a separate role responsible for overall security and the upkeep of firewalls and intrusion detection systems, but all sysadmins are generally responsible for the security of the systems in their keep.

[edit] Related fields

Many organizations staff other jobs related to systems administration. In a larger company, these may all be separate positions within a computer support or Information Services (IS) department. In a smaller group they may be shared by a few sysadmins, or even a single person.

  • A database administrator (DBA) maintains a database system, and is responsible for the integrity of the data and the efficiency and performance of the system.
  • A network administrator maintains network infrastructure such as switches and routers, and diagnoses problems with these or with the behavior of network-attached computers.
  • A security administrator is a specialist in computer and network security, including the administration of security devices such as firewalls, as well as consulting on general security measures.
  • A web administrator maintains web server services (such as IIS or Apache) that allow for internal or external access to web sites. Tasks include managing multiple sites, administering security, and configuring necessary components and software. Responsibilities may also include software change management.
  • Technical support staff respond to individual users' difficulties with computer systems, provide instructions and sometimes training, and diagnose and solve common problems.
  • A computer operator performs routine maintenance and upkeep, such as changing backup tapes or replacing failed drives in a RAID array. Such tasks usually require physical presence in the room with the computer; and while less skilled than sysadmin tasks require a similar level of trust, since the operator has access to possibly sensitive data.

In some organizations, a person may begin as a member of technical support staff or a computer operator, then gain experience on the job to be promoted to a sysadmin position.

[edit] Training

Unlike many other professions, there is no single path to becoming a system administrator. Many system administrators have a degree in a related field: computer science, information technology, computer engineering, information system management, or even a trade school program. Other schools have offshoots of their Computer Science program specifically for systems administration.

Some schools have started offering undergraduate degrees in Systems Administration. The first, RIT[1] started in 1992. Others such as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Marist College, and Drexel University have more recently offered degrees in Information Technology.

As of 2008, only four U.S. universities, Rochester Institute of Technology[2], New York City College of Technology,Tufts, and Michigan Tech have graduate programs in system administration.[citation needed] In Norway, there is a special English-taught MSc program organized by Oslo University College [3] in cooperation with Oslo University, named "Masters programme in Network and System Administration." University of Amsterdam (UvA) offers a similar program[1], in cooperation with Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA). However, many other schools offer related graduate degrees in fields such as network systems and computer security.

One of the primary difficulties with teaching system administration as a formal university discipline, is that the industry and technology changes much faster than the typical textbook and coursework certification process. By the time a new textbook has spent years working through approvals and committees, the specific technology for which it is written may have changed significantly or is now obsolete.

In addition, because of the practical nature of systems administration and the easy availability of open-source server software, many systems administrators enter the field self-taught.

Generally, a prospective administrator will be required to have some experience with the computer system he or she is expected to manage. In some cases, candidates are expected to possess industry certifications such as the Microsoft MCSA, MCSE, Red Hat RHCE, Novell CNA, CNE, Cisco CCNA or CompTIA's A+ or Network+, Sun Certified SCNA, among others.

Sometimes, almost exclusively in smaller sites, the role of system administrator may be given to a skilled user in addition to or in replacement of his or her duties. For instance, it is not unusual for a mathematics or computing teacher to serve as the system administrator of a secondary school.

[edit] Career Paths

Because of the lack of formal training for systems administrators, most system administrators start off in some field that uses systems administrators and drift into systems administrations. Traditional routes are programmers, maths students, physicists. I.e. IT professionals in other IT fields or hard scientists that use a lot of computational power and as such learn about computing.

Recently there have been some systems administrators arriving via "softer" routes, such as helpdesk operators and web programmers.

In many cases these transformations from the original role to systems administrator will occur over a period of time until the person ends up system administrating more often than not. If they enjoy it, they might then become full time systems administrators.

Unlike many other fields in ICT, system administrators tend to be less interested in the move from techy to manager. This is not to say that it does not happen, but it does not seem to happen as much. Perhaps this is because of all of the technical IT positions the systems administrator is perhaps the geekiest.

[edit] Duties of a system administrator

A system administrator's responsibilities might include:

  • Analyzing system logs and identifying potential issues with computer systems.
  • Introducing and integrating new technologies into existing data center environments.
  • Performing routine audits of systems and software.
  • Performing backups and restores.
  • Applying operating system updates, patches, and configuration changes.
  • Installing and configuring new hardware and software.
  • Adding, removing, or updating user account information, resetting passwords, etc.
  • Answering technical queries.
  • Responsibility for security.
  • Responsibility for documenting the configuration of the system.
  • Troubleshooting any reported problems.
  • System performance tuning.
  • Ensuring that the network infrastructure is up and running.
  • Capacity planning
  • Monitoring - i.e. implementing systems that monitor the availability, health, capacity of servers, applications and other ICT infrastructure
  • Deploying, managing and supporting applications, or assisting, advising and supporting those that do, such as deployment engineers.
  • Storage management - e.g. managing SAN and NAS storage
  • Conforming to technical and business policy, procedures, directives, etc, such as change management, records management and the like.
  • Contributing to and implementing Disaster Recover (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) plans and planning
  • Systems administrators will often also be the application owners for infrastructure applications such as DNS, DHCP and directories such as LDAP or Active Directory, even if they do not run other applications in an organisation.
  • Automating common or repetitive tasks. Systems administrators tend to automate common and repetitive tasks - sometimes this is an official duty and sometimes this is done just to make life easier, more interesting, less boring or all of the "above". Often automated processed will be given a quick and often dirty front end, which will then allow end users to have self service access to the service in question. In addition to the previously alluded to benefits automation increases quality by increasing repeatability and reducing the scope for human error.

In larger organizations, some tasks listed above may be divided among different system administrators or members of different organizational groups. For example, a dedicated individual(s) may apply all system upgrades, a Quality Assurance (QA) team may perform testing and validation, and one or more technical writers may be responsible for all technical documentation written for a company.

In smaller organizations, the system administrator can also perform any number of duties elsewhere associated with other fields:

System administrators, in larger organizations, tend not to be system architects, system engineers, or system designers. However, like many roles in this field, demarcations between systems administration and other technical roles often are not well defined in smaller organizations. Even in larger organizations, senior systems administrators often have skills in these other areas as a result of their working experience.

In smaller organizations, IT/computing specialties are less often discerned in detail, and the term system administrator is used in a rather generic way — they are the people who know how the computer systems work and can respond when something fails.

[edit] Qualities of a Systems Administrator

In addition to technical/business skills and knowledge there are a range of qualities that are useful or in some cases virtual pre-requisites for a systems administrator.

  • Ethics/honesty/trustworthiness - Nearly all of the worlds information (commercial and financial secrets/data, military/security secrets/data, personal information, personal communications, academic records, employment records) is stored digitally. Except for a few very paranoid organizations (think NSA, CIA, ASIO, MI6, DSD and the like) systems administrators tend to have access to all of the data on the systems they administer. Not only do they have access, but they usually have sufficient skills and privileges to remove all trace of any access they might choose to exercise, if they so desire. Therefore ethics are a very important quality in a systems administrator.
  • Discretion - for much the same reasons that ethics are important in systems administrators, discretion is important. Systems administrators are often required to access other people communications or in effect perform traffic analysis on people' systems usage. Systems administrators are often called upon (along with networks administrators and security professionals) to participate in civil and criminal legal investigations. As such system administrators need to be discrete so as to minimize embarrassment/damages of clients, colleagues, customers and the like.
  • Problem solving abilities. Systems administrators deal with both practical and abstract problems on a day to day basis. Many of these problems are rooted in complex systems and have many inputs and variables. Therefore a good analytic problem solving mind is the basic tool of the systems administrator.
  • Patience - some aspects of systems administration can be particularly boring or require a lot of patience to untangle
  • Creativity - systems administrators often work as informal integrators tying together systems from multiple vendors and organizations which have a variety of protocols and conflicting requirements. This tends to result in a lot of constraints which can often only be reconciled with a creative approach. Many system administrators show their creativity in more traditional creative pursuits outside their work, such as music and writing.
  • Ability to quickly investigate, abstract and understand complex systems. Systems administrators are often asked to perform work on systems they have never seen before and about whose particulars they know nothing about, though they may know he hardware and operating system and have some vague description of the systems purpose.
  • The ability to multitask or "context switch" quickly. System administrators often need to deal with a number of tasks in near real time, temporarily abandoning one task as a higher priority task arises and then reverting to the lower priority task when possible. (Or as a systems administrator might put it, pushing a task onto the stack as a task with a higher priority interrupt level is raised and serviced")
  • Detail orientated - working with complex systems make an appreciation for detail very important and therefore a very useful quality for a systems administrator. Very small details (such as leaving off a flag for a certain optimization when formatting a disk) can have serious and costly long term implications. For example if a disk performs badly on a banking system due to not switching the aforementioned flag on when formatting the disk, it can be very expensive if the system can't keep up with orders, and to fix it it can also be very expensive, because in serious production environments small changes are very expensive to implement.
  • Highly organized
  • Methodical
  • Ability to explain complexity in relatively simple terms
  • Good verbal and written communications

[edit] System Administrator Privileges

The term system administrator may also be used to describe a privilege which a computer owner must obtain on his or her own computer to perform certain actions even if the computer is not part of a larger system.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Universiteit en Hogeschool van Amsterdam: ICT in Amsterdam - Opleidingen - Master System and Network Engineering

[edit] External links

[edit] Professional Organizations

[edit] Certification Organizations

[edit] Periodicals

[edit] Conferences

[edit] Books

[edit] Online Resources

[edit] Technology Unions and related links

[edit] Articles

[edit] In Popular Culture

  • In the 1995 film Hackers, Eugene "The Plague" Belford was the system administrator for the Gibson computer system.
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