What is the difference between a System Administrator and Network Administrator?

Does anybody know the difference between roles of a System Administrator and a Network Administrator in terms of what systems and technologies they support? What is the main thing that distinguishes a System Administrator and a Network Administrator? thanks.

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pumbaa_g

My understanding (which may be wrong) will be, System Administrator is Platform related Server/Desktop support like Wintel. Network Admin will involve Network Related tasks

paul78

Yes - its realy not more complicated than that. System admins work on computing devices and network admins work on network devices. In reality, as a job role, different companies of varying sizes will have slightly different duties.

ptilsen

Pumbaa pretty much has it. "Systems" professionals are more typically working on workstations, servers, or mainframes, while "network" professionals are more typically working on VPN appliances, firewalls, routers, switches, and cabling. The huge however, however, is that there are many positions that might be titled one way or the other but not really focus on either area. Particularly in organizations, you can title the position whatever you want because they will essentially work on anything.

Even in larger organizations, there can be crossover, especially when it comes to security. In almost all positions, it is worth having at very least a foundation in each of the common technologies in use, if not deep skill.

QHalo

The issue with the terms is that HR departments don't understand them and since requirements for certain jobs cross lines the terms have started to become quite interchangeable really. The thing I would look for is in the job description whenever one is posted. That's the best indicator as to what the company thinks the title means. The others have provided you with how the titles logically would fall into place, but as many of us know working in IT, a title is not always reflective of the work you will perform.

Slowhand

I've heard them used interchangeably, (unfortunately,) depending on what company I've been with. Generally, though, pumbaa_g's break-down of the terms is what you'll encounter out there. Sometimes there are little sub-divisions of the terms, depending on your area and what the trends are. In the San Francisco Bay Area, there are a few titles you'll see on job-boards pretty regularly and they usually go something along these lines:

* Systems Administrator - Usually involves working with Windows Server

* Systems Engineer - Most often this will involve managing Linux/UNIX servers

* Network Engineer - Routing, switching, firewalls, and working with protocols like OSPF and BGP are generally in the job-description.

* Network Administrator - This one's a toss-up between working with routers & switches or being an admin-of-many-hats and doing a bit of everything.

SteveO86

Pumbaa_g has the real breakdown, however I've found companies label the position whatever they want want. I've worked with people who are title network administrator and are really just a glorified desktop techs, I've seen Sr. Network Engineers who are heavy VMWare/Server guys and don't deal with the network one bit.

My real title from HR is System Engineer however my role has nothing to do with servers at all, my job role is 100% Cisco Routing/L3/VPN and yet I don't have the word network anywhere near my title.

Weird huh?

egrizzly

yeah, it is weird. I think sometimes IT department get mixed up in being understaffed/overstaffed with personnel that between expanding and limiting the job roles of their various job titles the job descriptions they send to HR wind up seriously overlapping. Thanks for all the explanations.

m3zilla

In my experience, it's the same thing. I've worked for several small/medium size company and have had titles like system/network admins or system/network engineer, and it's the same duties for all the companies.

ptilsen

Slowhand wrote: »

In the San Francisco Bay Area, there are a few titles you'll see on job-boards pretty regularly and they usually go something along these lines:

* Systems Administrator - Usually involves working with Windows Server

* Systems Engineer - Most often this will involve managing Linux/UNIX servers

Either San Francisco is really unique, or this is just inaccurate. There is no Windows/NIX distinction between the terms "Administrator" and "Engineer". The only distinction is that "engineers" typically do more "design" and project work, while "administrators" do more maintenance and break/fix work.

Slowhand

As I said, that's what I'm generally seeing out there as I job-hunt. The term "systems administrator" tends to get associated with Windows work and the term "systems engineer" tends to denote Linux administration, around here.

SanDie

ptilsen wrote: »

Either San Francisco is really unique, or this is just inaccurate. There is no Windows/NIX distinction between the terms "Administrator" and "Engineer". The only distinction is that "engineers" typically do more "design" and project work, while "administrators" do more maintenance and break/fix work.

If engineers do the designing does that mean that Engineers are always busy and if administrators just have fix work, they have downtime until there is something to fix?

networker050184

Well there is more to it than just fixing broken things from an admin/operations side. New configurations, house keeping etc.

SanDie

networker050184 wrote: »

Well there is more to it than just fixing broken things from an admin/operations side. New configurations, house keeping etc.

Would admins still have more downtime than the engineers? Or just as busy..

kohr-ah

No not at all. Both can be just as busy but accomplishing different tasks.

networker050184

SanDie wrote: »

Would admins still have more downtime than the engineers? Or just as busy..

That depends 100% on the company. No blanket answer for these questions you're asking.

TheFORCE

lol SanDie digging up old threads in search of the IT job with the ultimate downtime.

chmod

I think nowadays we should forget about sys admin/net admin/net engineer/whatever engineer and leave that for HR paperwork.

Even if we are specialized in certain topic, we should consider/prepare ourselves to become infrastructure specialists, sure you can be a server specialist or a network specialist but you need to have a very good understanding of both(systems and networking), nowadays is very normal to get a job where you do a little bit of both or entirely both, also to be really good and have an end to end understanding of technology you should master sys admin and net admin skills, then you specialize a little bit more on one or the other.

NOC-Ninja

System deals with servers,vm's......
Network deals with routers,switches,anything networks.

Danielm7

It really depends on the company. In some places the sysadmins might also do some network tasks, or the network admins deal with the servers because they "are on the network" as silly as that sounds. If you're job hunting look at the job descriptions, not only the titles. I think we've all seen "help desk engineer" or the opposite end of the spectrum where they want analyst level titles with architect level responsibilities.

Maybe it's regional, but I've never seen the admin = windows, engineer = linux thing before.

OctalDump

NOC-Ninja wrote: »

System deals with servers,vm's......
Network deals with routers,switches,anything networks.

And fight over who deals with the virtual network.