A Practical Approach to Teaching Information Technology Infrastructure Management

Abstract

Nowadays being an information system administrator or Information and Communication Technology (ICT) specialist is a very creative position. There are no strictly defined standards and guidelines what knowledge and skills the ICT specialist should have. It is also not clear what available solutions he should use to effectively manage the various types of information technology systems and infrastructures. Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) gives only direction and overview of IT service life-cycle and management of IT service processes. Standards like ISO 27000 (standard for IT security) and ISO/IEC 20000 (standard for IT Service Management) provide only normative and theoretical base for IT service management. The goal of the paper is to develop a practical knowledge and technology approach that can help ICT specialist to build and to manage IT infrastructure more effectively. This approach includes modern virtualization technologies and cloud computing, operating systems and effective operating system management solutions, IT resource monitoring, data backup and security monitoring systems, network security solutions and centralized IT system log management. It will help ICT specialists to acquire management processes, identify process ownership of management levels and understand ITIL best practice role in IT governance. They will get knowledge how to use specific software functionality and set of technologies to manage IT, IS systems in most effective way. The teaching approach is based on hands-on exercises and automated aids for checking completion of the exercises are provided.