Define "System Administration" and the set of tasks involved.

I run Linux at home and the office, and "system administration" consists of managing repositories of data (files) gathered from locations, made available to users, backed up and periodically cleaned up.

I started out using shell scripts with standard Unix commands (grep/sed/awk) to move things around across network shares. However, trying to port these scripts to other Unix's (SUN) and Windows was painful because of inconsistencies in shells and command flags. Now I prefer to write perl scripts in place of shell scripts, because the logic is more flexible and portable.

But, those are 'my' system administration needs...what are yours?