New Net Admin

JamesFigueroa

Hey guys,

Just got a new job as a net admin for a travel company. My responsiblities are a little fuzzy at the moment and while I know its all mental, im still a little bit nervous about the gig. I only have one year of hard core experience in IT but I am wrapping up my AS and have my A+(currently working on my CCNA). Is there any advice from guys in net admin roles that you can give me like sites recommended to stay on top of "new" technology, any best practices or do's/donts? I would really appreciate it and thanks in advance.

pham0329

Best advice my boss ever told me is to ask questions. He would rather answer 1,000,000 questions than have to stay overnight restoring a server.

It's normal to be nervous, but I don't think anyone expects you to come in and know everything right away. Whenever I start a new job, I like to make my own documentation of the network. It's not that I don't trust the existing document (well, I don't), but I find that it helps me get familiar with the network.

crrussell3

pham0329 wrote: »

Best advice my boss ever told me is to ask questions. He would rather answer 1,000,000 questions than have to stay overnight restoring a server.

It's normal to be nervous, but I don't think anyone expects you to come in and know everything right away. Whenever I start a new job, I like to make my own documentation of the network. It's not that I don't trust the existing document (well, I don't), but I find that it helps me get familiar with the network.

+1 to documenting the network and not trusting existing or verbal documentation. I spent about four hours troubleshooting why a server wouldn't promote as a dc in a remote site only to find out the network wasn't laid out how they thought when I first started. They kept telling me the main firewall wasn't part of the equation when it ended up being the problem.

Ask questions, triple check your work before hitting apply, and document, document, document!

Zartanasaurus

Find the biggest, toughest guy and knock them out in front of everyone. Instant respect.

Wait, that's jail. Nevermind.

Being nervous is okay. Don't shut down if faced with something foreign to you. Go through everything you can and figure out how it all works together. Read vendor documentation on any software/hardware you'll be supporting. Making your own documentation of the network is good for understanding how it all pieces together. Hopefully there is some prior documentation for you out there to read as well.

TesseracT

If you're there just to be a netadmin then the first thing you should do is back up all the network devices! If something goes down you need to be able to get things back up and running asap (which is kind of hard if you don't know the setup)!

After you've backed everything up then go through and document the network. As you go through change any passwords if you're the lone network admin (just to make sure the last admin doesn't have access) otherwise just Visio things up. The first thing I normally do is make sure all devices can be accessed via ssh and turn telnet off.

After that's done you need to setup some monitoring. Setup a syslog and netflow server (ask if the server admin will give you a dedicated server for net operations) and set everything up so if something happens in the network you are the first to know.

Good luck and don't stress (and tell us how it goes)

JamesFigueroa

Nice advice guys! Thanks so much! Will keep you guys posted