That is the question that came to my mind when I was considering the career options of Exchange Server administrators.

I know that other IT professions carry varying degrees of complexity, but still wonder how often the email admin is the smartest person in the room.  Putting aside the ego behind that question there are definitely a lot of areas in which an email admin needs to have an understanding.

Let’s consider some of the technical skills that a good email admin needs.

Email Servers – often the email administrator is working in environments with more than one email server product in production.  Even those who only manage one server product will still encounter other products as they deal with outside parties, often trying to troubleshoot a mail delivery problem.

Operating Systems – the email admin is also usually responsible for the operating system running on the server.  Again in heterogeneous environments this may mean several different editions of Microsoft Windows as well as some form of Linux or Unix.

High Availability – larger environments often require high availability for their email systems.  This means the email admin needs to understand cluster, network load balancing, and the Exchange Server high availability features.

Firewalls – every email system needs to move data to and from the internet, so an understanding of firewalls from different vendors is necessary.

DNS – this plays an important role in several ways, not only the MX records but also concepts such as split DNS and how important reverse DNS is for delivery.

Network Protocols – there are many protocols at different layers involved for an Exchange Server system such as TCP/IP, HTTP, SSL/TLS, RPC, and MAPI.

Email Clients – the email server admin will inevitably be called upon to assist with email client software support.  In my experience this extends not just to the different version of Outlook but also to POP/IMAP clients.

Mobile Devices – mobile access to email is so common these days that an email admin will encounter many different devices such as PDAs and smartphones requiring support.

Server Hardware – an email server is almost guaranteed to have the most concurrent users of any system in a business at any given time.  This means that the server hardware must be sized with enough resources to handle the peak load.

Storage – Storage Area Networks are everywhere these days and in my experience getting a well configured storage subsystem for an Exchange server requires the combined knowledge of both the storage admin and the email admin.

Backups/DR – in most businesses email is among the most critical systems and so it must be well protected by Exchange backups and able to be quickly recovered when disaster strikes.

Telephony – fax integration with email has been around for a while now and more recently telephone integration has also become mainstream.  Exchange Server 2007 introduced Unified Messaging that included many features previously only found in dedicated PBX systems.

Without a doubt being an email admin requires a broad skill set to manage what is one of the most complex and critical systems within a business.

Can you think of other important skills for email administrators?