System Administrator Appreciator Day

What is a System Administrator?

An individual responsible for maintaining a multi-user computer system, including a local-area network (LAN), wide-area network (WAN), Telephone system, or voice-mail system. See Figure 1. Typical duties include:

Adding and configuring new workstations

Setting up user accounts

Installing system-wide software

Performing procedures to prevent the spread of viruses

Allocating mass storage space

Answering questions


The system administrator is most often called the sysadmin, or S.A., or just the systems administrator. Small organizations may have just one system administrator, whereas larger enterprises usually have a whole team of system administrators.