#1434 Refresh of IT Infrastructure (ITOP) Levels 1-4 change request accepted

IT infrastructure (ITOP) broadly covers system administration (sysadmin) activities and tasks.  Automation is referenced at Level 4 but this is now an important aspect of a system administrator or infrastructure engineer role, from entry-level upward. 

As infrastructure is increasingly provisioned from cloud IaaS vendors, configuring and monitoring platform services needs to be reflected in the IT infrastructure skill. 

The overall skill description can be improved by identifying general sysadmin activities separately from the automation of those activities. 

Revised overall description and skill-level descriptions are set out below, which reference configuration and automation at each level.   

Levels 1 and 2 include explicit reference to the learning of skills. 

IT infrastructure ITOP - Overall description

The building, operation and control of the IT infrastructure that is required to deliver and support the information systems needs of a business. The provisioning, testing, deployment and monitoring of infrastructure components.  The application of tools and languages to automate infrastructure tasks.

Guidance Notes 

The components of IT infrastructure include - but are not limited to - physical devices, virtual resources, infrastructure-related software, middleware, network services and data storage, Components may be on-premises or provisioned as cloud services.

Activities include...

• preparing for new or changed services
• operation of the change process
• maintaining regulatory, legal and professional standards
• building and managing systems and components in virtualised and cloud computing environments
• monitoring the performance of systems and services in relation to their contribution to business performance, their security and their sustainability.

IT infrastructure ITOP - Level 4

Provides technical expertise to enable the correct application of operational procedures.

Contributes to the planning and implementation of infrastructure maintenance and updates.

Uses infrastructure management tools to determine load and performance statistics.

Implements agreed infrastructure changes and maintenance routines.

Configures tools and/or creates scripts to automate the provisioning, testing and deployment of new and changed infrastructure.

Identifies operational problems and contributes to their resolution, checking that they are managed in accordance with agreed standards and procedures.

Provides reports and proposals for improvement, to specialists, users and managers.

IT infrastructure ITOP - Level 3

Provisions/installs, configures and maintains infrastructure services and components.

Monitors, measures and reports on infrastructure load, performance and security events.

Carries out agreed operational procedures including backup/restore, using supplied infrastructure tools and scripts.

Automates routine system administration tasks to specification using standard tools and basic scripting.

Carries out agreed system software maintenance tasks.

Identifies operational problems and contributes to their resolution.

IT infrastructure ITOP - Level 2

Carries out routine operational procedures, including execution of specified automation tools/scripts.
Applies amendments to automation tasks under supervision, to gain a basic understanding of the scripting language/automation tools.
Contributes to maintenance, installation and problem resolution.

IT infrastructure ITOP - Level 1

Contributes, under supervision, to routine infrastructure operation.

Gains understanding of infrastructure components and services, by following the activities of experienced colleagues

Proposed change applies to IT infrastructure

Current status of this request: accepted

What we decided

Helps to provide a better and more flexible description of current working practices - and as a complementary skill for IT Infrastructure ITMG.

What we changed

Skill and skill level descriptions for ITOP have been updated.