Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Unleashed

System Administrator Responsibilities

A system administrator is responsible for the integrity and availability of the data in a database. This is a simple concept, but it is a huge responsibility. Some large corporations place a valuation on their data as high as $1 million per 100MB. The investment in dollars is not the only issue; many companies that lose mission-critical data simply never recover.

Job descriptions for system administrators vary widely. In small shops, the administrator might lay out the physical design of the database, install SQL Server, implement the logical design of the database, tune the installation, and then manage ongoing tasks, such as backups. At larger organizations tasks might be broken out into separate job functions. ...