RESPONSIBILITY OF A SYSTEMADMINISTRATOR

Responsibilities of the Primary System Administrator

The responsibilities of the primary system administrator are defined in the current job description for the position.? However, in this section we will outline the major areas of responsibility, as well as, some of the necessary daily responsibilities borne by the primary system administrator.

Overview
The primary system administrator of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB) LAN is ostensibly the ?owner? of the CCB LAN.? The primary system administrator takes ownership and responsibility for all technical, planning, operational and security issues concerning the LAN.? This includes, but is not limited to the servers, workstations, network cabling and network hardware.? The primary system administrator is also the primary contact for account holders on the CCB LAN who are in need of technical support.

Planning Responsibilities
It is the responsibility of the primary system administrator to maintain the LAN in ?state of the art? condition.? Toward that end, the primary system administrator is routinely expected to assess the quality and reliability of existing hardware, software, operating systems and network components that comprise the LAN, and make recommendations for upgrade or replacement where necessary.

Daily Operational Responsibilities
The primary system administrator has a myriad of responsibilities that must be attended to on a regular basis.? The following are some of the more critical items:

1-Server backups ? The primary system administrator is responsible for conducting and verifying the validity of daily tape backups of the servers.? This process is described in more detail in the section entitled ?Tape Backup Procedures?.

2- Electronic Mail ? The primary system administrator is to ensure that the electronic mail capabilities of the server are operational at peak performance at all times.

3-User Support ? The primary system administrator represents the ?first line of support? for account holders on the CCB LAN.? In situations where the primary system administrator cannot readily answer technical questions or solve technical problems, it is his/her responsibility to use all available technical resources to discover and relate a solution back to the user.

4-Network Monitoring ? The primary system administrator is responsible for monitoring the state of the network and general network throughput.? Any serious degradation in performance of the network should be diagnosed to the extent possible.? All unresolved network problems should be reported immediately to the RUCS-TD Network Operation Center at (732) 445-2351.

5-Security ? The primary system administrator also acts as the security officer for the CCB LAN.? It is his/her responsibility to investigate and resolve unsuccessful login attempts, intruder detection lockouts and compromised passwords.