Since the project you're interested in is much more vaguely defined, you're going to need to be creative! You obviously won't know details about our production infrastructure, so your application should talk about what you hope to get out of your project and what things you've learned already from the install process.

Talk about your working strategy, what kind of tools you expect to be using, etc. This project is going to involve a lot of self-teaching and research, so talk about how you approach learning about something you aren't familiar with -- where you go to find more information about problems you're having, what tools you use to find information, what you do when you get stuck, etc.

If you have any ideas about specific tools that you want to learn more about, or programs you want to learn how to work with, include that as well. And be sure to tell us why you're excited about this project in particular, and why you love system administration enough to devote a summer to it!