SPEAKER 2: So organizations employ the help of

At a high level, system administration is someone like a systems

the field in IT that's responsible for administrator to manage the company's IT
maintaining infrastructure.
reliable computer systems in a multiuser
environment.
System administrators, or, as we like to call
them,
While systems administration sysadmins, are the unsung heroes of an
responsibilities organization.
can overlap with other roles in IT, a
person who works only in system
administration They work in the background to make sure
is called a systems administrator. a company's IT
infrastructure is always working, constantly
fighting to prevent IT disasters from
Systems administrators have a diverse set happening.
of roles and responsibilities. They
can range from configuring servers,
monitoring the network, provisioning or Yes, that's a real thing.
setting up In all seriousness, sysadmins have a lot of
new users and computers, and more. different responsibilities.
Any company that has an IT presence needs
IT support specialists work. a sysadmin or someone who handles those
You need to apply your diverse set of tech responsibilities.
skills The role of a sysadmin can vary depending
in different situations to help solve problems on the size of an organization.
in an organization. As an organization gets bigger, you need
teams of sysadmins.
Their responsibilities may be separated out
IT infrastructure encompasses the software, into different roles, with job titles
the hardware, like network administrators and
network, and services required for an database administrators.
organization Companies like Facebook and Apple don't
to operate in an enterprise IT environment. have a single person running their IT show,
but in smaller companies, it's usually
a single person who manages an entire
Without IT infrastructure, employees company's IT
wouldn't be able to do their jobs, and infrastructure.
the whole company will crumble before In this course, we'll focus on how just one
it even gets started. person-- you--
can single handedly manage an IT
infrastructure.
You'll learn the skills you need to manage service can be software that perform a
an organization of less than 100 people as a certain function.
sole IT person. In this video, we're going to talk about
As you start to scale up to large servers
organizations, more in-depth because, in many cases,
you'll also need to level up your sysadmins are responsible for maintaining
knowledge of systems administration. all of the company's servers.
You need to pick up skills that allow If you're working as an IT support specialist
you to automate workflows and manage and have systems administration
configurations responsibilities,
or computer settings automatically. these tasks could be something you'll
Right now, let's focus on systems perform.
administration A server is essentially software or a
in a small organization. machine
In the next couple of lessons, we're going to that provides services to other software or
talk in detail about the responsibilities machines.
of a sysadmin and how that relates For example, a web server stores and serves
to a role of a IT support specialist who content to clients
handles system administration. through the internet.
You can access the web server through a
Basically, a sysadmin is responsible for domain
their company's name like google.com.
IT services. We'll dive deeper into web servers in a later
Employees need these IT services so that course.
they can be productive. Right now, let's run down some other
This includes things like email, file storage, examples of servers.
running a website, and more. These An email server provides email services to
services have to be stored somewhere. other machines,
They don't just appear out of nowhere. and an SSH server provides SSH services to
Any thoughts on where they're stored? If other machines
the answer servers, you're correct. and so on and so forth.
We talked about servers in an earlier course We call the machines that use the services
and you've learned that the term servers can provided
have multiple meanings. by a server clients.
In one course, we discussed how servers Clients request the services from a server
have web content that they serve to other and, in turn, the servers respond with these
computers. services.
In another course, we talked about how A server can provide services to multiple
clients at once,
and a client can use multiple servers. Any
computer can be a server.
I can set up a web server on my home
computer
that would be able to serve my own you could potentially deal with a handful of
personal website servers.
on the internet for me. You don't want to have a monitor, keyboard,
But I don't really want to do that because and a mouse
I'd for each of these servers, do you?
have to leave my computer on all the time Fortunately, you don't have to thanks to
in order something we
for my website to be available all the time. learned in an earlier course.
Industry standard servers are typically We can remotely connect to them with
running 24/7, something like SSH.
and they don't run on dinky little hardware Even so, you should always have a monitor
like my home and keyboard on hand.
laptop. Sometimes, when you're working, your
They run on a really powerful and reliable network
hardware. might be having issues and won't be an
Server hardware can come in lots of option.
different forms. A common industry practice is to use
They can be towers that sit upright, that something
look very similar to the desktops we've known as a KVM switch.
seen. KVM stands for keyboard, video, and
Those towers can be put in a closet or can mouse.
sit on a table A KVM switch looks like a hub that you
if you want them to. can connect multiple computers to and
But what if you needed to have 10 servers? control them using one
The towers would start taking up way too keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
much space. You can read more about using KVM in
Instead, you can use rack servers, which the next supplemental reading.
lay flat Now that we've got a better understanding
and are usually mounted in a 90-inch wide of servers
server rack. and what they do, you can go out and start
If you needed even more space, you could buying server hardware and setting up
use blade servers that are even slimmer than services for your organization.
racks. Or maybe not.
There are other types of form factors for You don't actually have to buy your own
servers, server hardware
but these are the most common ones. You or even maintain your own services. In
can also customize the hardware on your the next video, we're going to learn about
service a wave of computing that's starting to
depending on the services. overtake the IT
For example, on a file server, you'll want world-- cloud computing. See
more storage resources so that you can you there.
store more files.
What about connecting to our servers? Oh, the cloud, the magical wonderful cloud
Working in a small IT organization, that you hear about in the news that
moves data across the white fluffy billions of users.
wonders in the sky. It's easy to see why the cloud has
The magical cloud dispersed bits of data become a popular way of computing in
across in the world in itty bitty raindrops, the last few years.
right? Now, instead of holding onto terabytes of
No, that's not how the cloud works at all. storage space
But you'd be surprised how many people on your laptop, you can upload that data to a
believe that. file storage
There's no doubt you've heard the term cloud service like Dropbox, which stores that data
in the news in a managed
or from other people. location like a data center.
Your photos are stored in the cloud. Your The same goes for your organization.
email is stored in the cloud. Instead of managing your own servers,
Cloud computing is the concept that you can you can use internet services that handle
access your data, everything for you,
use applications, store files, et cetera from including security updates, server hardware,
anywhere routine software updates, and more.
in the world, as long as you have an internet But with each of these options come a few
connection. drawbacks.
But the cloud isn't a magical thing. The first is cost.
It's just a network of servers that store and When you buy a server, you pay upfront for
process the hardware.
our data. That way, you can set up your services, like
You might have heard the word data center a file storage,
before. at potentially very little cost because you're
A data center is a facility that stores the one managing it.
hundreds, When you use internet services like Box,
if not thousands, of servers. Companies Dropbox,
with large amounts of data have to keep that offer file storage online, the starting
their information stored in places like data cost
centers. may be smaller, but in the long-term, costs
Large companies like Google and Facebook could add up since you're paying a fixed
usually own their own data centers because amount every month.
they have billions of users that need access When comparing the cost of services,
to their data at all times. always keep in mind what a subscription
Smaller companies could do this but usually could cost you for every user in your
rent out organization.
parts of a data center for their needs. When Weigh that against maintaining your own
you use a cloud service, this data is typically hardware
stored in a data center or multiple data in the long-term, and then make the decision
centers, anywhere that's large enough to that works
hold the information of millions, maybe best for your organization.
even The second drawback is dependency. Your
data is beholden to these
platforms. But in smaller businesses or shops, as the IT
If there's an issue with the service, someone lingo goes,
other than you the sysadmin has to think carefully about
is responsible for getting it up and running computer security and whether or not to
again. allow access to certain users. There are a
That could cost your company precious loss few common policy questions
of productivity and data. that come up in most IT settings that you
No matter what method you choose, should know.
remember that you're still responsible for Should users be allowed to install software?
the problems Probably not.
that arise when there's an issue. You could run the risk of having a user
If Dropbox is having an issue with your accidentally install
important user data, malicious software, which we'll learn about
it's still your problem, and you have in the upcoming
to get it working again no matter what. To course in security.
prevent a situation like that from popping Should users have complex passwords with
up, certain requirements?
you might consider backing up some critical It's definitely a good rule of thumb
data in the cloud to create a complex password that has
and on a physical disk. symbols,
That way, if one system goes down, you random numbers, and letters.
have another way to solve the problem. A good guideline for a password length is
Whether you choose to maintain physical to make sure it has a minimum of eight
servers characters that
or use cloud services, these are the type of make it more difficult for someone to crack.
things you need to think about when Should users be able to view nonwork-
providing services related websites
to your company. like Facebook? That's a
In the next couple of lessons, we're going personal call.
to talk about some Some organizations prefer that their
of the other responsibilities of a sysadmin. employees only
We'll give you a high-level overview use their work computer and network
of these, then dive even deeper later in this strictly for business.
course. But many allow other uses so their
employee
In a small company, it's usually a sysadmin's can promote their business or goods on
responsibility social media
to decide what computer policies to use. In platforms, stay up to date on current events,
larger companies with hundreds of and so on.
employees or more, It would definitely be a policy that you
this responsibility usually falls under the and your organization's leaders can work
chief security out together.
officer. If you hand out a company phone to an
employee, infrastructure services
should you set a device password? in your organization.
Absolutely, people lose their mobile Spoiler alert, there are a lot of them ahead.
devices all the time. As always, make sure to rewatch any
If a device is lost or stolen, it lessons
should be password-protected at the if you need some more time for the material
very least to sink in.
so that someone else can't easily view Rome wasn't built in a day, you know, and
company emails. neither are IT support specialists. So how
We'll dive way deeper into the broader about getting network access? That's a
impact and implications service that needs to be managed.
of security and organizational policies in the What about secure connection to websites
security course and other computers?
that's last up in this program. These You guessed it, that's also a service that has
are just a few of the policy questions to be managed.
that can come up. And managing services doesn't just mean
Whatever policies are decided upon have setting them up.
to be documented somewhere. As you They have to be updated routinely, patched
know from our lesson on documentation for security
in the first course, it's super critical to holes, and compatible with the computer
maintain good documentation. within your organization.
If you're managing systems, you'll be Later in this course, we'll dive deeper into
responsible for documenting your the essential infrastructure services that you
company's policies, might see in an IT support specialist role.
routine procedures, and more.
You can store this documentation on an Another responsibility sysadmins have is
internal wiki site, file managing users and hardware.
server, software, wherever. Sysadmins have to be able to create new
The takeaway here is that having users
documentation of policies and give them access to their company's
readily available to your employees resources.
will help them learn and maintain those On the flip side of that, they also
policies. have to remove users from an IT
infrastructure
We've talked a little bit about the if users leave the company.
services that It's not just user accounts they have to worry
are potentially used in an organization like about.
file storage, Sysadmins are also responsible for user
email, web content, et cetera. machines.
But there are many other infrastructure They have to make sure a user is able to
services log in
that you need to be aware of. and that the computer has the necessary
As an IT support specialist doing system software that a user
administration,
you'd be responsible for the IT
needs to be productive. software is updated
Sysadmins also have to ensure that the and hardware issues are fixed if and when
hardware they're they occur.
provisioning or setting up for users is Retirement-- in this final stage, hardware
standardized in some way. becomes unusable or no longer needed, and
We talked in an earlier course about imaging it needs to be properly removed from the
a machine with the same image. This fleet.
practice is industry standard with In a small organization, a typical hardware
dealing with multiple user lifecycle
environments. might go something like this.
Not only do sysadmins have to standardize First, a new employee is hired by the
settings company.
on a machine, they have to figure out the Human resources tells you to provision a
hardware computer for them
lifecycle of a machine. and set up their user account.
They often think of the hardware Next, you allocate a computer you have
lifecycle of a machine from your inventory or you order a new
in the literal way. When one if you need it.
was it built? When you allocate hardware, you may
When was it first used? need to tag the machine with a sticker so
Did the organization buy it brand new, or that you can keep track of which inventory
was it used? belongs to the organization.
Who maintained it before? Next, you image the computer with a base
How many users have used it in the current image,
organization? preferably using a streamlined method that
What happens to this machine if we discussed in our last course, Operating
someone needs a new one? Systems and You.
These are all good questions to ask when Next, you name the computer with the
thinking about an organization's standardized host name.
technology. This helps with managing machines-- more
Sysadmins don't want to keep a 10- on that
year-old computer when we talk about directory services later.
in their organization. Or In regards to the name itself, we talked
maybe they do-- about using a format such as username-
even that's something they might have to location,
make a decision on. but other hostname standards can be used.
There are four main stages of the hardware Check out the supplemental reading to find
lifecycle. out more.
Procurement-- this is the stage where After that, you install software the user
hardware is purchased needs on their machine.
or reused for an employee. Deployment-- Then the new employee starts, and you
this is where hardware is set up so that
the employee can do their job.
Maintenance-- this is the stage where
streamline the setup process for them by manage hardware,
providing instructions on how to log into you do something called batch update. This
their new machine, means that once every month or so, you
get email, et cetera. update all your servers with the latest
Eventually, if a computer sees a hardware security patches.
issue, a failure, You have to find time to take their services
you look into it and think through the next offline,
steps. perform the update, and verify that the new
If it's getting too old, you'll have to update works
figure out where to recycle it and with the service.
where to get new hardware. You also don't have to perform an update
Finally, if a user leaves the company, you'll every single time
also have to remove their access from IT a new software becomes available, but
resources it's common practice to do batch updates
and wipe the machine so that you can for security updates and very critical system
eventually reallocate it updates.
to someone else. In the security course, we dive deeper into
Imaging-- installing software and security practices,
configuring settings but a good guideline is to keep your system
on a new computer can get a little time secure by installing the latest security
consuming. patches routinely.
In a small company, you don't do it often Staying on top of your security is always a
enough where it makes much of a good idea.
difference.
But in a larger company, a time- Not only to sysadmins in a small company
consuming process work with users and computers, they also
just won't cut it. have to deal with printers and phones too.
You'll have to learn automated ways to Whether your employees have cell phones
provision new machines or desk phones,
so that you only spend minutes on this and their phone lines have to be set up. Printers
not hours. are still used in companies, which means
they have to be set up so employees can use
When you manage machines for a them.
company, Sysadmins might be responsible for making
you don't just set it and forget it. sure printers are
You have to constantly provide updates working or, if renting a commercial printer,
and maintenance they have to make sure that someone can be
so that they run the latest secure software. on-site to fix it.
When you have to do this for a fleet of What if a company's fax machine isn't
machines,
you don't want to immediately install
updates
as they come in.
That would be way too time-consuming.
Instead, to effectively update and
working? to establish this relationship with a vendor.
If you don't know what a fax machine is, It's not just technical implementations of
that's not totally surprising. hardware
They've been slowly dying since the that sysadmins have to consider. It's
invention of email. so many things.
Fax machines are still alive and kicking at
companies, We talked about troubleshooting a lot in an
and they're a big pain to deal with. earlier course,
Sysadmins could be responsible for those but it's worth mentioning again. When
too. you're managing an entire IT
Video/audio conferencing machines-- yep, infrastructure,
they probably you constantly have to troubleshoot
need to handle those too. problems and find
In an enterprise setting, sysadmins have to solutions for your IT needs.
procure this hardware one way or another. This will probably take up most of your time
Working with vendors or other as an IT support specialist.
businesses to buy hardware is a This could involve a single client
common practice. machine
Setting up businesses accounts with vendors from an employee, or a server, or service
like Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Apple, et cetera, that isn't behaving normally.
is usually beneficial, since these companies Some folks who start their careers in IT
can support deepen their knowledge to become
offer discounts to businesses. system administrators.
These are things that sysadmins have to They go from working on one machine to
think about. multiple machines.
It's typically not scalable just to go out and For me, I made the leap during my
purchase devices internship
on Amazon, although if that's what's as an IT support specialist in college at a
decided, semiconductor lab.
they could do that too. The lab ended up closing, and they needed
Sysadmins must be sure to weigh their help
option before purchasing deprecating the environment.
anything. So what started as an IT help desk support
They need to think about hardware supply. quickly transition
So if a certain laptop model isn't used to a sysadmin role.
anymore, That opportunity was my golden ticket to
they need to think of a suitable backup that dabble into Active Directory, subnetting,
works with their organization. and decision-making, which is a core
Price is also something to keep in mind. part of this job.
They will probably need formal approval Sysadmins also have to troubleshoot and
from their manager or another leader prioritize
issues at a larger scale. They can monitor their service and have it
If a server that sysadmin managed stopped alert them
providing services to 1,000 users, in case of a problem.
and one person had an issue about the So how do you keep track of your
printer, which troubleshooting
do you think would have to be worked on a common industry standard is to use some
first? sort of ticketing
Whatever the scenario, there are two skills or bug system.
that are critical to arriving at a good solution This is where users can request help on an
for your users, issue
and we already covered them in an earlier and then you can track your
course. troubleshooting work through
Do you know what they are? The the ticketing system.
first is troubleshooting. This helps you organize and prioritize issues
Asking questions, isolating the problem, and document
following the cookie crumbs, and reading troubleshooting steps.
logs Throughout this course, we'll introduce
are the best ways to figure out the issue. You types of services
might have to read logs from multiple that a sysadmin needs to maintain
machines and what responsibilities they have in an
or even for the entire network. organization.
We talked about centralized logging a little We'll also share some best practices for
bit troubleshooting when it comes
in the last course on Operating Systems and to systems administration. When
You-- you work as an IT support
Becoming a Power User. specialist,
If you need a refresher to how centralized systems administration can become part of
logging works, your job.
check out the supplemental reading. So it helps to think about all aspects of
Anyway, the second super important managing an IT infrastructure in an
skill that we covered organization.
is customer service. The more prepared you are, the better.
Showing empathy, using the right tone of
voice, Let's take a bit of a dark turn and talk about
and dealing well with difficult situations-- disasters.
these skills are essential to all IT roles. Like it or not, something, at some point, will
In some companies, sysadmins have to be stop working,
available around the clock. no matter how much planning you do. This
If a server or network goes down in the happens in both small and large companies.
middle of the night, It's an equal opportunity problem. You
someone has to be available to get it can't account for everything,
working again. but you can be prepared to recover from it.
Don't worry, a sysadmin doesn't have to How?
be awake and available 24/7. It's super important to make sure
that your company's data is routinely backed administrative session.
up somewhere, preferably far away Do whatever you need to do, and once
from its current location. you're
What if a tornado struck your building and done, close the session.
your backups got In Linux systems, we usually use the
swept away with it? sudo command to execute commands as
You wouldn't have a building to work in, let an administrator.
alone be able to recover your data and get When you execute sudo for the first time in
people up a machine,
and running again. you get a message like this. These
Later in this course, we'll talk more about principles apply to any administrator
what methods rights,
you can use to back up your organization's regardless of the operating system or
data service you're in charge of.
and to recover from a disaster. Let's take a deeper dive into what this all
We'll try to keep things a little lighter in the means.
meantime. Respect the privacy of others.
So far, you've learned a lot about the roles Don't use your administrator rights
and responsibilities of a sysadmin. Some of to access private information that you have
it may seem like a lot of work. Some might no business
even seem scary. accessing.
Being responsible for keeping data available Having system access to the information
isn't easy, stored in a user's
but it's a rewarding role in IT, and you're home directory doesn't mean you should be
already looking
building your SA or sysadmin skill at their personal files.
set by learning the fundamentals of IT Being an administrator of an email server
support. doesn't mean you should read someone else's
email.
When you have administrative rights for Just because you can doesn't mean you
something, should.
whether it's one machine, a fleet of 100 And even if you have a business reason to
machines, access a certain piece of information, make
or a cloud service with thousands of users, sure you follow the appropriate process or
you need to be careful that you use these policies
rights responsibly. to access it.
The most important thing is to avoid using You shouldn't use your administrator rights
administrative rights for tasks that don't to bypass any rules. Think
require them. before you type.
For example, you shouldn't browse the web When you use your administrator rights,
as an administrator user. your actions can have much greater
Try to minimize the time spent in an consequences than when
you're acting as a normal user. Think
through what you're doing and
don't rush. administrator rights,
Mistakes like deleting the wrong set of the more you can mess up.
files, You can minimize the impact of any
rebooting the wrong machine, or breaking mistake--
the connection and some mistakes are inevitable-- by
that you're using to manage a remote making
machine sure you can quickly revert your changes if
can all happen if you're not careful. something
You can train yourself to do this goes wrong.
by writing out the steps you plan to take You can do this by making a copy of the
before doing them. state
This helps in two ways. before changing it, by keeping your
It allows you to plan ahead and serves as a configuration in a version
documentation control system, or by documenting what
of what you did. steps you
Documenting what you did is crucial when needed to take in order to go back to the
using administrator rights. previous state.
Listing the commands you executed lets Reverting to the previous state is called a
you repeat the same exact process in the rollback.
future Some commands are easier to rollback than
and fix any problems that may come up others.
later. For example, if you change a configuration
In Linux, there is a command called script. setting
We can use it to record a group of from true to false, the rollback is to set it
commands back to true.
as they're being issued, along with their But if you're deleting a file in a way
output. that it doesn't keep a backup copy, the
In Windows PowerShell, there's an rollback could be tough or even
equivalent command impossible.
called Start-Transcript. So before you make a change, take a
The output of these tools is useful for moment
automating to think about what a rollback would look
procedures. like and make sure
Similarly, we can use the recordMyDesktop you have copies of any information that
tool could be lost.
to record the interaction with the graphical
application. Let's start by defining what we mean by
We put information about these tools in production.
the next supplemental reading. In an infrastructure context, we call the
The last of the sudo command principle is parts
with great power comes great responsibility. of the infrastructure where a certain service
It's a little cheeky, but the point is serious. is
The more you can do with your executed and served to its users
"production."
If you host a website, the service
that delivered the website content to the
users machine.
are the production servers. Once the changes have been applied, make
Inside your company, the servers that the standby machine and primary machine,
validate users' passwords and then apply the changes to the other
are the production authentication machine.
servers. For even bigger services, when you have
You get the idea. lots of servers providing the service,
So let's say you need to make an important you may want to have canaries. Similar
change to the canary coal miners carry to detect
in your production infrastructure. It toxic gases when entering the mines,
could be adding a new service, you'll use a small group of servers to
changing the configuration of an existing detect any potential issues in the larger
service, changes
updating the operating system, or you want to push out in the system. Once
maybe shutting down you verify that it works correctly on those
the service that's currently running. How machines,
do you go about doing that? you then deploy the change to the rest of
The key to safely making these changes is to the fleet.
always run them through a test environment That way, if there's an issue with the
first. change,
The test environment is usually a virtual only a subset of the users get exposed to it
machine running and you can roll it back before it hits
the same configuration as a production everyone.
environment, Now let's say you need to make a minor
but it isn't actually serving any users of the change in your production infrastructure.
service. Should you just go ahead and make the
This way, if there's a problem when change in production?
deploying the change, No, you should always try it in your test
you'll be able to fix it without the user infrastructure first.
seeing it. It doesn't matter how minor the change may
If you're in charge of an important seem.
service There's always something that could go
that you need to keep running during a wrong.
configuration change, Whether the infrastructure needs primary
we recommend that you have a and secondary machines
secondary or a standby machine. This or a group of canaries depends on how big
machine will be exactly the same as a the service is
production machine, and how important it is that it doesn't go
but won't receive any traffic from actual down.
users Even for the smallest services, you should
until you enable it to do so. never make changes
In this case, once you've tested your changes
in the test
environment and are ready to deploy them to
production,
first apply the changes to the secondary
directly in production. into existing machines.
Always use a test instance first and only In general, the more users your service
deploy the change reaches,
to production after verifying that it works. the more you'll want to ensure that changes
aren't disruptive.
We've mentioned before that you should The more important your services to
always your company's operations,
test your changes before deploying, the more you'll work to keep the service up.
document what you do, and have a way to You may have a user agreement about the
revert to the previous state. expectation
The amount of time and effort you invest of a service availability.
in each of these steps depends on the risk For example, in lots of companies,
involved. disruptive maintenance is performed on the
You should always have a test instance for weekend.
trying out In these cases, it's agreed that it's fine if
changes, but it might not be worth having the main file server is down on Saturday
a secondary server while you make any changes. You
if nobody cares about downtime. can also use these criteria to
So how do you decide how much time and establish priorities
effort to invest? for fixing a problem.
We can assess the risk involved by If the problem is preventing people from
considering doing their work,
how important the service is to the finding a solution to it should have a higher
infrastructure priority
and how many users would be impacted if than solving a minor annoyance that can be
the service went down. worked around.
Certain services are mission-critical.
If the centralized authentication system is As an IT support specialist, you'll often
down, be in charge of fixing problems. The
no one will ever be able to log in. problem could be in a user's computer,
If the billing system is unreachable, the a server in your own infrastructure, a piece
company won't be able to receive of code
payments. running in the cloud, or somewhere in
If your backups are lost, you have no between.
safeguards So how do you go about fixing it?
in the event of a disaster. Let's say you're dealing with a problem,
But not all services are mission-critical. either because you found it or someone
An informational website isn't as critical reported it to you.
as an e-commerce site. Before you start fixing it, make sure you
An internal ticket system isn't as can recreate the error, as you'll
critical as an external customer support want to test your solution to make sure the
application. problem is
The infrastructure needed for new gone after you apply the fix.
installation
isn't as critical as the one used for logging
This is called a reproduction case you should see the website content instead
and means you're creating a road map to of the error
retrace the steps that page.
led the user to an unexpected outcome, like Wow, we've come a long way and covered
reaching an error page. lots
When looking for a reproduction case, of different aspects of the responsibilities
there are three questions you will need to of a sysadmin, including how to apply
answer. changes safely with the right amount of
What steps did you take to get to this point? effort.
What's the unexpected or bad result? And Next, you'll practice these concepts using
what's the expected result? Qwiklabs.
Let's say that you're trying to fix a problem Then, in the next module, we'll talk about
where a user the technical details of the infrastructure
can't access a website page. The services used in IT. See
reproduction case would be you there.
navigating to the failing SPEAKER 1: Congratulations on finishing
site with a web browser. this lesson
The bad result is an error page, while the from the Google IT Support certificate.
expected result Access the full experience, including job
is a visible website. search help,
Once you have the steps you need to and get the official certificate by clicking
recreate the icon
the unexpected result and you know what or the link in the description.
the right result should be, you can try to Watch the next lesson in the course by
fix the underlying issue. clicking here,
Remember, always do this in your test and subscribe to our channel for more
instance, lessons
never in production.
Make sure you document all your steps and
any findings.
Having this documentation may prove
invaluable
if you ever have to deal with similar issues
again.
Your future self will thank you.
After applying your fix, retrace the same
steps that
took you to the bad experience. If
your fix worked, the expected
experience
should now take place.
For our page example, you can verify your
solution
by visiting the site.
Once you've applied the necessary fix,