From the course: Career Essentials in System Administration by Microsoft and LinkedIn

Servers and clients

From the course: Career Essentials in System Administration by Microsoft and LinkedIn

Servers and clients

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- [Instructor] There will be two types of operating systems when managing servers as a sysadmin. The first would be Windows and the second would be Linux. There are other types such as Unix, but the previous two will make up the majority of your server types. These server operating systems will hold applications, file and printer shares, databases like SQL, and many other services that can do amazing things. Whether you use Active Directory for Windows, or Open LDAP or other third-party directory service products you'll need a centralized place to hold objects such as users, passwords groups, printers, and many others. This is needed for management and security. Without a directory services product every user would be in charge of their security of their computer and data streams. And that wouldn't be a good security solution. Azure has Active Directory, but to mimic on-premises Active Directory there's Azure Active Directory Domain Services. It's not an exact copy of on-premises Active Directory, but it is very close. You'll likely see most Windows clients from Windows 11 all the way back to Windows 7. And in some cases, maybe older than that. Macintosh computers are in many offices. They're mainly used by graphics, and video editors, but some companies may use them exclusively. Only about 1% of all client computers use a flavor of Linux for their operating system client. It works in a similar way as the server products, but without as many features, securing them may be an issue for offices that don't have Linux proficiency. The list you see here could be a partial list of what you'll be managing as a sysadmin. In larger organizations, you may have one, or a few of these jobs, in a small company you'll wear all these hats, or you'll hire consultants to fill in the gap. You don't have to be an expert in all of them on your first day even though some people might expect that. You'll learn about the products your company uses a little each day until you become proficient. For example, I have many years experience with IBM Storage, but if you gave me HP Storage to configure I would need some time to learn it. However, I do understand the various ways I can connect any type of storage to a server from what I learned in college, and studying for certifications. If you learn the underlying technology of all these subjects, then any well made brand will be fairly easy to understand. Servers and clients need a lot of upkeep, whether they live on-premises, or in the cloud. Learn what you can, but don't expect to be the most experienced person in a given room until you have some time and experience as a sysadmin.

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