Have you ever wondered what is expected out of a UNIX (or) Linux system administrator as they call it variously on day to day basis. Here are the job duties and responsibilities of UNIX/linux/AIX and all flavors of UNIX/Linux system administrator:
1) Apply systems analysis techniques to determine functional specifications to meet system and networking business needs - Typically UNIX/linux admin will be part of many infrastructure meetings starting with capacity planning wherein project needs are discussed in detail. This is the functional specification gathering point that they need to translate to server needs. Some firms make use of capacity planning software that can be an excel developed in-house or a third party application in which the linux admins are given appropriate access. They need to input the server specifications needs starting from project initiation phase including requirement on size and type of servers, operating systems to be installed in servers, disk configurations to be made etc
As of latest trend, all the major firms are evaluating the possibility of deploying their servers in cloud infrastructures like amazon web services, google cloud platform GCP, microsoft azure, rackspace, alibaba cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure popularly called OCI etc as cost cutting measure that makes infrastructure design and deployment done in form of Infrastructure as a service (IaaS - Infrastructure as Service ) rather than traditional on-site datacenter model. Henceforth, linux admins can start equipping themselves by preparing for AWS certified solutions architect associate level certification exam with sysops specialization focussing on AWS system administration without any delay
2) Design, develop, document, create, test, and modify system programs to meet enterprise needs
3) Highly skilled and proficient in theoretical and practical application of highly specialized information to server
4) Establish and manage server and monitoring infrastructure - monitoring tools like HP glance, linux level command line programs like sar, top, cpustat, vmstat, iostat are used extensively on day to day basis
5) Configure UNIX servers that can be linux flavors like RHEL, oracle linux, ubuntu linuc, HP-Unix, solaris etc
6) Configure, build and deploy applications and patches to the servers - This is a major job that takes much of the admins time. Now, with cloud infrastructure like AWS in place, this can been off-loaded to AWS team
7) Monitor server resources such as CPU, IO, and Disk to understand current resource requirements anticipate growth needs using server tools like top, sar, vmstat, cupstat, memstat
8) Must have command of basic advanced TCP/IP networking concepts - Though the system admin does not need to know lot of networking basic commands like ifconfig, stacktrace, ping etc come handy when server is inaccessible. same does apply in cloud infrastructure as well
9) Troubleshoot networking issues on both Linux servers, Solaris servers, Unix flavored machines. Additional knowledge is needed if server happens to be AIX the IBM based linux machines
10) Setup and manage SAN/NAS systems as well as backups. Most mid level enterprises dont have storage team as well as storage admins. Linux administrator will need to take care of NAS/SAN storage as well as backup infrastructure. The storage overhead will be 100% eliminated once the project is 100% deployed in cloud. However, with first project firms prefer to retain data in local datacenter as well as in AWS
11) Setup and manage Linux Server administration tasks including fixing broken disks by running fsck the disk check commands, create users, groups, grant roles appropriately, manage reports from monitoring infrastructure, perform backup restore and recovery of servers etc
12) Plan and test business continuity in form of disaster recovery testing on quarterly basis
13) Revoke access from user accounts once user leaves organization. Unix admins will have regular emails from HR department on this
14) Maintain and mange test, QA, UAT, DEV servers in addition to production servers
15) Work closely with dba's and grant them access to storage LUN's on as needed basis. Also, some database upgrades, patching demand server reboot. Linux admins are involved in these tasks
