Network Administration vs. Systems Administration

Network Administration vs. Systems Administration Name Institution Affiliation Course Date of Submission The functioning of many organizations is enhanced by use of computers and computer networks with the care of these operating systems falling under the IT department at the responsibility of network and system administrators. There is a distinction between network administration and system administration, which particularly lies with what part of a computer that is being managed. The organization of computers is primarily managed by system administrators, while the management of computer networks is managed by network administrators. The network and system administrators have to understand how computers are configured and troubleshoot in their network so that they are able to aid in troubleshooting process. System administration encompasses a relatively lesser capacity such as computer user setbacks and hardware problems, but the network administrators have to deal with the large scope of issues regarding network security and the management of interaction between computers. Small scale organizations do not have a distinction between system and network administration as the scope of work is usually limited and either system administrator or a network administrator can handle all these functions (WiseGeek, 2012). Large organizations on the other hand, distinguish between the functions of network administration to those of systems administration because of the large scope of the different functions carried out in the organizations operating systems. The duties of system administration varies with respect to organization’s difference, as system administrators are typically in charge of the installation, sustenance and the safeguarding of computer systems and development for response to other examination outages and problems. Project management and programming also entails for a system administrator job and consultation of computer problems that are beyond the knowledge of technical support (Dawson, 2000). Hence the subject matter of system administration encompasses computer systems and the user interface within an organization. Although the system administrator’s guide does not have practical distinction between system and network administrators, there are companies such as Microsoft that has made it clear the distinction between system and network administration. There are significant common characteristics between system administrators and network administrators which are largely of the opinion and substitution of these jobs at many instances. The installation of large and complex networking installations like the data center and the operations center environment and the installation of complicated system administration environment such as the building of a UNIX workstation for a specialized programming work may require specialized system and network administrators as they are the best in handling the installation requirements (Gabor & Mahoney, 2010). The political stance of an organization and the size of the installation are dependent on whether a company makes a distinction between the network administrator and system administrator or the combination of their roles. This calls for an understanding of firms and technical organization that make the distinction between the two; network administrator and system administrator usually consider this distinction because theirs organizational user base and their informational technology infrastructure requires a separate job for its system administration and its network specialty. In the exploration of the difference between network administrators and system administrators, it is significant for the clarification of what the positions are generally defined as the roles of a system administrators and network administrators. The system administration roles are defined and encompass security administration, monitoring and control of services, scheduling of jobs, the administration of network directory services, print and output administration and storage management (WiseGeek, 2012). Although network administration has been defined as part of the system administration role, it is defined separately as being the role of setting up and configuring of internal and external networks, development and maintenance of all systems, applications, security and configuration of network. It also includes provision of guidance and technical support to users and troubleshoots network performance issues while maintaining a disaster recovery plan. The network administrator is involved normally with the primary strata of the stark that generally consists of hardware. An overlap exists linking the network administration and system administration at the administration transfer level of services such as the DNS and WINS which grants ...