Information System

Limitations

• A systems approach does not adequately specify the interdependence and nature of interaction between an organization and its environment.
• The system tends to be rigid and will react slowly in open systems that interact with external forces.
• It generally is suitable for the manufacturing industry but not the service industry, which often has to adapt to the external environment.
• It also does not offer practicing managers specific tools and techniques, remaining rather abstract for practical problems.

System Administration

• In the context of the OS service provisioning, system administration plays a pivotal (critical/crucial/fundamental) role.
• This is particularly the case when a system is accessed by multiple users. The primary task of a system administrator is to ensure that the following happens:
• a. The top management is assured of efficiency in utilization of the system's resources.
• b. The general user community gets the services which they are seeking.
• In other words, system administrators ensure that there is very little to complain about the system's performance or service availability

This is not an exhaustive list, yet it represents most of the tasks which system administrators perform:

• System startup and shutdown
• Opening and closing user accounts
• Helping users to set up their working environment
• Maintaining user services
• Allocating disk space and re-allocating quotas when the needs grow
• Installing and maintaining software
• Installing new devices and upgrading the configuration
• Provisioning the mail and internet services
• Ensuring security of the system
• Maintaining system logs and profiling the users
• System accounting
• Reconfiguring the kernel whenever required