We talked about troubleshooting alert.
In an earlier course,
but it's worth mentioning again,
when you're managing an entire IT infrastructure,
you'll constantly have to troubleshoot problems and find solutions for your IT needs.
This will probably take up most of your time as an IT support specialist.
This could involve a single client machine from an employee or
server or service that isn't behaving normally.
Some folks, who start their careers in IT
support deepen their knowledge to become system administrators.
They go from working on one machine to multiple machines.
For me, I made the leap during my internship as
an IT support specialist in college at a semiconductor lab.
The lab ended up closing and they needed help deprecating the environment.
So, what started as an IT help desk support quickly transition to assist admin role.
That opportunity was my golden ticket to dowland to Active Directory,
Sub netting and decision making which is a core part of this job.
Sys admins also have to troubleshoot and prioritize issues at a larger scale.
If a server that sys admin manage stop providing services
to a thousand users and one person had an issue about the printer,
which do you think would have to be worked on first.
Whatever the scenario, there are two skills that
are critical to arriving at a good solution for your users.
We already covered them in an earlier course. Do you know what they are?
The first is troubleshooting, asking questions,
isolating the problem, following the cookie crumbs,
and reading logs are the best ways to figure out the issue.
You might have to read logs from multiple machines or even the entire network.
We talked about centralized logging a little bit in the last course on
operating systems and you becoming a power user.
If you need a refresher to how centralized logging works,
check out the supplemental reading.
Anyway, the second super important skill that we covered is customer service;
showing empathy, using the right tone of
voice and dealing well with difficult situations.
These skills are essential to all IT roles.
In some companies, sysadmins have to be available around the clock.
If a server or network goes down in the middle of the night,
someone has to be available to get it working again.
Don't worry, a sysadmin doesn't have to be awake and available 24/7.
They can monitor their service and have it alert them in case of a problem.
So how do you keep track of your troubleshooting?
A common industry standard is to use some sort of ticketing or bug system.
This is where users can request help on
an issue and then you can track your troubleshooting work,
through the ticketing system.
This helps you organize and prioritize issues and document troubleshooting steps.
Throughout this course, we'll introduce types of services that a sysadmin
needs to maintain and what responsibilities they have in an organization.
We'll also share some best practices for
troubleshooting when it comes to systems administration.
When you work as an IT support specialist,
systems administration can become part of your job.
So it helps to think about all aspects of
managing an IT infrastructure in an organization.
The more prepared you are the better.