System Administration

Chapter One
and Maintenance
Objectives
▰ Define the different practices when establishing a site
from scratch and the assessments when updating existing
technology.
▰ Identify the industry practices of selecting hardware,
software, data, process, network, and people components
of an information system.
▰ Illustrate an IT organizational structure specific to
supporting System Administration and Maintenance

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Building the SA Team
System Administration Team

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Factors to Consider
▰ Structure of the SA Team and how it fits to the organization
will determine the success or failure.

▰ Communication is a critical area between the SA Team and

the management of the organization.

▰ The SA Team needs to establish the culture of temwork.

The Basics of the building the SA Team
1. Sizing
2. Funding Models
3. Management Chain of influence
4. Skill Selection
5. Infrastructure Teams
6. Customer Support
1. Helpdesk
2. Outsourcing
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 Sizing
▰ Refers to meeting the desired ratio of SA to customers.
▰ Meets the required service levels of the customers and reliability.
▰ Ways to right size the SA Team.
○ Realistic approach
○ Time and motion study, Projections, Historical data
○ Consider the complexity of the environment
○ Consider the type of work
○ Service level requirements

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Funding Models
▰ SA Team is treated as a cost
▰ Can be termed globally or locally (centralized vs decentralized)
▰ Ways to get the right funding model
○ Cost reduction and multi skilling of the SA’s
○ Feedback and Focus Group Discussions are encouraged.
○ Consider pay by work done vs large scope (only to specific tasks done) so
it is clear for SA’s and the cost is accounted for.

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Management’s Chain of Influence
▰ The flow of feedback and directions from either bottom up or
top bottom approaches.
▰ Factors to consider:
○ The ability of the management chain to bring up issues on trouble,
upgrades, scale up, and other changes to the system.
○ Ability to make big decisions
○ Capability to handle loads of interruptions, requests and trouble
tickets.

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Skills Selection
▰ Assemble a well-rounded team with a variety of skill sets and
rules.
▰ 4 main Categories of SA Duties
○ Provide maintenance and customer support
○ Deploy new services
○ Design a new service architecture
○ Senior Generalists and Consultation
▰ Factors to consider
○ Development Upskilling (from Jr. SA to Senior SA)
○ Rotation of Roles and duties.

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Infrastructure Teams
▰ An infrastructure team will look after centralized services, such as
authentication, printing, email, name service, calendar service,
networking, remote access, directory services, and security.

▰ Factors:
○ Specialization and Skillset
○ Redundancy of equipment and ability to troubleshoot.

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Customer Support (HelpDesk and
Outsourcing)
▰ Customer support is a key part of the system administrator
function. Customer support means making sure that customer can
work effectively.
▰ Factors to consider with customer support:
○ Customer support personnel should help align your response time
with your customers’ expectations.
○ Customers like to know who their support people are.
○ Customers contact Sa’s because they need help or are.
○ A centralized support model can result in customers talking to a
different person each time they place a support call.
○ Customer satisfaction is important.
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Group Output
▰ Instruction: As part of your function in the workplace, your group
is assigned to create an IT support infrastructure. The role of the
IT Team is to ensure that all individual computers of the 500
employees from upper management to front line staff will have at
least 90% of system operability at any given time. You are asked to
create a proposal on your strategic plan for the following areas of
consideration.

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THANKS!
Any questions?
You can find me at
▰ peterjosephrabanes@buksu.edu.ph

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