New IT job, Adjustment period?

I just started a new job on on the 1st of the month... After awhile of looking I landed a Network Admin job with a medium sized company and it seems very promising with a good chance to learn a TON. Its a 3 month contract to hire position so I still need to impress to stay on with the company, which I am not overly worried about my chances to do this.

Now this is my first "Career" IT job I have had and I am seeing alot of technologies that I havent worked with in my certification studies (which I know is normal). My question is how long is normal for someone who is just getting their first real taste in IT Networking (I was a PC tech before this) to fully understand the technologies and be trusted to fully be able to administer the network...

Devices I will have to work with

Both Juniper and Cisco switches and Routers
Juniper Firewalls
Palo Alto Firewalls
ISG 2k Firewalls
F5 Load Balancer
Wifi APs and Controlers

About Me:
I feel very comfortable with Cisco Equipment (just TSHOOT away from CCNP)
I have never used Juniper Equipment before this job
I have very little knowledge in Firewalls
No knowledge in F5 load balancers
Decent knowledge and experience in Wifi APs and Controlers

Thanks in advance

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Comments

snunez889

I just landed my first IT job only a few short months ago as well. I was in the same boat, I have many certs but there was terminology and hardware I was unfamiliar with. I don't know every thing here, but after about a month or so I have become comfortable with it. It takes a while to learn the ropes, but you have the ability to learn(given that you are willing to study to obtain certs.). Best thing I can recommend is to ask questions when you don't know something and use any resources you can find.

ninjaturtle

Congrats on the new job!

I personally try to lab my work environment at home the best I can. I will even purchase older hardware of what we run at the office. I don't see this as an expense, but an investment! You can only learn so much from reading and training at work. The best way to learn, get experience, and master something is to do it ...so lab it up!!!

You can get a test Palo Alto device for a little more than the cost of an ASA. It's the something 200 series if I remember correctly. I was about to purchase one, but decided to go with another vendor. Throw that on your network at home and get it working and tweak it. When you go back to the office, you'll start turning heads being that you know what to do with it. The IT crowd is very hard to please, especially with "i know how" statements. They want to SEE you behind the console and configuring the device. It's just the nature of the beast in IT.

Smithozzie

Thanks for the feedback, I am trying to lab it up as much as possible... I cant seem to find a cheap Palo Alto to play around with... I do plan on grabbing a Juniper Firewall to play with.

Does anyone know of any good training resources for Juniper or Palo Alto Firewalls?

Thanks again!

Kragster

Congrats on the new job.

I haven't dealt with many Juniper firewalls. Have palo alto at my current job (3 months) and it's been a heck of a learning curve. The gui is fairly intuitive, but CLI is a completely different beast. When I was working on ASA's at my last job I did 80%+ configuration changes in CLI, now it's the reverse. There is a serious lack of resources or reasonable cost training for PA, but google can provide a few answers, and if the company has a support contract the palo alto support forums are decent. I've had to call in to PA support a couple of times, and they have been very good.

If you get a specific issue or question on the Palo Alto's feel free to drop me a private message. And for your sake I hope you don't have the 20xx series like I do. The management plane is slooooooow.

Good luck, it'll be an adventure, but if you're like me the challenge of new equipment is half the fun.

Vask3n

Congrats on the new position, one thing that I found helps is to read over any existing documentation the company/department has, for example a site wiki.

If not, I would probably start with gathering model numbers of devices or versions of software and familiarizing yourself with those at a high level before you are introduced to them formally.

jdancer

F5 has a website with online tutorials. They are quite good and assume no previous load balancer experience.

Mr. Meeseeks

Smithozzie wrote: »

I just started a new job on on the 1st of the month... After awhile of looking I landed a Network Admin job with a medium sized company and it seems very promising with a good chance to learn a TON. Its a 3 month contract to hire position so I still need to impress to stay on with the company, which I am not overly worried about my chances to do this.

Now this is my first "Career" IT job I have had and I am seeing alot of technologies that I havent worked with in my certification studies (which I know is normal). My question is how long is normal for someone who is just getting their first real taste in IT Networking (I was a PC tech before this) to fully understand the technologies and be trusted to fully be able to administer the network...

Devices I will have to work with

Both Juniper and Cisco switches and Routers
Juniper Firewalls
Palo Alto Firewalls
ISG 2k Firewalls
F5 Load Balancer
Wifi APs and Controlers

About Me:
I feel very comfortable with Cisco Equipment (just TSHOOT away from CCNP)
I have never used Juniper Equipment before this job
I have very little knowledge in Firewalls
No knowledge in F5 load balancers
Decent knowledge and experience in Wifi APs and Controlers

Thanks in advance

On a 3-month contract, you have exactly 17 days. No more, no less. It is actually a very scientific calculation...

Zartanasaurus

My suggestion to you would be to document the network from the ground up as much as you can early on while still doing your daily duties. If they have existing documentation, great, but you're doing this for your own understanding. Look at how the routing is setup, the vlans, the NAT, any VPNs, etc. You won't understand it all but you'll try to get a high level of each piece at a time. That's a lot to learn in 3 months, but once you understand what a load balancer does, you can transfer that to other vendors. You know what you want to do, it's just figuring out how to say it in a new language.

Smithozzie

Thanks for all of the feedback,

I have been starting to document the network from ground up, its just difficult because its a relatively large network. I am getting alot of it down, but I still have a while to go before I will feel like I have everything figured out. It sounds like the company is happy with how fast I am progressing and how quick I am learning. I am realizing without any "real" experience, its like being hit with a train your first few days...

School and Labs does not translate into Real world as seamless as I originally hoped

But its all good, willing to learn and I cant wait to show them what I can do once I get my feet wet.

@Kragster - I might send you a PM, but for the most part I have a "Mentor" and hopefully he should help me out if I run across anything crazy.