Network Management and Systems Administration

Network Management and System Administration

The aim of the paper is to establish the difference between a system administrator and a network administrator. The paper is thus divided into three sections. The first section deals with the basic definition and responsibilities of a system administrator; the second does the same for a network administrator and the third compares their responsibilities to clearly identify the differences between the two.

System Administrator

The maintenance of computer systems in a company is the sole responsibility of a system administrator. They are responsible for maintaining, upgrading and installing servers. They are also entrusted with the task of checking the security of the server and maintaining its backup as well. They are also involved in programming for automating tasks at the server. For this purpose, they write programs, also known as scripting (Schneider, 2012a).

Education criteria for System Administrators:

With respect to the level of qualification, mostly system administrators do not possess any academic domain or degree which they cans specialize in. Usually they possess a degree or diploma in Information System Management. Apart from technical education, it is also necessary for them to understand the business process, and to learn other skills such as communicating among staff (in technical terms as well as in non-technical terms), etc. Moreover, the understanding of project management is also crucial for a system administrator in order to perform in longer run (Schneider, 2012a).

System Administrator -- Career Path:

The career of a system administrator depends upon his/her own interest. For instance, if he/she has interest in security, then he/she can groom himself/herself in that specific area, and make his/her career accordingly. But when it comes to a senior level position, such as Chief Information Officer (CIO), it is necessary that he/she should possess skills like project management and strategic management, apart from the normal education prerequisite of Information System Management or Computer Science (Schneider, 2012a).

Network Administrator

The collection of all the computers' hardware and software is called a computer network. The role of a Network Administrator is to manage a computer network. The management of a computer network includes its deploying, configuring, maintaining, and monitoring (Schneider, 2012b).

The level of a Network Administrator is of medium to senior level. he/she is designated to manage the whole computer network rather than providing support to individuals. he/she is usually involved in ensuring the efficiency of the computer networking, integration among the computers in a network, security precautions and measures, etc. When a problem cannot be solved by a helpdesk supporter or a network technician, then it is addressed by the Network Administrator (Schneider, 2012b).

Network Engineer is senior to Network Administrator. A Network Administrator gets his/her task from a Network Engineer. Beside the above normal tasks, a Network Administrator may also get a task of designing and implementing networks, but it depends on the size of the company (Schneider, 2012b).

Different companies have different set of responsibilities for a network administrator. However, the basic job responsibilities are aligned to tasks including configuration and support in routing protocols, network address configuration, configuration of routing tables alongside data security and access services. Moreover, the management and maintenance of the network machines in the network in form of synchronization, backups and drivers can also be included in the secondary but significant responsibilities. Advanced responsibilities also include configuration and support for network servers including VPN gateways, access management, security settings, file servers etc. (Schneider, 2012b).

Comparison of a system and network administrator

The job responsibility of a system administrator and a network administrator may include the same elements. But, system administrator responsibilities are a subset of responsibilities of network administrator. Larger enterprises have distinct job designations to cater system and network, however, smaller companies tend to combine all the responsibilities into one designation. Following are some of the distinctions which differentiate network and system administrator functionalities (Morgan, 2010):

Function

A set of network configuration hardware utility is available for access for the network administrators including cables, modems and switches etc. It is their responsibility to keep the network up and running. Basically the system administrators do not excel in working out the hardware of the networks however they specialize in monitoring and configuring them on the software (Morgan, 2010).