Day to Day Sys Admin tasks

KenC

Hi, currently I am a one-man operation providing IT services to business with very small number of users. I have quite a bit of experience in set-up and troubleshooting for this environment. I have set up and configured domains for some of these, but not on a regular basis (most commonly Small Business Server). It is usually a case of set it and forget it, and they will contact me when there is an issue, with no on-going monitoring (the client base I am talking about would not have the budget for this).

I am trying to obtain employment in a larger more structured organisation with an in-house IT department, but I seem to be lacking the skills in this area. I am trying to bridge the gap between my current skillset and what these type of places are looking for (e.g. SharePoint, software roll-outs, etc).

What I am looking for is "a day in the life of" type account by someone in this type of environment, the type of monitoring done (including what tools), scripting / automating of tasks. If I know what is commonly used, I can try to get some exposure to the them (enough to be able to converse intelligently at interview) myself.

Let me know if I need to be more specific or clear on this.

Appreciate any advice, Kenneth.

lsud00d

Use Nagios for monitoring...it's open source and easily configurable to report on a vast array of system attributes in both Windows and Linux servers.

onesaint

Funny, I'm setting up a Nagios server on Monday.

Ken, Every time I have something to implement (new software, equipment, etc.) I run it by Indeed.com and see how many hits it gets in my area. The more hits, the more marketable the skill will be. So, take network monitors for instance. hop over to Indeed and search for some of your current skill set with one of these software packages: Nagios, Zenoss, Zabbix, or Orion, you can get a sense of what companies are looking for in a position you might see yourself in. I might not base the majority of my acquisition decisions on this, but it doesn't hurt to know if a skill your acquiring (or have) is in demand.

Good luck on your goals.

KenC

Thanks for the replies, keep them coming.

Started using Nagios at the weekend and it seems very worthwhile - I can be using it for some of my bigger (but still very small!) clients to monitor and send me an email notification if there are any issues with any of their hosts / services (obviously there will be cases where the problem itself will prevent notification, but for the most part it will be a great help).

Any suggestions welcome on automating tasks e.g. 10 new users starting next week how to efficiently get them up and running, default printers etc. (this would be something I would always do manually).

I am prepared to put the effort in once I am confident that some task is considered common and best practice in larger work environments, so I really appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

Ken

pham0329

Poweshell/scripting is your friend!

We use a lot of systems that all integrate with each other, so that means that anytime an account is setup, you have to setup in a bunch of different places. It used to take me 20-30 minutes to create an account, now I run a script and it's done in 15 seconds

KenC

pham0329,
that would be the type of scenario I am looking for. I think I would really benefit from a working example of this, so I can perhaps work backwards. I have looked at powershell and I seem to be struggling to get a foothold on it. There seems to be so many objects and cmdlets that could easily be overlooked.
Thanks, Kenneth.