IT Career: Position System Administrator

Tasks and Responsibilities of a system administrator

The main task of the system administrator is to improve and modernize the entire information infrastructure of the company, as well as monitor its performance, and respond to emerging problems.

"An administrator is a person who can and should solve almost any problem, but not instantly, with a crutch, but correctly, balanced, efficiently, with a backlog for the future."

In small companies, the position of a sysadmin often implies performing the duties of an "enikey": refueling cartridges, installing Windows, purchasing equipment, and interacting with providers.

"The sysadmin is needed to implement 'this feature', to prepare the environment for the developer / user / client, and just so that 'everything works'."

It also happens that the system administrator performs part-time tasks of the network administrator (working with networks at the level of switches, routers, virtual networks). In the classic case, the system administrator deals with problems at the level of the operating system and application programs, and the network administrator - at the level of the network and programs working with the network.

"A network administrator knows what BGP is, but may not know what a GPO is, and vice versa."

Depending on the size and specifics of the company, the job duties of a system administrator may include:

- Setting up hardware and software for stable operation;

- Configuring servers, fault-tolerant solutions, infrastructure elements;

- Installation / installation of servers / services, modernization of existing;

- Maintenance of office computer equipment;

- Writing server software;

- Hardware testing;

- Setting up workstations, networks and network equipment (routers, modems);

- Information Security;

- Organization of backup;

- Organization of remote access;

- User support;

- Procurement of new hardware and software.

"Answering a lot of stupid questions and doing a little of your job of setting up your networks, OS and PDA."

“This work is rather monotonous. For people who lead a measured lifestyle and are not in a hurry. "

A typical working day for a system administrator includes:

- solving emerging problems;

- setting up new equipment, testing new firmware / software versions;

- planned work on automation and optimization of processes;

- administration of services, servers and infrastructure.

“Sometimes there are special cases: problems with the PBX or the server crashes. Then all 200 employees start calling you, and you just turn off your phone, lock yourself up and start looking for the root of evil. "

“They say that if an administrator does nothing, then he is a good administrator, since everything works for him and does not break. But in reality there is a lot of work. Even if everything works, there are many things that can be improved and made to work better. "

“A typical working day for a good system administrator is to go to the office, look at monitoring reports, what was broken and how it was repaired, play something, go to rallies, read new articles on your favorite blogs, watch mailing lists about updates. A good system administrator customizes everything for himself, automates, and then solves most of the tasks by pressing a few keys.