When businesses grow, most need a series of computers and other hardware to sustain their operations. And this brings a lot of new challenges, especially for owners without a background in system administration.
How do you maintain, secure, and optimize all your computer systems while minimizing cost? That’s why system administrators are one of the most in-demand online jobs today.
System Administrators versus Network Administrators
In general, both administrators aim to ensure the systems are up and running.
But there’s confusion between systems administrators and network administrators. Their roles are pretty overlapping for smaller companies. But when the company expands, there’s a clear distinction between both.
System administrators are more focused on the maintenance of the hardware itself. At the same time, network administrators are more concerned with the connectivity of the computers both internally and externally.
System administrators are responsible for:
- System Monitoring
- Managing user permissions
- File organization
- Creating system manuals, policies, and procedures
- SSO and password management
- System Maintenance
- Data Backup
- System upgrade
Here are the average salaries for system administrators, depending on the skill level.
But it’s not an easy task. How do you make yourself desirable to clients around the world? Here are 6 essential skills to become a sought-after system administrator.
Technical Skills
Dealing with computers is not something you learn out of a manual on-the-get go. It’s something that needs mastery. So to get hired, you should have technical skills with programming languages, networking, cloud computing, computer hardware, automation, and more.
You might even need to learn new programs, depending on what your client uses.
Documentation and Organizational Skills
What you don’t measure, you don’t improve. That’s why you should document what’s happening at a given time for your client’s computer system, regardless of what’s happening.
When you have the organizational skills to automate this, you can set triggers or thresholds as telltale signs when something goes wrong. After all, when you prevent a significant flaw or security issue before it happens, your company will save money from it.
Critical Thinking
Now that you have the data, what will you do about it? You should have the critical thinking skills and analytical skills to piece it all together.
Based on the data, do you need to upgrade anything? Is the system well-maintained? Do you have any possible vulnerabilities? With your critical thinking in place, you can spot the action required in the best time possible.
Time Management
Speaking of time, time is of the essence in system administration. After all, a few minutes of interruption might mean thousands of dollars lost.
So you should have time management skills to schedule maintenance and server updates. Also, you should have proper shifting between your colleagues. So that when something happens, there’s always a point person to take care of the problem.
Communication Skills
You will not be working alone in this field. You will be in constant communication with the IT department, marketing, operations, and many more. With this, communication skills are needed.
By communicating well, you would know how you can support their departments accordingly. You should get their inputs and relay also the limitations of the current system. In this way, you can manage your expectations while providing what’s needed for the team.
Up-to-date
Technology evolves every day. What works right now might not be the standard in the future. That’s why you should be up-to-date with the latest development in your field.
You should know the current threats in cybersecurity are. Also, what are the latest practices that can protect or backup your data when something goes wrong?
Conclusion
Want to try out becoming a system administrator? With the following essential skills, you can have an advantage over the rest. If you’re looking for opportunities in this field, you can check out this link for more information. Cheers!
