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Wesley
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#TL;DR

System administration has, as a subset of its larger potential skills, an overlapping portion of datacenter design's skillset. Datacenter design can be a speciality, and at a scale above a few thousand square feet is a speciality, but does have a set of topics that a system administrator can be reasonably expected to know.

#The Larger Story

A system administrator is a generalist knowledge domain. Some sysadmins tend to focus on one thing versus another thing, and no sysadmin really looks like another. However it is self evident that a sysadmin will be working on switches, routers, databases, server OSs, firmware, hardware replacement, wiring, VOIP, firewalls, storage, HPC clusters, threat mitigation, PCI compliance, wireless signals, mobile phones, etc. and etc.

Each of the above topic domains can be specialized in to such a degree that a person that does so might not be considered a sysadmin. Someone who is a VOIP engineer is... just that. A VOIP engineer. Not a sysadmin. Someone that is a storage administrator can have a depth of knowledge and a domain of responsibility that makes them... just that. A storage administrator. Not a sysadmin.

I like to use database administrators as an example. A sysadmin, in the course of performing his duties will have a high probability of working with databases. Maybe it's as simple as spinning up a MySQL database for a cacti instance. Maybe it's as complex as working with replication, sharding, split tables, indexing, and query execution plans for a large application. However, there are also database administrators (DBAs). DBAs are specialists in their field (or at least should be) and due to their constant exposure to databases and the theories and practices behind information storage and retrieval in a relational database, will have a honed domain of knowledge and speciality. They are no longer sysadmins, but DBAs.

Now some sysadmins might have never, ever touched a database server. Never ran an SQL query. Never worked with anything more complex than a spreadsheet. Does that make them less of a sysadmin? No. However, just because they have never used a RDBMS does not mean that someone who has is a specialist and that the general skillset is outside the realm of a sysadmin.

In a similar manner, datacenter design and management has the potential to be within the scope of a sysadmin. Topics like rack design, rack placement, hot and cold aisles, concrete floors, raised floors, cable plant management, ceiling types, AC sizing, AC duct placement, circuit sizing, electric voltage selection, etc. and etc. can be part of a sysadmin's duties. It could be for a 100 square foot closet. It could be for a 1,000 square foot room. If it gets much larger than that, then it seems that a specialist company and set of engineers should be consulted to do the main design phase, with input from sysadmins (thus, being at least a part of the design process, so still being considered as part of the datacenter design process).

Once you get past a certain arbitrary level of knowledge, job description, and daily duties, then somewhere along the line you become a DC manager or DC designer, in much the same way that at some point along the line you would become a DBA and not a SysAdmin, or a storage admin, or a security specialist, or a mobile device administrator, etc.

I've made a mockup Venn diagram that shows my thoughts:

Venn digram of sysadmin skills

#Conclusion

Aspects of datacenter design are on topic for ServerFault and sysadmins in general. Yes, I know we quibble about the fracturing of StackExchange into Security, DBAs, U&L, etc. However, that's another topic. For now, while we don't have a specialist community for Datacenter Managers, it's still on topic here just like database administration and UNIX/Linux questions are, within a certain sphere, on topic as well.

Wesley
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