topic Re: System Administrator duties in Operating System - OpenVMS

System Administrator duties

Gilbert Pereira — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:48:22 GMT

I am interested in obtain a document that describes the duties of an OpenVMS System Administrator I , II and III.

Re: System Administrator duties

Karl Rohwedder — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 23:57:32 GMT

Perhaps http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/ is the right place to look :-)

Really, what is System Administrator I , II and III, where are the numbers from?

regards Kalle

Re: System Administrator duties

labadie_1 — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 04:42:25 GMT

Kalle, this is excellent !!

:-)

You can read the doc, at
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/os83_index.html

especially

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/82FINAL/aa-pv5mj-tk/aa-pv5mj-tk.HTMl

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/82FINAL/aa-pv5nj-tk/aa-pv5nj-tk.HTMl

Re: System Administrator duties

Volker Halle — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:08:31 GMT

Gilbert,

welcome to the OpenVMS ITRC forum.

You may also want to have a look at the OpenVMS System Manager Courses curriculum. There are course descriptions for:

OpenVMS System Management I and II

In these descriptions, you could find the subjects touched in these courses.

http://www.education.hp.com/openvms_sysmgr1.htm

Volker.

Re: System Administrator duties

comarow — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 11:03:49 GMT

Gil,

Those terms are very arbitary. Titles for
people doing system management could range
from secretary, programmer, network manager,
VP, systems engineer, systems administrator,
Director of MIS, the UNIX or Microsoft guy who must take care of it, systems manager,
systems integrator, software specialist,
systems analyst to the guy that was left when they laid off the guy who knew what they were doing, they don't need a systems manager, they have a contract.

The duties are not clearly defined. As to all the tasks for a systems manager, for that there also are no clear definitions.
A reasonable stab would be everything in the systems manager reference manual, perhaps support all or some of the layered products, perhaps manage the network getting your hands slapped if you touch the network, to managing the storage, to getting your knees broken if you touch the SAN.

Seriously, the real definition is simple.
Do what is most valuable for your site, insure someone else can do it as well, or you'll never take vacations of be promoted,
and have a lot of fun.

Make sure that you can recover when the disk fails or someone messes up.

Bob C

Re: System Administrator duties

Andy Bustamante — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 11:18:36 GMT

Bob has the best definition I've seen: Make sure that you can recover when the disk fails or someone messes up.

Whatever else you're charged with, identify as needs doing, you always want to to be able to put things back the way you found them if required.

You may also want to see the HP certification site, http://www.hp.com/go/certification for an idea of what entry level, intermediate and senior system support staff may be called on to handle.

Andy

Re: System Administrator duties

Peter Zeiszler — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:37:38 GMT

Are these titles internal to your company? I know there used to be courses available with numbers like that - but that mainly described knowing whats in I before you took II or III.

Job duties might also be related to what your contract specifies (It does where I work because I work in a "break/Fix" contract at the moment).

What exactly are you trying to characterize?

Re: System Administrator duties

Jan van den Ende — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:43:26 GMT

I also like Bob's definition very much, but on second thought I would like to make a slight change:

Make sure that you can recover when the disk fails or someone messes up.

Make that:
Make sure that you can recover when anything fails or someone messes up.

From now on this is MY_ definition!

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

Re: System Administrator duties

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 02:55:55 GMT

I would say "whatever your management wants you to do" + "whatever you need to do because management doesn't want to recognize the work".

So, as a sysadmin I do (or did) :
1) management of middleware
2) problem solving of applications
3) Sybase DBA
4) application management of small stuff
5) monitoring
6) stuff the application people find too difficult

Fwiw

Wim

Re: System Administrator duties

Rob Kersey — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:04:48 GMT

A great book:

http://www.amazon.com/OpenVMS-System-Management-Guide-Technologies/dp/1555582435

Some people say they have based a career on it...