Duties of A Network Administrator
Many organizations use a three tier support staff solution, with tier one (help desk) personnel handling the initial calls, tier two (technicians and pc support analysts) and tier three (network administrators). Most of those organizations follow a fixed staffing ratio, and being a network administrator is either the top job, or next to top job, within the technical support department.
Trouble tickets work their way through the help desk, then through the analyst level support, before reaching the network administrator's level. As a result, in their day-to-day operations, network administrators should not be dealing directly with end users as a routine function. Most of their jobs should be on scheduling and implementing routine maintenance tasks, updating disaster prevention programs, making sure that network backups are run and doing test restores to make sure that those restores are sound.
Network administrators are responsible for making sure that the computer hardware and network infrastructure for an IT organization is properly maintained. They are deeply involved in the procurement of new hardware, rolling out new software installs, maintaining the disk images for new computer installs, making sure that licenses are paid for and up to date for software that need it, maintaining the standards for server installations and applications, and monitoring the performance of the network, checking for security breaches, poor data management practices.
Most network administrator positions require a breadth of technical knowledge and the ability to learn the ins and outs of new networking and server software packages quickly. While the person that designs a network are sometimes called a network engineer, many organizations roll that function into a network administrator position as well.
One of the chief jobs of a network administrator is connectivity. Network administrators are in charge of making sure that connectivity works for all users in their organization, and for making sure that data security for connections to the internet is properly handled.
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