New Job - 1 Week In

RouteThisWay

So, today marks the beginning of Week 2 of my new job. So far- compared to what I was told, the job is pretty accurate as described. With some other things thrown in. The biggest thing I was nervous about was that this is my first specialized job- I have always done jack of all trades type work, generic "System Admin" position for small businesses. Now, I am a Virtualization Engineer for a large enterprise Fortune 500 company. Big change!!

I spent the first two days sitting in my cube (first time in a cube- miss my office!) just analyzing their environment. I will say, I was slightly disappointed with the current state of affairs. Some ESX hosts in one datacenter were disconnected. Another was sitting in Maintenance Mode, not attached to the vDS. Then in another datacenter across the country I am responsible for, one of the hosts was erroring out on the DRS setting at the cluster level and the agent was erroring out. A couple others were just.. gone completely. They are currently running 4.0 (just upgraded from 3.5) so they are a little behind, but not too bad- thats what I am here for ha. Went to check the consoles of the blades and most of the iLO connections were errored out- I had to find someone on the enterprise messenger who could go reseat the blades for me while I shut those hosts down to get iLO working.

So, they wouldn't give me exact size of the environment before I started- but now that I have seen it, I am responsible for 50+ ESX hosts. Most are at 4.0, a few are at 3.5. There are a total of about 1100 VMs (about 30% of that is VDI stuff) that fall in my realm of responsibility. I am not disappointed here. I was definitely looking to move from the small business realm where I had 3 hosts and about 35VMs to something bigger. While this isn't the biggest environment ever, it is large enough for me to really cut my teeth on enterprise management of virtual infrastructure.

On Day 3, got to really see the group in action. Alerts started going off and a LUN became locked- and hosts started disconnecting. Not getting too much into it, apparently this is something that had happened a week before I started and sometime last year. Ended up trespassing over to the other SP and this freed the locked LUN. Rumor has it our storage team is non-existent- apparently it is in bad shape and they can't keep people here. So, we get on the horn with VMWare and EMC and as of right now- it seems to be a problem with the array according to EMC logs. So- this should be fun.

Fixed the DRS issue on one of the hosts in my local datacenter, working with a guy to clear all of the iLO errors, and have all of the disconnected/missing hosts sitting in the cluster, attached to the vDS, waiting to be thrown into production. Had to fill out a Change Request Order to be approved before I can turn them on.

That is probably the biggest change for me and one I am having to get used to- Change requests to be approved and separation of duties. My career has been spent in a "find it, fix it" mentality. I have always had access to everything, can fix things as need be, move on. Here- not the case. Lots of approvals, paper pushing, etc. For any infrastructure change to occur, you must fill out a detailed request about how you will perform the change, how you tested it, how to reverse it incase of adverse reaction or instability caused, authorizations etc and then a committee of senior managers meet twice a week to review all change orders and then either A) approve them or deny them or C) more info requested. And as far as separation of duties- just an example- one of the hosts I added back to the cluster isn't part of the storage group. Historically, I'd just log into the SAN and add it. Now, I have to work with the storage team- submit a request, have them do it, and then rescan the HBAs on the hosts.

All in all, I am very pleased. It is different, but.. different is good. I feel this is a place I can learn a lot about and really grow into. After about a year (that is about how long it takes me to really absorb the position, gain the knowledge of the environment, etc), I should be in a good place to really make an impact. I seem some potential areas I could build and improve upon. It's all about getting outside of the comfort zone- and this is definitely outside of mine!



and.. just as an encouragement to the many posters I see "How do I get out of Help Desk, get started etc..", I just wanted to say hang in there. I have been in IT for about 4.5 years and started in the Help Desk. And then moved to System Admin and now to my current position. The biggest piece of advice I can really give is to "be aggressive". This applies to your daily duties and to the job hunt. This current job advertised 10 years experience- I still applied for it (well, technically I was contacted about it but still) and got it. Job descriptions are not "have this or dont apply" rules. They are the ideal 100% perfect candidate- which no one is. Upsell the things you are qualified on. Be aggressive and show your manager/interviewer/whomever that you belong in that position and you can improve upon it.

As Forsaken_GA likes to say around here- a technical gap can be overcome relatively quickly. You can't fix stupid. And I would like to add on- you can't fix lazy either. Be aggressive and try to set yourself apart.

hiddenknight821

+1 Great post! Even though, I don't understand half of the virtualization jargon you used, I was at least able to understand what it's like to work in a bureaucracy for the first time that prevents you from taking shortcuts. When I was an intern, the paperwork were frustrating as it took forever to get a solution fixed. Good luck on your endeavor. Looks like your organization need better management, and I hope they are still hiring PMs.

dave330i

Congratulations. Sounds like a great learning/bang your head against the wall environment.

RouteThisWay

lol Dave. Is the bandage around my forehead that obvious?

NotHackingYou

+1 on be aggressive. ALWAYS take an opportunity to learn, especially if you don't have to pay for it!

Forsaken_GA

RouteThisWay wrote: »

That is probably the biggest change for me and one I am having to get used to- Change requests to be approved and separation of duties. My career has been spent in a "find it, fix it" mentality.

Yup, this takes some getting used to as well. If you're used to being The Guy who goes around and puts out the fires, it's a little offsetting when you have no choice but to rely on other people, especially when you know exactly what's wrong and how to fix it. To give an example, we had an internal routing issue, and it was due to someone screwing up configuration on an internal enterprise router. Well, a separate team handles the enterprise network. I troubleshot and ran down the problem, told them exactly which router, which interface, and which prefix needed to be done. 2 minutes of work, and most of that is logging into the damn thing. Took 2 hours to get someone with access to bother with it.

Though my favorite was when I needed an ACL modified on a backbone router. Kicked it up to one of the national guys, since I only have read access to their equipment. Dude was such a moron that I actually had to write out the steps of configuration I needed so he could copy and paste it out of the IM window.

On the flipside of that, the separation of duties is actually slightly comforting. If something falls outside of my ream of responsibility, and I can prove that it's nothing wrong with my gear, I'm hands off at that point. It's actually been somewhat beneficial, because it limits my ability to be a workaholic.

cyberguypr

Great advice. Thanks for sharing.

sratakhin

CarlSaiyed wrote: »

+1 on be aggressive. ALWAYS take an opportunity to learn, especially if you don't have to pay for it!

Especially if others are paying for it

Congratulations! Sounds like you'll learn a lot.

healthyboy

wwow, i want to be aa virtulization specilaist but only have 2.8 years of i.t experience but have done **** loads with virtulization, i might apply for more virtulization engineer roles who knows i could get hired

lhietpas

Congrats!!! Thanks for sharing!

NotHackingYou

sratakhin wrote: »

Especially if others are paying for it

Congratulations! Sounds like you'll learn a lot.

Doubly that if you are getting paid for it!

MiikeB

You aren't in SW VA by chance are you?

This describes to the T the place I left a couple of months ago.

Roguetadhg

The paper work is there to help cover your and the business. I'm sure if you've been in the position where you've had to make the changes, document the changes, and the sort having someone doing something without telling you can royally mess with documentation.

Point given: Having to spend nights to get ready for new client work - I've had to spend 7 hours trying to track down where phones we moved to. My doc didn't match up with what was on the floor. Mostly because "Phones dont work" and no one bothered to put in a ticket (Can't get paid without tickets). That or computers don't work and people don't want to move from their cubicle home and sit beside someone else.

Knowing that Phone A was swapped with B would've meant 7 hours of overtime not spent. More sleep. I was grouchy that morning, especially to the supervisors of that area. *Drinks his BAWLS Geek/Root Beer*

Just imagine if things did go wrong, as from the company viewpoint - that's time spent, money spent, resources spent all to fix a problem that was undocumented. It may be something as small as a little Windows Error. It may be something so large no one is capable to use the computers or internet. Documenting the change will allow you (or someone else - separation of duties?) to find the problem. Without the paperwork, kept neatly somewhere, the problem may be an all day problem. A problem that reaches the Presidents of the company. You don't want to watch the crap roll down the hill.

My example: Software upgrading without IT knowledge. I, for know, currently upgrading firefox will destroy the softphone. Upgrading Java to 7 is also going to blow it up. What did the supervisior do? Upgrade software. The problem went to the vp, all I could do as the lowly tech was watch the problem escalate into 2 days of "Why won't these booths work?" We also spent money on having the contractor that programmed the phone.



Although, I can definitely say giving up the ability to do things yourself would be annoying. Having to rely on someone else to do something you can do if you were just able to get there. Been there. I'm sure Help-desk persons feel this way more often. Troubleshooting over the phone, relying on the information you're given is correct and your "Shutdown" == Their "Shutdown". Or may just mean closing all windows :P

Fun times.

It's good that you spent your first days knowing what is going on. It sounds like problems went unnoticed for a while. You'll get the chance to get things squared away, without a doubt. Keep plugging away. Take notes of what you do

dazl1212

Great advice and inspiration, thanks.
I see so many jobs and because I don't 100% fit the requirements I don't apply.
Will apply anyway now, within reason
Thanks again

Roguetadhg

There you go.

dave330i

RouteThisWay wrote: »

There are a total of about 1100 VMs (about 30% of that is VDI stuff) that fall in my realm of responsibility.

Are you familiar with VDI? They have their own requirements which differ from server environment. If you haven't touched it before, pick up a few books and read the pdfs.

FloOz

Good to see that everything is going well for you! The job seems like a great fit!

RouteThisWay

dave330i wrote: »

Are you familiar with VDI? They have their own requirements which differ from server environment. If you haven't touched it before, pick up a few books and read the pdfs.

Just a high level conceptual idea. I have a few books that my boss has lent to me that I have been tearing through. You are absolutely right- a bit different requirements.


And as for the question if I am in VA.. nope, much further south than that. Sorry!

Glad I could inspire some of you guys to go out there and aim high. Remember, the whole point of the resume is to get you infront of someone in an interview. If you get infront of someone (or on the phone)- that means that as long as you didn't lie on your resume, you have or are close to what they are looking for. That is the opportunity you need to really SELL yourself. You are acting on your own behalf- you need to SELL SELL SELL. You are pitching your service for pay.

Forsaken, that describes to a T what I am waiting to do. Configuring the storage group on the EMC box would take me minutes- except it won't get done until this late afternoon or tomorrow morning. I'm sure I will get used it but you are correct, I am used to putting out the fires and touching everything.


EDIT: One thing I forgot, this came at a serendipitous time. With a kid on the way, this position gives my wife the option to stay home with the kid or not. She is leaning towards working (she just finished her Master's and is pretty ambitious herself) but, at least she has the option which is nice.

dazl1212

RouteThisWay wrote: »

Just a high level conceptual idea. I have a few books that my boss has lent to me that I have been tearing through. You are absolutely right- a bit different requirements.


And as for the question if I am in VA.. nope, much further south than that. Sorry!

Glad I could inspire some of you guys to go out there and aim high. Remember, the whole point of the resume is to get you infront of someone in an interview. If you get infront of someone (or on the phone)- that means that as long as you didn't lie on your resume, you have or are close to what they are looking for. That is the opportunity you need to really SELL yourself. You are acting on your own behalf- you need to SELL SELL SELL. You are pitching your service for pay.

Forsaken, that describes to a T what I am waiting to do. Configuring the storage group on the EMC box would take me minutes- except it won't get done until this late afternoon or tomorrow morning. I'm sure I will get used it but you are correct, I am used to putting out the fires and touching everything.


EDIT: One thing I forgot, this came at a serendipitous time. With a kid on the way, this position gives my wife the option to stay home with the kid or not. She is leaning towards working (she just finished her Master's and is pretty ambitious herself) but, at least she has the option which is nice.

tbhouston

Nice read, keep it updated

I really dont know much about VM systems but it's interesting to read

inscom.brigade

Thanks for sharing; this was a very nice read. I am lookingto do the same; it has been a long time for me since i was in corporate a position. Thanksfor the positive outlook!