A System Administrator installs, configures and supports a company’s Internet system, Local and Wide Area network and maintains the hardware and software.
To do this role you would have to have a definite knowledge of computers including applications and programming and the tasks in this role would involve:
- Diagnosing hardware and software problems and replacing components.
- Maintain and administer networks and related computing environments including hardware, systems software, applications software etc.
- Backups and disaster recovery.
- Perform routine network start up and shut down processes and maintain accurate records for doing so.
- User administration
- Monitor system performance
- Create file systems
- Install software
These are just a few of a system administrators duties.
Because the duties of a system administrator are very varied it will differ company to company but on a whole they usually have responsibility for installing, supporting and maintaining servers and other systems.
A system administrator needs to be good at solving problems. When the server goes down this can lead to all kinds of problems so as a good systems admin you need to be able to diagnose and fix the problem in a timely fashion by figuring out what is wrong and how it can best be solved.
You can become a Systems Administrator through working up within a company learning on the job or you could have done a degree in Computer Sciences first. Usually a systems administrator could have started off in a administrator type role and moved around from there but this is normally a senior role which will require some project management experience so a project management background with a good working knowledge of IT is an excellent background for this role.