Improving a Company’s IT Infrastructure as a SysAdmin— Software Company (Part I)
System Administrators (Sysadmins) are Information Technology (IT) professionals responsible for supporting, troubleshooting, and maintaining computer systems and networks.
Depending on the size of the organization, sysadmins also play the role of network administrators, and because of that, we can hear the term sysadmin used interchangeably to describe both professions. However, network administrators will focus on network tasks whereas sysadmins on servers and computer systems.
For those interested in learning more about the role, Google IT Support Professional Certificate is a good resource. In the System Administration and IT Infrastructure Services section, the final project requests a consultation as a sysadmin.
And this is what this post is about. Here I share the improvements I would recommend for one company based on what I learned.
Let’s go!
Software Company:
Network Funtime Company is a small company that builds open-source software. The company is made up of software engineers, a few designers, one person in Human Resources (HR), and a small sales team. Altogether, there are 100 employees. They recently hired you as a system administrator to come in and become their IT department.
When a new person is hired, the HR person purchases a laptop for them to do their work. The HR representative is unfamiliar with what type of hardware is out there; if a new employee requests a laptop, the HR person will purchase the cheapest option for a laptop online. Because of this, almost everyone has a different laptop model. The company doesn’t have too much revenue to spend, so they don’t order laptops until someone gets hired at the company. This leads to a few days of wait time from when someone starts to when they can actually work on a laptop.
The company doesn’t label their computers with anything, so if a computer is missing or stolen, there’s no way to audit it. There’s no inventory system to keep track of what’s currently in the fleet.
Once a computer is purchased, the HR person hands it to the new employee to set up. Software engineers that use Linux have to find a USB drive and add their preferred distribution to the laptop. Anytime someone needs something from HR — whether it’s office-related or tech related — they email the HR representative directly.
When a new employee gets a machine, they’re given logins to use cloud services. They get a personal orientation with HR to make sure they can log in. This requires the HR person to block off a few hours for every new employee. If an employee forgets the login to their machine, they have no way to retrieve a password and they have to reimagine their machine. Employees don’t have a strict password requirement to set for their computers.
The company currently has many of their services in the cloud, such as email, word processors, spreadsheet applications, etc. They also use the application, Slack, for instant communication.
What do you think needs to be improved? Please, feel free to pause scrolling down and think about how you would improve the company’s infrastructure. Also, don’t hesitate to share your suggestions in the comments.
My answer:
Now with a new system administrator the person who works in HR will not be overloaded with tackling tasks related to administration of technologies and set up in the company.
Firstly, from now on computers need to be labeled and an inventory must be done to keep track of the devices available in the company. Also, it is necessary to choose a standard operating system for the new devices bought and the hardware and specifications must first fit the needs for the job that will be performed, not only consider the cheapest price.
The company needs to have at least 1 spare laptop to provide to a new employee until it waits for the ordered laptop to arrive. Besides that, an educational video or an illustrated document should be provided to help old and new employees to set up their passwords and how login to the system. The same educational material should give instructions on how to act when they couldn’t log in to the computer for example, in case they have tried to follow all the tutorials followed.
Moreover, the go-to person to help employees to reset their passwords should be the system administrator. This same professional can adopt Active Directory to handle all the computers and users in the company, in case the budget allows that. With Active Directory will be possible to create GPOs and ensure that employees are using strict passwords and avoid reimagining the laptop when someone forgets the password.
When it comes to cloud services, it must be evaluated what services should really be on the cloud and what shouldn’t as using cloud services requires more money to keep them all there. In addition to that, it is important to set up a cloud service in more than one geographical region as in case of an outage the company still has access to their system and stuff.
Furthermore, as they use Slack for instant communication, some security measures should be followed. Ensuring that employees have a lock-screen key password and 2 Factor Authentication such as Google Authenticator on their cell phones is an important measure to avoid leaking information when someone has their device lost or stolen.
Lastly, like Active Directory permits dividing into Organizational Units and restricting access to some employees, in Slack it is possible to divide channels to restrict conversations. Therefore, this would help to keep instant messages restricted from other members of the company.
Thank you for reading.
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