IT Admin questions

monorion

Hello All,

I have a few questions and hoping someone can help guide me. Recently I have taken a position as an IT Admin for a mid-size company, I am the only on-site IT person (prior to me some people around the office would do the IT stuff, they're fairly tech savy people). So my role is to take care of all desktop/helpdesk roles but, i'm hoping down the road my access gets opened up a little more and i get more decision making.

I am trying to prepare myself for any infrastructure related changes if they do give me these tasks which I'm sure they will. what can i do to get ready for this i.e. New file servers, virtualization, SANs, network equipment, etc. if there is a need for this equipment, what will help me with the decision making and where do i ever start for what's good for our environment? (all hypothetical)

I have never done and admin work before my 4-5 years in IT has all been desktop/helpdesk roles. I do have my CCENT and hoping i can get my CCNA soon. Once I do complete that should i start digging into MCSA: Server?

I am super excited to learn infrastructure work but, at the same time nervous as I don't have any direct guidance.

Thank you all I really appreciate it!

Fulcrum45

I've been a sys admin for a few years now but only recently have I been put in the role of making decisions in regards to upgrades to our infrastructure. Here's what I did. I started working on my MCSA 2012R2 to fill in my knowledge gaps (and try to get a decent cert when I'm done) and then I subscribed to ITProTV because they have videos on practically everything. I would watch these videos in my free time to get a better grasp on VMWare and storage technologies. You wont be an expert but it will give you enough information to determine what you are getting into. Plus a CCNA never hurt anyone. That should help prepare you for most network issues and maintenance.

I'm not saying the cert itself will cover you- but the knowledge you acquire will. There are a lot of people who say certs should only be used to validate experience but sometimes you just need that road map on what to study and what to know- especially when you are the only person you can rely on in a one man shop.

monorion

Thank you Fulcrum, i'll definitely check out ITproTV. Mainly looking for something to brush up on my IT skills for server/networking related tasks, didn't really mean for this thread to be about and specific certs. Thank you for your input!

ande0255

Go to management and make your intentions perfectly clear about moving into networking (unless you want to maintain servers), and ask what you can do to help yourself move up the ladder, and is there anything they can do to help you or lay out land marks to get there.

From my experience at an MSP with 100's of customers with some really crap networks to companies getting their servers locked with Ransomware or trying to work with Microsoft Support on their products, I would recommend the network side as servers are a HAND FULL constantly with increasing sophistication of threats attacking servers.

dialectical

Find out if your servers are virtualized and from which vendor. Also check if you have any serverless infrastructure such as AWS or Azure. Is Cisco your only networking vendor?

Find out what's there and then start collecting free resources to immerse yourself in those technologies. If you do that then you will interview well and be convincing enough for upward or diagonal mobility.

Blucodex

How big is your environment? Users, hosts, buildings, etc.

It sounds to me like IT is a small priority but a task others no longer want to do. So it's priority may be shifting up but still not a huge priority for management. I'm going to assume there is minimal infrastructure so you probably won't have much to do in terms of networking after the equipment goes in. I'm also going to assume you're not going to get the Cadillac of anything. I saw Cisco mentioned in a reply but I don't see you mentioned Cisco. Do they use Cisco or small business model switches like rebadged Linksys?

Here's where you make your money. Use technology to show them how to save them money. Do they have a rack of aging servers? Get a virtual environment. Are they about to do a PC refresh? Maybe VDI is the answer. Do they serve up webapps? Setup a DMZ.

You are either going to be extremely busy or extremely bored. If you are bored don't sit on your ass collecting a paycheck. You hone your skills. Ask for training, create a legitimate AD (assuming Windows server(s)) environment, create a monitoring and notification system, setup a patching system and procedure, backups, vulnerability management. Snort, OSSIM, and ELK Stack are all free, document everything, be active in the local IT scene.

Assuming you get tasked with more admin/network related tasks this is your chance to permanently step out of the level II arena.

monorion

Wow Bluecodex, yes that pretty much sums it all up. it is a small organization with about 60-70ish people where most people work remote. The current infrastructure is small, pretty much just a server running a domain controller and a file share, (to my knowledge haven't been given the ability to log into anything yet). for switches yes they're using the small business cisco switches cant remember the model SPF or something.

The company's product is a software platform which has a cloud environment, but there is a separate cloud team that handles that and most of the internal IT infrastructure, they're slowly delegating out some roles.

Thank you!

Blucodex

I was in a similar position years ago. You can make of it what you want. Dive in and set yourself up for bigger things down the road.