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Google · on Coursera

System Administration and IT Infrastructure Services

Beginner English Professional CertificateFREE
SkillsSystem administrationIT infrastructureServersDirectory servicesCloud basicsTroubleshooting

Is this course right for you?

Our take
A later course in Google's IT Support Professional Certificate, turning from using systems to running them for an organisation.

Good for: Beginner system-administration skills for IT-support careers.

Skip if: You are already a sysadmin or want advanced infrastructure engineering.

It covers system administration proper — servers, directory services and managing infrastructure — the skills behind keeping a company's IT working day to day. Like its siblings it's practical and beginner-friendly, a natural continuation for people heading into IT-support and junior sysadmin roles, and correspondingly too basic if you're already a sysadmin or aiming at advanced infrastructure engineering.

As with the rest of the programme, take it inside the full certificate: a single subscription (about $49/month, financial aid available) unlocks everything, and it's the finished certificate, not any single course within it, that employers actually recognise (as of 2026).

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About this course

System Administration and IT Infrastructure Services covers what it takes to keep an organisation's IT running. Part of the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, it introduces system administration, server management, directory services (like Active Directory and OpenLDAP), networking services, data recovery and backups, and the basics of cloud-based infrastructure.

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Instructor

GC
Google Career Certificates
Coursera instructor

Created by Google Career Certificates as part of the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, taught by Google IT professionals with a hands-on, role-focused approach.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. It is one of the courses in Google's IT Support Professional Certificate, sitting later in that sequence after the hardware, operating-systems, and networking courses. You can take it standalone for the system-administration content, but it is designed as part of the fuller certificate aimed at preparing people for entry-level IT support roles, and builds on the earlier courses' foundations.

It helps but is not strictly required. It assumes familiarity with the basics covered earlier in the Google IT Support certificate — operating systems, networking fundamentals — so if those are new to you, doing the earlier courses first makes this one far smoother. If you already have some IT grounding, you can reasonably start here for the system-administration material specifically.

The essentials of system administration and IT infrastructure: managing users and hardware in an organisation, directory services, configuring and maintaining servers, cloud infrastructure basics, data recovery and backups, and planning for disaster recovery. It is the practical knowledge an IT support or junior sysadmin role relies on to keep an organisation's computers and services running reliably.

Yes, you can audit it on Coursera to watch the videos at no cost. The graded labs and assessments and the certificate need a subscription, with financial aid available. Since the hands-on assessments are part of what makes the Google IT certificate valuable, the paid track is worth considering if you want the full experience rather than only the lectures.

As a single course within the certificate, it typically runs several weeks at a modest weekly pace, depending on your background. The full Google IT Support certificate is designed to take around six months at a few hours a week, so this course is one chunk of that — quicker if you already have IT experience, longer if the concepts are new.
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