HOUR 19
Role of the Network Administrator

What You’ll Learn in This Hour:

• Review of network management jobs and tasks

• Computer networking education and certification

• Key concepts in administrating a computer network

• Ideas on effective project management

A network administrator is the person responsible for ensuring the health and well-being of a network. We’ve examined much of the information that a network administrator must know, such as computer hardware, network protocols, and Network Operating Systems (NOSs). An understanding of this information, coupled with experience and a healthy dose of common sense, enables an administrator to keep the network up and running.

A network administrator may be called by another title. For example, a network engineer at a large company could, in practice, also be a network administrator, although the scope and responsibilities related to a network engineer’s job would probably be greater than those of a network administrator at a small company. A small company that employs only a network support specialist to handle day-to-day problems and support (and uses consultants for major network installations or rollouts) has in effect made the network support specialist the de facto network administrator—at least in relation to basic network and client computer issues.

In this hour, we’ll explore the jobs associated with network administration. We’ll also examine issues related to different paths of education and certification for the network administrator. Finally, we’ll discuss planning and installing a network and look at some of the nontechnical issues related to network administration, such as budgeting and network project management.

Information Technology Jobs

Although we’ve concentrated on network design, management, and administration in this book, numerous other jobs and career paths relate to network administration. In the mid to late 1990s, there was a boom in the information technology (IT) field, with resultant job opportunities. Although hi-tech communications have cooled down somewhat, IT is still a sound career choice.

Computer networking professionals operate at many levels in a corporate structure. As examples, the chief information officer (CIO) operates at the top of the corporate ladder, IT managers and administrators operate somewhere in the middle, and technicians and support personnel operate near the bottom rungs. IT itself has a “pecking order.” Let’s look at a range of IT positions and their relative standing in the IT field, from bottom to top. Note that the job titles are generic monikers.

• Help desk analyst—Help desk personnel serve as the first line of support for many companies and institutions. They help users diagnose computer or networking problems and provide necessary remedies either over the phone or online. Working the help desk requires a broad knowledge of the company systems and networks and typical end user problems, an ability to provide quick fixes, and the social dexterity to deal with irate users. The help desk analyst is an entry-level position.

• User support advisor—User support personnel are responsible for working with users and for setting up new computers, connecting them to the network, and making sure the appropriate software is installed. Support advisors are also involved in diagnosing user problems and repairing them (similar to the help desk personnel). Support advisors are typically more hands-on than their help desk counterparts. The advisor positions are often entry level or one step up from the help desk.

• Support specialist—Support specialists are responsible for a particular aspect of the network infrastructure, such as server maintenance, network expansion and setup (including pulling wires), or the maintenance of a particular set of services, such as routers and DNS servers. Support specialists might also be responsible for network backups.

• Network administrator—Network administrators are responsible for planning, implementing, and maintaining the network infrastructure. This position requires an in-depth knowledge of NOSs and networking hardware. The person must manage the strategies for making network resources available to users and anticipate potential bottlenecks and security flaws in the network. The network administrator position usually resides in the middle of the company’s IT pecking order or at the senior level.

• IT director—The IT director is responsible for the overall planning and implementation of the network infrastructure. The responsibility includes managing the personnel who are specialists in different areas, such as LAN, databases, WAN, and web services. The IT director is also the conduit to upper management and is responsible for the budgets, inventories, licensing, and reporting (to upper management).

As mentioned, this list of personnel represents a generic set of job descriptions. Obviously, not all these positions are at the network administrator level, but they can serve as stepping stones for employees to work toward becoming a network administrator.

The job title for a position varies from company to company. One organization might call the LAN administrator a network administrator, whereas another might define the position as a systems manager. The salaries of these positions depend on the size of the business and the actual responsibilities listed for the position. As well, the responsibilities of the job dictate the level of knowledge and experience required.

Computer Networking Education and Certification

In many cases, the first wave of computer gurus, programmers, and networking professionals who found their way onto a company’s organization chart were self-taught. Many worked their way through the ranks by moving up the corporate pecking order through hands-on experience or, unfortunately, from transferring from another department that had nothing to do with computers or networks. During one of the times when I was writing code, my boss had no experience whatsoever with software, hardware, or data networks. His area of expertise was budgeting. But we programmers were happy about that. He gave us support, did all the number crunching, and wrote the long-range plans. He left us to our coding sheets, which was fine by us.

Today, it’s not uncommon to find network administrators who have business degrees or web designers who have majored in political science. It’s also not uncommon to encounter computer professionals who have had productive careers and either didn’t finish or didn’t attend college. (Bill Gates was a dropout.) Some of the most talented network people I’ve come across gained their college degrees in “soft” subjects, such as languages and music.

Times have changed. Today, many technical schools, community colleges, and universities offer information science and IT degrees.

Another way that IT professionals gain their knowledge base and meet the requirements for a job is by acquiring professional IT certifications. These certifications can be vendor specific or generic.

For example, Microsoft, Novell, Cisco Systems, and Sun Microsystems offer different certifications and designations related to their products. In terms of generic (meaning nonvendor-specific) certifications, the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) offers several certifications related to different skill sets. For example, the CompTIA Network+ certification is designed for professionals with nine months of experience (or more) in network administration and support.

To attain a particular certification, the candidate must take an exam or set of exams. Some certifications require only one exam; others require a number of exams. Here are examples of programs from major vendors:

• Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) is a broad certification program offered by Microsoft. The program offers multiple certifications, based on different areas and levels of technical expertise. To be awarded certifications, a candidate must pass a series of exams. The current certifications are Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD), Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) and Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA). (Previous generation certifications include Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE), Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD), and Microsoft Certified Database Administrator (MCDBA).

• Sun Certified Professional (SCP) is a certification program offered by Sun Microsystems. It’s meant to test and verify skills in Sun products, such as the Java programming language and the Solaris operating system (OS). The Sun Certified Java Associate (or SCJA) tests a person’s knowledge of object-oriented programming, Unified Modeling Language (UML), and the Java programming language. The Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) exam is the entry-level Java exam and a prerequisite to several other Java-related certifications.

• Cisco Career Certifications are tests and certifications for Cisco products. There are five levels of certification: Entry, Associate, Professional, Expert, and Specialist. With the exception of Entry, each level requires a selected set of skills, although there’s necessary overlap of information in the programs.

• Red Hat offers the Red Hat Certification Program. All its tests are hands-on and include installation, administration, and troubleshooting tasks. No paper tests are conducted; all is done live.

• Numerous educational institutions and IT training centers across the United States and worldwide offer courses that allow you to prepare for specific exams. There are even boot camps to help you prepare for an entire certification track for a protracted period of time (in some cases, a week).

• You can take these exams at testing centers in your area. Pearson VUE offers many IT certification exams. For information on locations and exams offered, see Pearson VUE’s website at www.vue.com. You can also take exams at Thomson Prometric testing centers. Check out its website at www.2test.com.

Additional Thoughts on Managing the Planning and Installation Processes

As you’ve seen throughout much of this book, two important tasks a network administrator must face are the planning of a network and its subsequent installation. Hours 10, 11, and 12 discuss issues related to planning and installing a network. The main tasks involved in network administration are planning, designing, implementing, and tuning.

When viewed in this light, network administration appears to be pretty simple: four straightforward steps that lead to network nirvana. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Building and managing networks is easier than in the past because of the Internet standards, the acceptability of NOS platforms, and the plug-and-play features for many components. Nonetheless, a lot can go wrong in a computer network. Pay attention to the details. When in doubt, read the user manuals. And for larger enterprises, make certain you or your personnel have taken (and passed) the NOS and router certification programs. If this isn’t the situation, I recommend you contract with a firm to take over the running of your systems.

A Few Thoughts on Budgets

After you’ve worked through the issues related to planning and running a network, another aspect of a network administrator’s job is dealing with budgets. Many people have had a basic accounting or personal finance class at some time in their educational experience. Therefore, the arithmetic involved and the structuring of a budget is no mystery. Most companies also have a form or template that can be used to create a department’s yearly budget. Getting the budget down on paper is relatively straightforward. The difficult aspect of working with IT budgets relates more to justifying the expenses than listing them accurately.

In most companies, the network infrastructure serves as a communication and productivity tool for the employees. The problem with justifying a network budget is quantifying how the computers and the network make the employees more productive and therefore generate more income for the company. I’m not talking about companies with websites that generate measurable sales or software companies in which programmers need computing tools to generate product. For the run-of-the-mill business that uses computer technology as just another tool, it’s often difficult to measure the cost effectiveness of the network infrastructure. In many situations, computer networks don’t generate measurable income.

This means that when you create your network budget, you also need to accumulate any information that will help you justify the budget when you meet with upper-level managers. Here are a few ideas for justifying your IT implementation:

• Do research on other companies that use a particular technology. Most hardware and software vendors provide white papers and case studies that allow you to see how a particular aspect of the network infrastructure improved a particular company’s capability to do business. Having some facts available—especially those related to a competitor—can help justify proposed expenses.

• Talk to salespeople in the field and find out how certain aspects of your network infrastructure (such as dial-in or VPN connections for remote users) have made them more effective.

• Look at the average employee’s workload and determine the time savings and increased productivity that new hardware tools and software will provide.

• Compute the travel costs required for employees involved in a company project that includes branches of the company at different locations. Providing a groupware product to employees that offers an environment for communication and collaboration, such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes, might negate the need for much of the travel. You must prove that the cost of servers, software, and training to roll out the groupware environment will be less over time than the cost of travel and lodging.

• Determine if older equipment, such as PCs, can be donated to a nonprofit organization and create a tax savings for your company that helps sweeten a proposal for upgrading workstations and servers.

The bottom line, so to speak, is that you need to not only create a budget that provides accurate funding for your network plan but be able to sell the budget to the people at your company who control the purse strings.

Managing Network Projects

As a network administrator, you’ll likely become involved in many projects critical to the mission of your enterprise. Managing a project requires that you exercise control over two things: resources (including technical tools and personnel) and time. Managing people and equipment seems straightforward enough, but how do you control time? Time control relates to creating and then sticking to a schedule for the project.

Although a schedule is only a best guess, accurately assessing the human and technical resources for a project can go a long way toward helping you meet the schedule. Identifying milestones in the schedule also can help you assess where you are in relation to the completion of the project. If you are off schedule at a particular milestone, you can judge whether you need to increase the number of resources (such as technical staff) that are needed to complete the project on time.

Remember that your project has a budget. Throwing a lot of overtime and other technical costs at the schedule might allow you to complete the project in time, but it might also run your project over budget. In addition, it might result in a completed project whose final implementation produces incomplete results...or worse, inaccurate results.

Although project management is a subject that can fill an entire book (and has), here are some general pointers related to network project management:

• Define the project in a short abstract (known as an Executive Summary). An abstract is a quick overview of the project. Supply the purpose and perhaps even the level of project difficulty so that you can determine the staff and resources required to complete the project.

• Organize the project around goals and outcomes rather than tasks so that each interim goal or outcome can be quantified in terms of individual tasks. This approach makes it easier to create a schedule. Identifying the interim outcomes for the project allows you to break the overall project down into various phases (creating milestone dates for the completion of each phase). Breaking down the project into a series of interim goals makes it easier to schedule personnel and resources and take stock of the project as it’s in process.

• After the project has been given the go-ahead, assign specific dates to your different interim outcomes or milestones. I’ve seen far too many badly planned projects in which the schedule is broken down into week one, week two, and so on with no specific dates other than a best-guess completion date. You need to have a specific schedule and a plan to meet each milestone date.

• Provide local authority to keep the process moving. If you’re working on an implementation project at several sites, you need to designate a site manager who can make critical decisions related to keeping the project moving on a day-to-day basis. If every decision related to the project requires your authorization, and you’re unavailable, you’re going to have a lot of team members sitting on their hands waiting for you to make a decision as to their next step. Delegating authority requires you to stay in frequent contact with those who you’ve empowered. Give them the responsibility and the authority to carry out the responsibility.

• Closely monitor the progress of the project (in terms of interim goals). This allows you to track the differences between your plan and what’s unfolding. Monitoring requires regular meetings with project personnel. You should also build some type of reporting instrument (a weekly report, for example) that allows you to keep your finger on the pulse of the project.

• Build some sort of testing into the process. This allows you to test whether each interim goal or outcome has been met.

Your proposed budget can reflect the possibility of special projects that might pop up in the coming year. I’m not suggesting you pad your budget, but you do have to communicate effectively with upper management so that you have a clear understanding of where they expect computer technology to take them in the future. If there’s a chance that management wants a new tool made available, it should be reflected in the budget even if it’s only in some dollars that are earmarked for exploring a particular technology on a limited, test basis. The actual rollout of the technology can then be incorporated into the budget for a subsequent year.

You can keep track of your projects—including the resources and personnel required and the timeline for the project milestones—in different ways. One way is to maintain a hard copy notebook or calendar that tracks the project. Another is to use Microsoft Excel to track resources, personnel, and timelines in a worksheet.

When you’re managing a large, complex project, consider taking advantage of project management software. Numerous project management software packages are available, including Primavera SureTrak, Journyx Timesheet, Niku Projects, Vertabase Pro, and Microsoft Project, to name a few.

A real benefit of using project management software, such as Microsoft Project, is that you can configure each task in the project so that it’s dependent on tasks that must be completed before the particular task can be started. This type of project tracking also keeps you honest in that you have to stay on track and approach each task in the proper order as you move from the start of the project toward completion. Being able to assign resources and predecessors (tasks that must be completed before the current task) and log notes related to a particular task really helps you keep a project organized. Project management software also makes it easy to generate reports related to a project.

Using project management software allows you to centralize the information related to a project. It obviates the mess of separate sheets of paper, Post-It notes, and other unorganized errata that can become the downfall of many ill-fated projects. Staying organized and using a timeline to accurately track the project is a necessity of managing even the smallest of IT projects.

However, don’t succumb to the lure of the CRT screen’s Gantt Charts. Project management software won’t manage the project. That’s your job. Don’t become so engaged with the tools to track project progress that you aren’t engaged with your staff and your users.

Summary

In this hour, we examined IT jobs related to network administration and network support. We also discussed the certifications that computer networking professionals can pursue and viewed the big picture of planning and implementing a network. Finally, the discussion included information related to budgeting and network administration, with tips about managing network projects.

Q&A

Q. What are some ways to learn networking skills and upgrade your network administration skill set?

A. Many colleges, universities, and private training schools provide courses in network administration and related topics. There are also many vendor-specific and nonvendor certifications, such as those offered by Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.

Q. What are some ways that you can help explain a network implementation’s return on investment to your corporate officers when dealing with budgets?

A. Conduct research on how other companies have improved their business by implementing the network technologies you plan to implement. Talk to company employees—particularly salespeople—and learn how new network tools can improve their ability to do their job. Compare the costs of network communication tools in relation to the travel required if the network infrastructure didn’t provide various communication possibilities.

Q. Cite some good practices related to managing network-related projects.

A. Some good practices include organizing projects around goals and outcomes, determining the individual tasks required to meet a particular goal, creating a definitive schedule for the project using real dates, and empowering the people who work for you to do their work.