Activities involved in IT system management and support (A1)

Thomas Mortimer - Task 1 (Unit 20 - Managing and supporting systems)

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Configurating Systems

Configuring systems when managing systems is vital in supporting the systems. Configuring the systems comes with the benefit of configurating a system is allowing all components to be aligned allowing the systems to be adapted for the purposes of work and administrator to serve the purposes of the ease of use and efficiency of the system. People also become more specific when referring to different types of configuration for example; if the configuration is hardware focus it would be labelled as hardware configuration and software labelled as software configuration.

Providing technical support for users

Technical support is essential for creating, configuring and managing computer systems. Technical support is essential to keeping computer systems up and running effectively, allowing users on the network to keep working with full access to the systems. This is a job which always has to be repeated as their will always be developing errors and people will continue to need support when using the system.

Managing users

Managing users is an essential ability when dealing with customers, this comes with the skill of managing user access and their access to IT resources for example, systems, devices, applications, storage systems and networks. User management is also essential to the addition of individual user accounts, passwords and their permissions, this comes with the responsibility of managing these users access to systems, resources and other assets on a system.

Monitoring of usage and identification of misuse

Monitoring the usage of systems and identifying the misuse of a computer system is another skill an administrator must perform regularly. Monitoring usage is an essential to identify the usage of the computer systems to avoid damage to the systems and keeping a companies system productive. This can be found on almost any setting which requires a computer system like a school, company or any other workplace environment.

Fault-Finding

Another key skill which is needed when managing a computer system is fault-finding, fault-finding will have an administrator use a fault recording database to assist them in troubleshooting a fault and finding a solution. After a solution has been identified the fault recording database can be updated to allow the solution to be identified easier in the future. This will also assist in finding a permanent solution instead of rectifying the fault again. 

Setting up and running backup and restore procedures

The ability to set up, backup and restore data is one so essential to an administrator due to the data being stored on a system is vital to a company the ability to protect that information from corruption or failure is essential. To set up a backup the administrator has to identify where this backup will be stored usually it is on a identical storage server like the main server however, some now opt to store this data on a cloud server like OneDrive and google drive. Many people will opt for a cloud server due to its ability to avoid failing data and allows the company to store this information risk free for a monthly fee. 

In the event of a data corruption and all main copies of essential data are lost it is up to the administrator to restore information from one of the many backups. There is a very specific checklist someone has to follow before restoring data from a backup. But firstly, the administrator must troubleshoot the computer system to identify the main cause of the failure to start off with. The following list shows what procedures must be followed before the full restoration can take place:

Security procedures

To ensure the security and protection of a computer system the computer administrator must follow a list of procedures to ensure the security of the computer system. The following list shows the steps and procedures that must be followed to protect the computer systems: An anti-virus scanning software, a configured firewall to allow only authorized information to pass through, access control to only allow authorized devices access to the network, configuring the security policies of the computer systems, making sure there are constant security patches and updates, managing the authorized software and its access to device permissions and software.

Drive Management

Drive management is another responsibility which has a computer systems administrator, drive management comes with two major tasks one is; imaging a disk and the other drive mapping. Firstly, imaging requires the systems administrator to form a backup for all physical discs and compress them files into a compressed file type which can be stored onto another system, and drive mapping which will have the system administrator access a shared file using a network method which maps a shared folder to become more efficient. Doing this will assign a drive letter to a folder which will act as a local drive which will allow all the systems on the network access to it.

Network Management

Finally, network management is a skill which all administrators must have, it refers to the general management of software, hardware, tools, applications, processes used as provision, operate, maintain administer and secure network infrastructure and processes which flow through a network. Another task the administrator will need to perform is IPAM or IP address management. IPAM has the administrator use DNS and DHCP servers to address a device on the network an IP address.