best way to become a network admin

[Radiation Burns]

It is time for a change, I want to be a network administrator. Should I take MCSE courses first, then try to find a job or should I try to find a job and then take the MCSEs? :D

and is it best to take a bootcamp like at Microsoft or should I go to the local trade school?

money is not an object as I feel that education is vital to a good life and dont mind spending money to make money, and happiness.

[shifty]

The certs/training will help you get a foot in the door for interviews, but if you're looking for something that's going to make you more interesting than any college kid out there that will take a low-paying job doing IT slave labor, I would suggest tacking on a couple of firewall-related courses with bigger names like Cisco and Juniper/Netscreen, working with managed switches, L2/L3 switches...these are all things larger offices want to see on their entry level IT positions that are going to result in larger paying jobs. Just don't stop your education when you get hired.

You also better be prepared to make sh*t for dough until you can get some experience, and if the job you're taking on won't promote you within the first 18 months, you better start looking elsewhere.

I'm only using my case as an example, but I've been with the same place for 10 years. I started out as a lowly support peon for $6.75/hr. By my 3rd year, I was salaried @ $30k/yr (in a city where you could live well @ $20k/yr). I then transferred to another city to take a promotion @ over $50k/yr around my 5yr mark. I took a couple of internal promotions where I am now, bouncing around, and am closer to the 6-figure range. Mind you, I literally hit my 10-year mark in ~1.5 weeks, but ... the whole point here is...get in the door, absorb as much as possible, dig into everything you can at that job to build up your portfolio of knowledge, and if you're not seeing salary progress like I've seen, you're either a dumbass that's not learning/showing your full potential to your employer, or your employer sucks ass...in which case, the only way to build up to a better salary is to start looking for another job at a higher wage, and keep hopping till you find somoene that appreciates you for your actual value.

Most important, NEVER think you are worth less than you are. But NEVER assume you're worth more than you really are. The tough (and fun) part is finding where you really belong ;)

Good luck!

[Radiation Burns]

Thanks, that is the kind of advice I am looking for. The cash wont matter as I can afford to live very cheaply for a while. and it sounds like there wont have to be a layout of cash for the MCSE classes right off.

[Saboteur]

If you are into doing your own reading, you may want to take a look at O'Reily's Safari Books Online (http://my.safaribooksonline.com/home) service. My subscription gives me access to 10 tech books from their vast library (though some meaty books count for 2 slots on my bookshelf), and the topics are wide ranging.

MCSE, CCNE, etc, etc.

Worth a look-see if you're wanting to make that leap and need to assimilate a lot of new information.

[Radiation Burns]

I will give safari books a look, sounds much better than buying my own copies at this point.

Thanks

[dragonash]

Rad - i dont know your background. Are you coming out of college?
If not and are employed at another job in a related field, see if they will pay for the courses.


And yes...i think the courses are the way to go. I personally dont learn anything from books. It just wont sit in my brain. I need hands on experience. After the courses, polish up on some brain dumps or testking (whatever its called) to get used to those microsoft questions and their "labs". I need to update my certs soon and I am going to have my company pay for the courses.

[Radiation Burns]

I dont work in the field and really need to get out of where I am for various reasons.... I have looked at the microsoft boot camp things and do well with that type of environment. I also can read almost anything and pick it up. I have messed around with pc repair/home networking for a dozen years now, and I think its time to do something I love for a living. I havent taken any college courses in probably 15 years now. But I have 15 years of customer service training, and think I could do help desk fairly well. As far as compnay paying for courses, that isnt going to happen. So its my savings basically.

[shifty]

Well, I'll toss this out at you also.

I have no formal education.

I have never obtained a certification.

I took ~1.5 years of college before dropping out.

I went through massage school, got certified, never practiced.

I am now head of IT for the "Americas" offices of a medium-sized worldwide company.


I got there by starting at the bottom and working up - the classic "mailroom boy" story.

Some people spend gaggles of money to get here. True, I make about 20% LESS than what I could with a 'proper' education. But the reality is, if you find a place that sees you for your value (e.g. you have competent managers and good mentors), you can do anything.

I say get the basic certs - couple Microsoft MCP certs for popular things that you know like XP or otherwise, maybe get a Cisco cert, and learn a scripting language or something. That will get you in the door. Don't go overboard blowing money. Once you get in the door, make it clear that you've been immersed in computers and have loved them for decades. People like to hear that crap; the guy who loves tech is the kind of person you want to have working for you in a lot of cases. If you get hired, get into EVERYTHING you can. Learn as much as possible. Ask questions. Ask for training. Ask to participate in various tasks. Just don't be overbearing. Kiss ass with the admins above you. Don't take on too big a task to the point that you fail.

[Radiation Burns]

Holy crud Shifty, you did all that in 10 years? damn... I would be very happy with half that result :)

I will definately take your recommendations to heart as it sounds like the route for a middle aged guy like me.

[]LoL[Harm]

My story is similar to Shifty's. And I suggest the same advice.

I've been doing IT work for 12 years, I don't have a degree and my MCP certification expired about 7 years ago.

I make really good money due to my experience alone and currently work for a very large enterprise level pharmaceutical company.

Another area that I would strongly suggest getting some knowledge on is Virtualization and storage technologies. Cisco has recently come out with their own virtualization so you could possibly team that up with your network studies. But VMWare is the leading vendor currently.

As a side note, a great place to get cheap training (cheaper than the boot camps) is your local community college. I know mine here in Columbus offers courses that help you prepare for the CCNA and other certifications.

[Radiation Burns]

looks like I have me some reading to do now :) I have never even heard of virtualization

[shifty]

Actually, IIRC, Wes is using virtualization with his entire hosting company. This forum is run on as a VM as well, I'm pretty sure. One server with multiple operating systems running inside an app window, FTMP.

If you're not familiar with virtualization, it'ss pretty simple - think of it as... running an OS from a file...You know, just like you run any other application on your computer. Thing is, you can stuff multiple (VM OS) files on one computer, like, say, 10 installations of Windows XP on one computer, each as its own "virtual machine" (VM).

While logged onto the machine, you can start up, shut down and reboot an installation totally without affecting the other 9 installations. You define how much hard drive space and memory each installation can use.

I don't know if anyone has a system that can be used without some kind of core OS. I mean, usually here at the office, we setup a Linux box and run multiple different Windows VMs. So, we'll boot into Linux, and be developing Windows software, so the guys will grab a VM image for a Win2003 installation, copy it off the network server onto their local machine, them start it up in Linux. You can ALT+TAB between several running VMs like any other app.

It's fun stuff, it's what everyone will be doing 5-10 years from now, I'm sure. Rather than having entire racks full of servers, you're just going to see big beasts of machines with multiple 64-bit CPUs in them, 100GB-120GB of RAM, clusters of hard drives and 20-30 VMs for varying OS, all with a respective share of the CPU, RAM and HDD space on the server.

[Ninjahedge]

You mean we are running in circles?

(This sounds a lot like Workstations, but with a twist).

[ganesha]

We currently have 21 ESX hosts running 531 VMs connected by fiber to ever growing SANs. Plus a Lab Manager environment for Development. Because of this we have what would be considered a modest sized, if not tiny, data center.

Actually, IIRC, Wes is using virtualization with his entire hosting company. This forum is run on as a VM as well, I'm pretty sure. One server with multiple operating systems running inside an app window, FTMP.

If you're not familiar with virtualization, it'ss pretty simple - think of it as... running an OS from a file...You know, just like you run any other application on your computer. Thing is, you can stuff multiple (VM OS) files on one computer, like, say, 10 installations of Windows XP on one computer, each as its own "virtual machine" (VM).

While logged onto the machine, you can start up, shut down and reboot an installation totally without affecting the other 9 installations. You define how much hard drive space and memory each installation can use.

I don't know if anyone has a system that can be used without some kind of core OS. I mean, usually here at the office, we setup a Linux box and run multiple different Windows VMs. So, we'll boot into Linux, and be developing Windows software, so the guys will grab a VM image for a Win2003 installation, copy it off the network server onto their local machine, them start it up in Linux. You can ALT+TAB between several running VMs like any other app.

It's fun stuff, it's what everyone will be doing 5-10 years from now, I'm sure. Rather than having entire racks full of servers, you're just going to see big beasts of machines with multiple 64-bit CPUs in them, 100GB-120GB of RAM, clusters of hard drives and 20-30 VMs for varying OS, all with a respective share of the CPU, RAM and HDD space on the server.

[Radiation Burns]

wow, my head hurts now :)

[Radiation Burns]

that is some intense stuff, so each vm represents a server in real life, without the hardware for each box?

[Saboteur]

Yep. Each has its own hostname, IP address(es), security policies, users, software installations, anti-virus (of course... if its Winders), etc.

I run two VMs on my desktop along with the host OS. I can connect a VM to a customer's VPN without affecting LAN/Internet access from my host OS.

[shifty]

We currently have 21 ESX hosts running 531 VMs connected by fiber to ever growing SANs. Plus a Lab Manager environment for Development. Because of this we have what would be considered a modest sized, if not tiny, data center.

On the topic of ESX, I just picked up a dozen of Dell Sc1425's on ebay - dual CPU Xeon 2.8GHz EMT64, 4GB RAM, 80GB SATA...$200/ea - all are ESX ready.

I found a dude that basically clears out datacenters - servers are less than 24 months old and don't look like they were ever even used, to be quite honest. Slapped a 1TB secondary drive into them and running all kinds of stuff on them in our server room at the office. Very convenient, and @ $2400 for the end cost ... sheesh! Can't beat it!

[shifty]

that is some intense stuff, so each vm represents a server in real life, without the hardware for each box?

Seriously...the best way to think about a VM is like ... treat it as if WinXP were an actual application. Say you have 5 VM images of WinXP - an 'image' is like an ISO of a CD or something. If you really wanted to, you could open those 5 copies of WinXP and close them as you please. If one crashes....oh well! Close it out and open another one.

This is why VM technology is so appealing to admins. "Oh damn...server crashed? Oh well...open up the backup copy from yesterday and start it back up..."

[Radiation Burns]

I am going to read up on that. Would it work for Gaming?

[shifty]

I would tend to say no, it's most effectively tailored to creating clusters of servers on one system.

Because you are running an OS within an OS in most cases, you would see a slight performance decrease due to the high demand of a video game (especially running shared video). Most servers run services, though...which aren't so demanding with graphics and sound.

[Radiation Burns]

I am just trying to figure out how I could set one up adn use it as a learning tool. Would it work as a media server? like to stream music and photos vids etc?

[shifty]

Sure, you could totally do that.

[Radiation Burns]

Cool, busy weekend for me now :)

[dragonash]

I am going to read up on that. Would it work for Gaming?

Wasnt wes hosting a bunch of TF2 servers via VM?

[Wes]

No, i don't host games on VM, for performance issue.

[]LoL[Harm]

Certain servers would make it possible to host multiple game servers. But the amount of money you would need to invest in hardware would be a bit heavy since the real limitation comes down to how many resources you have to throw at your guest systems.

We have HP ProLiant DL585's with 8 processors (4 - Dual Core AMD Opterons), 128GB of memory and 40GB of network throughput (4 10GB connections) dedicated to the guest systems. We successfully run Oracle database servers on these that have large amounts of read/writes from multiple application sources. This would feasibly host multiple game servers relatively well, though real world testing would give you the real down low.

As a note though, a single dedicated server will almost always outperform a virtualized one, though the difference in performance may be negligible to end users, this is because there is always a little overhead when it comes to a guest that has its resources managed by a host.

[Radiation Burns]

I tried to get it working and couldnt using Linux and MS, so now I am taking a free course on citrix xenapp... and its a free download too. My company uses it and cant get it running right so I figure i will work on learning it and maybe climb the ladder here first :) lol

[dragonash]

not a bad idea.

get something working your company cant and people WILL recognize you for future plans.

[Radiation Burns]

Login time this morning was over 35 minutes, they did an update last night and obv it didnt work. We have huge lag issues 2 - 3 seconds to see typed characters everyday and it doesnt make sense that its like this. (we do use thin clients by Neoware on a dedicated T1 for 8 people.)

[lilith]

citrix is the worst... I don't think you CAN get it working. No one can! :o
We had it for about 3 months, with teams of really smart IT people from 5 campuses trying to make it work... finally got rid of it. :D

[]LoL[Harm]

We have over 100 applications being hosted on over 40 servers running Citrix. Not saying it doesn't have issues from time to time, but it does work, and works far better than NLB teamed up with Terminal Services. :)

[lilith]

Granted, my experience with it was from several years ago, when it was new. I wasn't one of the really smart people trying to get it to work. I was one of the regular people trying to work with it. It seemed like it just added a whole level of complication to normal processes with little gain. It crashed more than it worked. Maybe, hopefully, they've improved but I still never got the point of using it at all. What applications do you need it to access? We were using it with PeopleSoft. Not fun! Not fun at all... :o

[dragonash]

peoplesoft has it's own set of problems....even NOW. I cant imagine it with sh!trix from back then ;p

[]LoL[Harm]

Citrix's main draw is the many to one capabilities. Say you have a warehouse management system that is currently in use at five different warehouses spread all over the place (could be in different parts of a city, country or even world). And they all currently have hardware, applications and support staff at each location. Citrix is an excellent way to create centralized infrastructure, where you can consolidate the hardware, applications and support staff. Then the warehouses use a normal web browser, log in and are presented with their application.

The application is redundant (loaded on multiple citrix servers) and only requires a single back-end instance (with whatever redundancies you require). This speeds up updates, and overall simplifies administration and hardware support.

That is the primary role of Citrix.

[Saboteur]

I admin'd a Citrix WinFrame 1.6 server back in the day. It did what was needed without excessive complication.

[lilith]

Maybe it was the Citrix/Peoplesoft mix...:(

[Cerwin_Vega]

I am going to read up on that. Would it work for Gaming?

I would tend to say no, it's most effectively tailored to creating clusters of servers on one system.

Because you are running an OS within an OS in most cases, you would see a slight performance decrease due to the high demand of a video game (especially running shared video). Most servers run services, though...which aren't so demanding with graphics and sound.

It is very possible depending on the game you are trying to play. I had some screenies to show where back in the day I had as many as 3 Cabal MMO's running at the same time on 3 seperate VM's. However I realized some other stuff that was showing and decided against it. :D

I think you guys solved a problem I'm having. I didn't want to throw a third boot on my PC just so I can VPN in to work. I can just install a small VM for XP 32bit since my work doesn't have a 64 bit version of the client :/.