week 1
A1 Purpose and nature of IT system support and management
The main purpose of IT system support and management is to:
Support different types of user using the system, including end users who can be classified as beginners, intermediate or expert, and administrators who have access rights that include the support staff.
Consider your school or college, you have teachers, managers, support staff, canteen staff and maintenance staff. These individuals are all important members to the running of the institution, however, their data needs are not identical. Therefore systems need to be structured in a way that limits the abilities of those members of staff to the data that is only sufficient enough for them to be able to do their jobs. Due to the nature of these roles some staff may be more IT literate than others and this could mean that training may be required for those that do not regularly use it systems to do their roles.
Provide continuity of IT-based:
– systems, e.g. servers and virtual personal computers, cloud storage, mobile devices, laptops, bring your own device (BYOD) and network systems
It is the role of the IT support systems to ensure that the day to day IT services functions as smoothly and efficiently as is possible, this requires them to monitor the "core services" of the infrastructure to maintain their operational stability.
– processes, e.g. financial management, email communications and stock control
Additional to the support of the network and core services, "processes" and "digital data" will need to be supported to ensure its validity and consistency is accurate. IT support can monitor the data flows around a system to address and anomalies or intrusions.
Maintain and improve the performance of organisations through system diagnosis, preventative maintenance and system upgrade and configuration
Companies reliance on IT has grown significantly over the years of digitisation and automation. As a result, the support role within the sector is one of utmost importance and as an emphasis on the continuity of the system is vital therefore having measures of preventative maintenance, upgrading and configuration. Companies need to be using systems that they can trust that are secure and will not fail. Using updates will ensure that things like security gaps are closed and that software and hardware operate to the best possible degree. The use of diagnostic tools to review the current position of things like network speeds, traffic going in and out of the network, speeds of processors and the number of threads and cores that are able to be used and memory testing.
Ensure security and protection of data in the system, including storage and backup and recovery in the event of system failure.
The volumes of data that organisations can create can be colossal and the importance of the security of the data has high levels of significance not only financially but legally. Companies that create data and information during their day to day functioning need to consider the value of the data, as if it were to be lost the company could be fined under the GDPR legislation. Companies are expected to keep all data safe and secure and for only as long as it needed, loss of this data could be an infringement of the legislation, furthermore the back up of this data would also be a key factor that must be met.
To avoid any potential legal mishap or impact on the functioning of the company IT support need to ensure that there is a process in place for backup routines to be followed. With the advent of cloud storage companies can locate backups of their data remotely from the organisation, this enables them to have a further level of security in place for any sort of physical infiltration.
Understand that the support and management needs of organisations varies across the system’s life cycle:
Design, build and test, e.g. install software, configure systems, training and setting up users
Operate, e.g. password resets, fault logging and management, managing data storage
Decommission, e.g. archive and migrate system data, recycle hardware.
• Understand that:
Support resources include: human, number and type of software licences, number and type of hardware devices, capacity requirements, e.g. size of hard disk drive (HDD) and network
Demand increases due to organisational change, e.g. changes to processes and systems
User need for support can be frequent or infrequent depending on their usage of the systems, expertise and access rights
Support provided is a compromise between cost, the resource availability, productivity of users and the environmental impact, e.g. energy consumption and reuse/recycling of hardware
Organisational needs can vary by sector, e.g. office, process and engineering industries and entertainment, IT and media sectors.
Last Updated
2021-04-19 14:51:04
Links to Learning Outcomes |
Links to Assessment criteria |
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Learning aim A: Examine the IT system support and management needs and characteristics of different organisations, which are essential to their operation |
English
Listening: Listen and respond to speakers ideas and perspectives, and how they construct and express meanings
Sentences with different forms: statement, question, exclamation, command
Sentence Structure: Use a range of sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate punctuation and spelling.
Maths
Collect and record data: Questionnaires, Observation, Tally
Analysis of information: Interpreting Results, Drawing conclusions from data, Comparing data
How 2's Coverage
Question and Answer - Verbal discussion with learners to quantify understanding
Traffic Lights - Learners use green, amber and red traffic lights to indicate levels of understanding and to attract support from peers and the teacher.
Anonymous Assessment - Learners assess an anonymous piece of work containing deliberate mistakes against given success criteria.
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