System Administrators – All The Skills You Need To Be At The Top

For any business, its data center infrastructure is of critical importance. The duty and responsibility of building it and maintaining it falls on the system administrator. Of course, there are bound to be subtle variations in the requirements for system administrator positions across various companies. However, the core system administration duties more or less remain the same.

Here are the top system administration skills that every big company wants in their system administrator!

Strong Communication Skills

For effective system administration, an administrator with strong communication skills is a must. System administrators are required to communicate with end-users on a regular basis for discussing technical problems. When pressure is high and users need to work according to strict deadlines, they need to be open about the problems they face. Similarly, if a system administrator runs into any trouble, it’s up to him to notify all end-users.

Quick Assessment of Problems and Finding Solutions

Every once in a while, end-users run into problems. When they cannot find effective solutions on their own, they turn to the system administrator. Technical problems are encountered even more in bigger companies, and can be very detrimental to overall productivity. A key part of the system administration process is to find solutions for these problems to keep the work heading in the right directions. During massive system breakdowns, it is the duty of the system administrator to find some way of getting the system up and running again.

Time Management

A system administrator would be completely lost without effective time management. Apart from having their own core set of responsibilities, system administrators have to take out time to solve others’ problems as well. Typical system administration duties include analysis of system logs, performing backups, integrating new technologies, taking responsibility for security, and fine-tuning all aspects of the system’s performance. With so many things to do and more, a system administrator needs to get his routine in order. Breaks need to be minimized, and the administrator should always be ready to communicate with the other departments of the company.

Awareness of System Weaknesses

No company’s network infrastructure is absolutely flawless. Even though all possible efforts are made to ensure that the infrastructure is as stable and secure as possible, some or the other weakness remains. Security bulletins issued by trusted sources such as vendors and user groups must be acknowledged. Users should be asked to log off from their machines during periods of inactivity. Password protection needs to be ensured through regular changes.

All systems should be monitored on a regular basis in order to identify unauthorized modifications. In spite of all the security precautions, unpredictable circumstances may require system administrators to initiate disaster recovery procedures. Last but not the least, all end users must be educated regarding the necessary security protections. In the long run, this saves a lot of time for system administrators.

Relying on Automation

With testing environments being increasingly exposed to more and more pressure and stringent deadlines, system administrators are expected to develop automated processes. Automation makes the testing process a much simpler one than what is generally experienced with manual testing. In the manual testing process, different solutions have to be tested manually. In an environment with tight deadlines, it is almost impossible to comprehensively test all aspects of any particular software. On top of that, both time and money are saved through automation.

In-depth technical knowledge is a must if you aspire to be a key part in your company’s system administration. Most aspiring system administrators master popular operating systems such as Oracle Solaris, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Windows Server in their system administration training courses. Certain companies also use operating systems apart from the aforementioned few, and it would be wise to familiarize yourself with operating systems like MacOS X Server, OpenVMS, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Learning to write programs in all these operating systems is also an important aspect, along with learning the shell for both Windows and UNIX based systems.