Basic System Administration Tasks

Simon Loh+60123253588

Basic Tasks

Planning Preparing Installing Hardware Maintaining Monitoring Installing/ Upgrading/

Removing Software Backups and Archives

Configuring Trouble-shooting Maintaining Local

Documentation Help & Educate Users Baselining Problem Solving Know where to look for

help

cost, capacity planning, logistics (network design, server locations, where to install, wiring, IP address assignments, ...), network service providers (ISPs)

Planning

temperature, humidity, electrical, fire, security, EIA/TIA wiring closet and cabling standards, UPS; Change management (preparing for any service changes)

Preparing

computers, terminals, disk drives, CD-ROMs, RAM, printers, NICs, cabling

Installing Hardware

regular preventative maintenance (daily, weekly, ...), boot and shutdown systems when needed, printers, backup media, tune systems for performance

Maintaining

printers, disk space, network, servers and workstations, performance, and security, and all log files regularly

Monitoring

OS (kernel patches, new device drivers, ...), applications (new versions, DLLs, new configurations), documentation

Installing/upgrading/removing software

Execute backup procedure to safely copy data from the servers to tape (cassettes)

Backups and archives

kernel, networking software such as Samba, X Window, accounting, quotas, security, mail, news, time, web and other servers, crontab

Configuring

network connections, services that don't start, faulty security

Trouble-shooting

new user's guide, policy and procedure documents (security plan, disaster recovery plan, administrative procedures, service request/bug report forms, ...), man pages for add-on software

Maintaining local documentation

This includes working with your management (who sometimes needs the most help and education even if they don't think so), helping new users, experienced users, and yourself

Help & Educate users

Generate system reports and correlate growth, changes over time. (Use data to order supplies, spares, hardware and software upgrades in a timely manner, and to generate reports to management)

Baselining

System administration is about solving problems, not memorizing how-to directions. Often something won't work as it should. What will you do then?

Problem Solving

books, netnews, man pages, on-line (www.tldp.org, docs.sun.com, www.redhat.com, ...)

Know where to look for help

Thank you