For successful system administration, you need something beyond the necessary technical skills. The following is a list of five slightly non-technical capacities that should be developed to turn into the best system admin ever. Image Source: Education Training 1. Monitor, measure, and record. Indeed, you know what the swap use is today in light because there's an issue with the disks thrashing and it's making the server go slow. However, your clients are complaining to the management that it's an ongoing issue and now the management is asking you for an explanation. What, you haven't been reporting this, so it's now your word against Sales and Marketing? Think about who wins that argument of course? You're liable for the system, so they will make this your concern. So get/build/purchase a system to monitor, measure, and record that data so you can build beautiful slides for fund next time you have to request hardware upgrades or to prove that the issue