Dear James,<br><br>In my humble opinion, a System Administrator should be good with People as well as Technology. You will need, leadership skills to ensure you guide the organisations staff to use the system optimally, you also require good problem solving skills, remember IT problems can be as simple as a cleaner pulling out a cable with a broom to a bug in the system however you need to be calm and collected to avoid disruption in business should the system go down. You also need to understand business processes to know what problems the system deployed by your organisation is solving and if it meets the organisations needs (the Business case).<br>
You will need to keep abreast with latest trends in the technology being used by your organisation to ensure you are not left behind especially in this days of distributed computing and outsourced services.<br>Finally, you have to be a good communicator, remember technology is a means to an end and not an end in itself, you have to communicate with users to ensure they are comfortable with the system, you also need to put measures in place (policies) that will guarantee seamless operation of your system, to summary, you need to be savvy technicaly and businesswise, i am sure someone else will elaborate on course work, i beleive system administration could vary across industries.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 5:16 PM, James Wachira <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:jwaciira.lists@gmail.com">jwaciira.lists@gmail.com</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<font color="#666600"><font size="2"><font face="tahoma,sans-serif">Seeing the good response James got on his &quot;CCNA - Advice&quot; thread, </font></font></font><div><font color="#666600"><font size="2"><font face="tahoma,sans-serif">I thought it would be an opportune time to ask this.</font></font></font><div>


<font color="#666600"><font size="2"><font face="tahoma,sans-serif"><br></font></font></font></div><div><font color="#666600"><font size="2"><font face="tahoma,sans-serif">Say I&#39;m working towards being a System Admin,</font></font></font></div>


<div><font color="#666600" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font color="#666600" face="tahoma, sans-serif">What is the right place to start?</font></div><div>

<font color="#666600" face="tahoma, sans-serif">What skill set do I need to have?</font></div><div><font color="#666600" face="tahoma, sans-serif">What I&#39;m I required to do in terms of professional courses, private study etc?</font></div>


<div><font color="#666600" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Are these possessional courses over-rated, is there such a thing as the self taught System Admin?</font></div><div><font color="#666600" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><br>


</font></div><div><font color="#666600" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Regards,</font></div><div><font color="#666600" face="tahoma, sans-serif">//James</font></div><div><font color="#666600" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><br>

</font></div><div><font color="#666600" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><br></font></div></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
Skunkworks mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke">Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks" target="_blank">http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks</a><br>
------------<br>
Skunkworks Server donations spreadsheet<br>
<a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AopdHkqSqKL-dHlQVTMxU1VBdU1BSWJxdy1fbjAwOUE&amp;hl=en" target="_blank">http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AopdHkqSqKL-dHlQVTMxU1VBdU1BSWJxdy1fbjAwOUE&amp;hl=en</a><br>

------------<br>
Skunkworks Rules<br>
<a href="http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&amp;t=94" target="_blank">http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&amp;t=94</a><br>
------------<br>
Other services @ <a href="http://my.co.ke" target="_blank">http://my.co.ke</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Barrack O. Otieno<br>+41767892272<br>Skype: barrack.otieno<br>