Transition from Desktop Support to System Administration

Rockets34Life

Hello everyone,

I just recently got a new job and it's a combination of help desk/desktop support/a little system administration. What is the best way to break out of the help desk/desktop support role and move fully into system administration and maybe combined with network administration?

it_consultant

Get noticed by your superiors by doing an outstanding job in the position you were hired on for. Its risky, but you can try (and hopefully succeed) in fixing a nagging or recurring problem that no one else has bothered to tackle. Pull that off well and you will be the golden boy in no time.

Rockets34Life

it_consultant wrote: »

Get noticed by your superiors by doing an outstanding job in the position you were hired on for. Its risky, but you can try (and hopefully succeed) in fixing a nagging or recurring problem that no one else has bothered to tackle. Pull that off well and you will be the golden boy in no time.

Thank you for the inspiring words, but I'm asking from a technical standpoint.

What do I need to learn or tests to take or projects to take on to impress and either take a sys admin job in my current environment or somewhere else?

I've currently have and building with 1 year of sys admin experience.

Dakinggamer87

I would recommend as far as certs/training to do the MCITP: EA/SA on Windows Server 2008. I plan to upgrade to MCITP for Server 2008 once I finish my MCSA/MCSE on Server 2003 and CCNA certs since I'm already almost finished with the certification track.

brad-

Rockets34Life wrote: »

What do I need to learn or tests to take or projects to take on to impress and either take a sys admin job in my current environment or somewhere else?

First, what do the people you want to impress value? What holes does your organization have in terms of not having a knowledgeable or certified guy? Maybe SQL, Exchange, Cisco, Virtualization...whatever the company needs more of, maybe that'll get some brownie points. If you're a specialized organization, maybe you get into something like cisco security. If you dont have a documented disaster recovery plan, maybe coming up with one would raise a brow.

If you're just starting to branch out from your desktop role, look in the W2k8 test for AD or the CCENT. I just started cisco about 5 months ago and im kicking myself for not doing it years ago. Everyone should have an understanding of that.

MentholMoose

it_consultant's advice is good. Find improvements you can make and implement them. The specific changes will depend on the environment. You're in a good position since you are at least doing some systems administration already, instead of 100% help desk or desktop support, so you likely can more easily implement things. I don't know anything about your environment so it is hard to make specific suggestions.

I was in a similar position and made the jump to sysadmin roles, and I basically did what it_consultant is suggesting... I identified common problems I was handling on the desktop support side and implemented fixes to eliminate them altogether. The more I fixed, the more time I had to concentrate on systems administration tasks, and eventually I was promoted. From there I moved to a sysadmin role in a larger (3000 users) environment.

I could give examples if you want but there were specific to my situation. Maybe it was the environment I was in but I found it really easy to find things to improve. Implementing the improvements often required learning something, and what was required varied by the task.