What's the difference between Systems administrator and Systems Operator?

[SM_3]

Hello

What's the difference between Systems administrator and Systems Operator?

Thanks.

[Karthik S S]

It is more of a managerical term than technical. You can say systems administrator (SA) as some one who has entire control of the system. SA can delicate some jobs to one or more Systems Operators. SOs will have only limited control over the system.

-Karthik S S

[Rita C Workman]

Difference between Operator and Administrator - it's the simplest illustration:

Who pushes the button and decides it's ok to push the button.

/Rita


...the rest is just $$$$

[Chris Wilshaw]

Depending on the company, the line between them can be very thin (or may not even exist - I've worked in places where you only have 2 people supporting unix [1 on each shift], with no true split between the op/admin duties)

Generally, you don't let an operator have root access to the systems (use sudo or super to let them get to any "root" commands that they need)

Operators here do the day to day tasks - systems monitoring, backup checks, tape swaps, password resets, printer admin, ID setup (within limits)

The admins (including myself) do monitoring to a more detailed level, scripting, security auditing, "secure" ID setup (adding operators, maintaining the root account), overall system admin (filesystem changes, kernel config etc), system builds, capacity planning, training and supervision, problem escalation (both during the working day, and on call for evenings/weekends) and anything that nobody else is able/willing to do.

[Pete Randall]

In my simplified view, the operator runs jobs on the system. The administrator sets up the system to be capable of running those jobs.


Pete

[Bruno Ganino]

SM, go to dictionary and search the words
http://www.computer-dictionary-online.org/

Bye
Bruno

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi

1. The spelling.
2. Training.
3. 10k /annum


Operator equates to car driver he/she drives the system.

Administrator equates to engineer - builds - services- replaces broken bits -tunes - identify faults, and can drive the system.


Paula

[Geoff Wild]

IMHO, A System's Admin is the Super User - does everything to a system - setup, configure, performance tuning, security, works with App Developers and users, etc...

A Systems Operator's monitor's a system - like from a data centre - usually shift work - on a 24x7 shop - runs commands setup by Sys Admin, pages Sys Admin when trouble occurs....

Rgds...Geoff

[Hazem Mahmoud_3]

In our company, we have a morning operator and a night operator. They are in charge of running the schedule, ensuring the system is functioning properly, etc. If something goes wrong, they alert the System Admin.
There is then the System (or Unix) Administrator who works on new projects, development, new jobs to go into the scheduler, and ultimately responsible for the proper functioning of the system.

-Hazem

[Marvin Strong]

system Operator:
Anyone responsible for the physical operations of a computer system or network resource. This usually entails things like adding and collect tapes from machines. And monitoring batch processes

System Administrator:
The user who installs, configures, and otherwise maintains the software (and possibly the hardware) associated with a computer system.

Of course each title can have a different description based on company.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I think Rita summed it up very nicely. The difference in salary can easily be greater than 2X.

[T G Manikandan]

Take a scenario where you are managing 1000 servers at 10 locations.To make it ease for centralized administration you use a Management softwrae like the IT operations from HPUX openview.

you can have a Management server at a location and have just monitoring machines at other locations.
The system operators can work with the monitoring centres just looking at the alerts and taking minimal action.

While the System administrator can be used at a Centralized Management server location.
who takes care of the critical tasks.

[SM_3]

Thanks for the replies.

Has cleared up my perception.

[Tim D Fulford]

Hi

It depends where you work... In one company I worked at OPS made NO decisions. They were given proceedures to run under certain condidtions. The ADMINs did the deciding if those proceedures failed.

At another company OPS understood there systems and made ALL the decisions.

I think it really depends on what RESPONSIBILITY the OPs & ADMINs have.

Regards

Tim