Before proceeding on to the next item in the engineering design process, I'm taking David's (of Habiblog) question about my definition of 'system administrator'.

Again, depending on whom you ask, the term 'system administrator' can apply to many skill-sets or job roles. There's quite a range in skills and responsibility, often loosely related to the size or industry of the installation. The guy working to keep the systems running at a small company of 40 people has to be the jack of all trades, especially if the company is not in IT. The guy supporting a manufacturer of children's clothing may not have the budget to spend deeply on 'enterprise-class' gear or have dedicated and redundant hosts. He'll run hosts longer and harder (because he has to), and in many cases, it will be gear that has names like 'Digital' or 'IBM System xx' stamped on it. He'll twiddle with EDI, keep an eye on the frac-T1, answer questions on Win95 (still!), and wonder if he can scrounge a box to try out Linux and Samba. This is where many of us started.

However, the guy (likely with a team) supporting yahoo.com or aol.com has a larger budget, technology at hand that improves his job, a more specialized focus, and a commitment to some goal, be it traffic numbers, availability, search query response times, etc. Few of us start here.

There's a continuum in between; folks who support desktop users at a university, the girl who runs the Beowulf cluster at Sandia, and the great-UnixHead, who lives only to rack, compile, and tune.

What I am getting at is the fact, and you see this in the dying throes of SAGE as it is extruded from USENIX and the fitful self-consciousness in LOPSA (which, by the way, hasn't yet made me System Administrator of the Week), is that this a profession that is relatively young and is looking to mature. The frantic pace of technological change and industry upheaval (boom and bust cycles), has left precious little time for the profession to arrive at a body of knowledge. But I do see the emergence of leaders in the field, technologists who can contribute their considerable energies and skills to advancing the profession.

So, in answer to the question, "what is your definition of a 'system administrator' [in this context]?", I have to place the most emphasis on the sysadmin's ability to decide. Does the sysadmin have the skills, the management backing, and the resources to make his work strategic and to improve (insert overused term 'architect') his installation by hewing to engineering practices? In summary, I'm thinking of the SAGE Level IV system administrator.

Appropriate Responsibilities

• Designs/implements complex local and wide-area networks of machines.
• Manages a large, complex site or network.
• Works under general direction from senior management.
• Establishes/recommends policies on system use and services.
• Provides technical lead and/or supervises system administrators, system programmers, or others of equivalent seniority.
• Has purchasing authority and responsibility for purchase justification.

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