Good morning all, I have been reading posts here for a while so I figured I would put my thoughts out to this great community.
I am looking for feedback, as I currently feel like I am running into a wall or have reached the ceiling of my current position.
I am trying to get a benchmark as to where I stand as a system administrator, or at least some validation of my current skills. What I mean by that, is the longer I work this position, the more I feel like just a power user and have lately been second guessing myself. I've been in the IT industry for around 15 years in one capacity or another, from call center helpdesk, desktop support to gradually moving into sysadmin roles. Here is a brief rundown of my current situation.
In this current environment, I am a jack of all trades spread out among all area of IT. Basically, if it has a cord it my responsibility, and yes, I did disassemble our Keurig to fix the water pump.
Being the only ‘admin’ at small company, with the limit types of technology I have at my disposal, feels very crippling. In the past year I have touched on a lot of things, however I have not been able to really focus on any one thing, at least to where I feel like I can say I am decently proficient. I guess you can say I know a little about a lot and I feel like the skills gaps are only getting wider.
I take care of 14 physical servers, many of which are Hyper-V hosts running our business VMs (file server, domain controllers, a couple web servers, remote desktop servers, etc). One of my servers runs vmware ESXi hypervisor, with a few VMs on that host as well. I have only had the chance to briefly look at vSphere and Horizon View.
The network is basically flat, with 1 switch in the rack with two VLANS. One for private network traffic (basically everything) and one for public internet or DMZ. I also have a Sonicwall with a few VPN tunnels, firewall rules and some NAT policies in place for the web and remote desktop services servers.
I have spent the most amount of my time here working with Server 2012 R2 and Hyper-V, but I have not been able to take advantage of the advanced tools, power shell or SCVMM. I have also not been able to do any kind of clustering or HA due to lack of shared storage.
My interests are in cloud virtualization and I have always been fascinated with Linux and Open Source solutions; however I haven’t really been able to pursue that path.
I want to progress as an administrator but feel like I’m hitting a wall. I have considered going back to desktop support to fill some gaps, but I realize that would be defeating the purpose. I have also considered trying to find a Jr. Admin position where I might be able to fill those gaps, again, might not be the best avenue. I find myself uncertain as to where I am in my journey.
Lately, I keep getting this bright idea like..”I KNOW! I’ll get MCSA certified!” or “LPIC-1” or whatever flavor. However, I don’t think that qualifies as a benchmark or true validation.
If you have taken the time to read all of this incoherent rambling, I truly thank you.
Has anyone been in this position and if so, what might be your recommendations as to which way one might go? I’d like to one day graduate from amateur status to playing in the big leagues.
