Summary

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The system manager implements strategic management policies to try to anticipate potential problems and prevent them from occurring rather than simply dealing with them after the fact.

Support and maintenance agreements ensure that the systems under the system manager's control are adequately protected if a system fails. The system manager must also ensure that the level of support is right and must strike a delicate balance of providing value for money and protecting the interests of the business.

Documenting the systems is extremely important, especially if the documentation is to be used as part of a disaster recovery plan. The information provided must be up-to-date if it is to be of any real value and also must be comprehensive enough to cover all aspects of the systems under the system manager's control.

A form of configuration management, such as SCCS, strengthens the integrity of the systems by providing a fully documented history of changes made to configuration files, administration scripts, or system documentation.

The system accounting software is an excellent tool for monitoring the activity on the systems. The information it provides can be used to assist with future planning and license renewal, and to identify trends in command usage, to name but a few uses.

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