I want to move up from within my company

Nyblizzard

Below is a brief example of the technologies necessary to learn. I work in a fairly open and interesting environment where on any given day sitting on my left could be a Windows Admin, on my right a Linux/Unix admin and directly ahead a Cisco Engineer. I'm confident that given the skills (the connections are easy), one could effectively move around from within. My goal is to do just that but I'd like some guidance as to how to acquire and develop the skills necessary.

Which certification path(s) would get me working with these?
• Active Directory Administration and Management
• DNS, DHCP, Group Policy Administration• Exchange 2007, 2010 Administration and Management

This is what I'm currently concentrating on (2012)
• Windows Server 2003, 2008 Administration and Management

VCP certification? I've gone through the training but have yet to take the test
• VMware Infrastructure

I wouldn't even know where to begin with these
• EMC SAN Administration
• RecoverPoint Replication
• Backup Administration (practical experience with at least one of the
following: NTbackup, Netbackup, Backup Exec, etc)

This is also a goal of mine, not sure what the best way to proceed is
• Ability to write scripts in some administrative language (Powershell) a must!

Essendon

Where do your interests lie?

Nyblizzard

Short/Mid term? The Jack-of-all-trades approach has always been how I saw myself and my career going. Will I ever deviate from that in the long term? I honestly wouldn't be able to answer that.

With that said my current interests lie within trying to learn everything I can within a Systems Admin/Engineer role. Not necessarily strictly in a Windows environement, but certainly with that concentration in mind

Essendon

The 70-410/411 would be a good start leading upto the MCSA/E 2012. This will get you started on GPO/DNS/DHCP and general server OS management. The VCP is always a good cert to have with most things virtualized these days. As for SAN administration, this is a tough one. Offer to help out your SAN admin with basic stuff, read up as much as you can, there's the SNIA certification you can take a look at but I wouldn't recommend you get the cert, just study for it. As for PowerCLI, build a test lab of some sort at work/home, start working through the dozens of websites out there that get you going with it.

Looks like you are at the stage of your career where I was a few years ago. I just put my hand up for managing backups when no one else wanted to do it. Why? Because it wasnt managed, I redesigned the whole thing and had it going like a charm. Then at another job, put my hand up for becoming 'Bob, the builder' building VMs one after the other. Not glam you'd think, but it got my foot in the door and haven't looked back since. Grew from there..

techfiend

MCSA 2012 looks like the most fitting starting point for certs for you.

aderon

As far as EMC and storage in general goes, the only place you're going to get quality info is from the source. Most storage companies have a learning/education website with learning paths, certifications, etc. Your employer most likely has a login to access the materials.

This should lead you in the right direction:

https://education.emc.com/guest/training/learning_paths/

210mike

EMC's education website is good, and they have quite a few free courses on there. I've taken the intro to RecoverPoint on their site for free as I'm the backup RP guy and it was a pretty decent experience. They should have some intro to VNX stuff there as well.

A good resource for storage knowledge is EMC's Information Storage and Management book (second edition). It will also prepare you for their entry level storage cert. Make sure you get the 2nd edition of the ISM book.

http://www.amazon.com/Information-Storage-Management-Virtualized-Environments/dp/1118094832/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0AGWRQAK2AHMJSBHRDS4

Powershell in a month of lunches is a great way to start learning powershell. I've had a lot of success learning PS by forcing myself to use it to accomplish tasks I would have ordinarily done another way. I absolutely love powershell, it honestly has been game changing in the windows admin arena. If you plan on managing windows environments, you *have* to know powershell.

The Learn Active Directory Management in a month of lunches is good book as well. It does gloss over/skip a lot of the underlying theory of AD, but it will teach you how to manage an environment. You can learn the intricate details of Kerberos later in your career if you want.

If you've been through the VCP training you should have most of your resources already. The Scott Lowe Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 is the gold standard in books for that discipline. If you don't have a copy already, I would recommend getting one.

I'm not sure what your Windows environment is like, but at this point in time I'm recommending people learn 2008R2 if they're relatively new. It's a good compromise between learning the old 2003 stuff and the new 2012 stuff. If you know 2008 you can probably manage on 2003 or 2012. If you learn just 2012 theres enough differences where you may be unfamiliar with 2008/2003 systems. If you're mostly 2012 though, learn that. Grab one of the Mastering Windows Server books from Mark Minasi

I also find Jeremy Moskowitz book Group Poloicy Fundamentals, Security and the Managed Desktop to be a good read for a Windows admin looking to learn Group Policy.

Nyblizzard

As always you guys have provided me with more than enough insight to get the ball rolling

Thanks guys