Network Administrator - Duties of A Network Administrator

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.

Read more about this topic:  Network Administrator

Famous quotes containing the words duties of a, duties of, duties and/or network:

    “Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”
    —Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    “The application requisite to the duties of the office I hold [governor of Virginia] is so excessive, and the execution of them after all so imperfect, that I have determined to retire from it at the close of the present campaign.”
    —Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    “It is fair to assume that when women in the past have achieved even a second or third place in the ranks of genius they have shown far more native ability than men have needed to reach the same eminence. Not excused from the more general duties that constitute the cement of society, most women of talent have had but one hand free with which to work out their ideal conceptions.”
    —Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)

    “Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?”
    —George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)