The typical IT department

When I was in college, I had no idea what my uncle was saying when he said he was working for HP, level 1 help desk. And I still had no idea what was level 1, 2, 3 when I started working. One of my friends that was in level 3 later on finally explained the difference to me.

I think typically this is the structure if any international\large organisations' IT department (an organisation that provided customer\user support).

Level 1: Level 1 usually consists of a help desk that deals with end users problems. When a computer user faces a problem with his\her PC, or have problems accessing a server, or have application problems, or email ...or virus... or just plain dumb people that needs help, these people will first call up the help desk and ask for assistance.

The level 1 support team (the help desk people) will usually help the user rectify the problem. Before\after\during which the help desk people will create a ticket (A ticket here means something like a tracker entry. Every request to solve a problem is documented in tickets. The date, time, requestor, requestee, approval bla bla bla. There are many ticketing software available, one of them is IBM's Tivoli). If the problem persist or not within the scope of the help desk, the ticket will be redirected to Level 2

Level 2: People here are 'techier' compared to people in level 1. The techies in level 2 maintain all the servers and stuff like that. They usually fix hardware\software\firmware problems that are highlighted in the tickets or by level 3. (Everything that is being done on servers and such must have a ticket supporting it. It's like a security thing also la I guess. You can just simply access a server for nuts. That is why if you are given 3 private test servers that is not under production, its heaven man! Especially if the test server are off the network) I think being in level 2 is very interesting. You get to mess with the servers, configurations, application testing and a lot of tools to mess with. The downside of it is when you need to be on-call, where you are responsible for the server\network 24\7 even if you are in the toilet at home. You laptop must always be around you to access the network and check on the servers.

When I was studying, my networking lecturer used to tell the class that there are ‘lights out’ systems where techies do not have to stay at the servers' side. They go home hence the 'lights out' of the server room. When a server\network crash or has problems or something, the system actually calls up the techies on-call on the phone. Yep, so if you are on-call, you will have to check the servers\network from where you are via VPN or what ever. If the on-call techie is not available, the system will ring up the next person and so on. Neat stuff.

Level 3: I guess this is where all the initial server\network design happens. Whatever applications and are suppose to be on whatever server are fixed by this people in level 3. These techies are often called the 'consultants'. They are the ones who usually plan for upgrade or suggest a new application to be installed... or roll out testing for a new product... I think something like that gua.

Anyone in Level 1, 2 or 3? Not really sure if I'm right with my facts.