What Does a System Administrator Do?

What is a system administrator? Well, look at the title. Administrator
of systems. A system administrator takes care of systems.

Now, most people read "system" to mean an individual computer, and think
that all a sysadmin does is clean viruses off your computer and replace
your monitor. That's not wrong -- but it is only one page of the whole
story.

A real computing system is larger. Very few computers work just on their
own anymore; when you use the web, play a game online, share files with
a friend, or send email, you're using a complex and intricate collection
of computers, networks and software that come together to do the job
you're asking.

A sysadmin manages these systems -- they figure out how to bring storage
from one server, processing from another, backups from a third and
networking from a fourth computer all together, working seamlessly. For
you.

It's not an easy task. Your sysadmins need to understand in depth
computing protocols. They often have to know something about
programming, something about hardware, a lot about software -- and even
more about the people using their system.

A sysadmin is a professional, with complex skills, ethical challenges,
and a daunting job. Many, if not most, people find computers difficult
to use, and sometimes they're unreliable. Being a sysadmin doesn't
absolve someone of dealing with unreliable computers. Oh, one can dream
of such a day, but the opposite is true; no one sees more dead computers
in a day than a sysadmin. No one sees them doing truly baffling things,
and no one has more stories of computers failing, acting possessed, or
even catching on fire.

The challenge of a sysadmin is making a computing system -- a whole
network of resources and servers and software -- work together, work
right, work even when parts of it fail -- and work for you.

That's the most important job of the sysadmin: to work for you. To take
the staggering array of technologies, acronyms, protocols, networks,
vendors, budgets, limited time, competing products, and threats to the
computing network, assemble them all together in a working system. Their
job is not only to be the geek in the corner who types all day. What
they're doing is bringing these diverse pieces of technology into order,
and fitting them together to fill your needs at work and home; to
translate the world of computing into human terms.

This is a daunting task and we're still at the cutting edge; we're not
perfect, and the field is still figuring itself out. Being a sysadmin
takes a certain boldness, to be one of the first people to take on the
challenge of turning difficult computers into easy to use systems. But
hundreds of thousands of people are working in that field now, from the
entry level help desk tech to the corporate CIOs and everyone in
between.

So when you think of a sysadmin, think of the people who run the servers
that help you clean it off, the people who run your backups to make sure
your data is safe, the people who bring you the network, the people who
monitor it for security -- and yes, the person who cleans the virus off
your computer and replaces your monitor.

Regards,

Zulkiflee Zainal
CTI Server - Malaysia
Tel:03-23832539
Email:zulkiflee.zainal@citi.com