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Role of The System Administrator

A system administrator is responsible for maintaining computer systems and networks. Their duties include analyzing system logs for issues, installing and updating hardware and software, performing backups, applying security updates, assisting users, and troubleshooting any reported problems. As the person overseeing the system, an administrator's most important skill is quick problem solving to address issues and keep systems running smoothly. Their role requires technical skills as well as an understanding of computer security policies.

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Fausiya Salim
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88 views2 pages

Role of The System Administrator

A system administrator is responsible for maintaining computer systems and networks. Their duties include analyzing system logs for issues, installing and updating hardware and software, performing backups, applying security updates, assisting users, and troubleshooting any reported problems. As the person overseeing the system, an administrator's most important skill is quick problem solving to address issues and keep systems running smoothly. Their role requires technical skills as well as an understanding of computer security policies.

Uploaded by

Fausiya Salim
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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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.
 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 and assisting users.
 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.
 Configure, Add, Delete File Systems. Knowledge of Volume management tools like Veritas (now
Symantec), Solaris ZFS, LVM.
Role of the system administrator

The person who is responsible for setting up and maintaining the system is called as the system
administrator. System administrators may be members of an information technology department

Duties of a system administrator


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.

The system administrator is responsible for following things:


1. User administration (setup and maintaining account)
2. Maintaining system
3. Verify that peripherals are working properly
4. Quickly arrange repair for hardware in occasion of hardware failure
5. Monitor system performance
6. Create file systems
7. Install software
8. Create a backup and recover policy
9. Monitor network communication
10. Update system as soon as new version of OS and application software comes out
11. Implement the policies for the use of the computer system and network
12. Setup security policies for users. A sysadmin must have a strong grasp of computer security (e.g.
firewalls and intrusion detection systems).
What is so special about the system administrator account?

The root account has full (unrestricted) access, so he/she can do anything with system. For example, root
can remove critical system files. In addition, there is no way you can recover file except using tape
backup.

Many tasks for system administration can be automated using perl or shell scripts. For example:

 Create new users


 Resetting user passwords
 Lock/unlock user accounts
 Monitor server security
 Monitor special services etc

Most important skill to a system administrator

Problem solving, period. This can some time lead into all sorts of constraints and stress. When workstation
or server goes down, you are called to solve the problem. You should able to quickly and correctly
diagnose the problem. You must figure out what is wrong and how best it can be fixed in small amount of
time.

System administrators are not...

 Cookie cutting software engineers.


 Developers.
 It is not usually within your duties to design new applications software.
 But, you must understand the behavior of software in order to deploy it and to troubleshoot
problems, and generally should be good at several programming languages used for scripting or
automation of routine tasks such as shell, awk, perl, python etc

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