What does a System Administrator do?

A system administrator, often abbreviated as system administrator or simply abbreviated as administrator, is responsible for controlling the computer network. You probably don't expect to fix multiple end-user desktops, but you are the person who makes everything work in a larger context. They are responsible for network security and traffic management, ensuring that there is a safe way to restore a backup when something terrible happens, and much more.

As a system administrator, you will likely interact with end users frequently. After all, you are the person who sets up the "system", which includes personal accounts and rights to those accounts, and ensures that no one can make too many mistakes without an administrator account. This means that a good system administrator must also have many cross-cutting skills.

Technical skills

1. Script

First, administrators need to be able to use scripts and scripting frameworks because a lot of work is devoted to monitoring and maintaining a computer system. With the right scripts, you can, for example, automate troubleshooting, reporting or testing new additions to the IT system. This saves a lot of time and money and is therefore an essential skill for any company. If you are using Windows, use PowerShell. However, you may also want to take a look at Perl or other frameworks.

2. Traffic management

Traffic management can mean many things. First, IT systems must use firewalls to route certain types of traffic to certain servers and block other types of traffic. A simple example would be companies that have a policy against using Facebook on their work desktop.

This is the old way of handling traffic. And while still very important, another dimension has recently been added to this term. With more and more applications running in the cloud, proper bandwidth allocation is becoming a growing challenge for system administrators. In the future, it will certainly be important to learn how to manage Internet traffic as a resource.

3. Security

Taking responsibility for the security of the entire IT infrastructure is an important task. In fact, there are system administrators and teams whose only goal is security. However, in smaller companies, this is a skill you absolutely need. Security, like most major jobs, involves many things. You are responsible for internal security, e.g. Make sure that no one in the company infects computers with viruses or brings home data they shouldn't.

It is also necessary to protect the company from external attacks. This means that your IT system has minimal security gaps. Knowing how to handle internal and external security problems is the key skill of a good system administrator.

4. Back up and restore

Backing up and restoring large amounts of data is a big challenge, but essential for any business. Unexpected things happen: computers suddenly stop working, servers stop abnormally, data is accidentally deleted. It is important that companies are prepared for such catastrophes and are able to normalize everything in a timely manner, as this can save an unimaginable amount of money and hassle.