Step 5: Determine if Escalation Is Necessary

Sometimes the problems we encounter fall outside the scope of our knowledge. Few organizations expect their administrators to know everything, but organizations do expect administrators to fix any problem, and to do this, additional help is often needed.

NOTE: Finding Solutions System administration is often as much about knowing whom and what to refer to in order to get information about a problem as it is about actually fixing the problem.

Technical escalation procedures do not follow a specific set of rules; rather, the procedures to follow vary from organization to organization and situation to situation. Your organization might have an informal arrangement or a formal one requiring documented steps and procedures to be carried out. Whatever the approach, there are general practices that you should follow for appropriate escalation.

Unless otherwise specified by the organization, the general rule is to start with the closest help first and work out from there. If you work in an organization that has an IT team, talk with others in your team; every IT professional has had different experiences, and someone else might know the issue at hand. If you are still struggling with the problem, it is common practice to notify a supervisor or head administrator, especially if the problem is a threat to the server's data or can bring down the server.

Suppose that you are the server administrator who notices a problem with a hard disk in a RAID 1 array on a Linux server. You know how to replace drives in a failed RAID 1 configuration, but you have no experience working with software RAID on a Linux server. This situation would most certainly require an escalation of the problem. The job of server administrator in this situation is to notice the failed RAID 1 drive and to recruit the appropriate help to repair the RAID failure within Linux.

NOTE: When you're confronted with a problem, it is yours until it has been solved or until it has been passed to someone else. Of course, the passing on of an issue requires that both parties be aware that it has been passed on.