Trapped in a corner...

I'm currently studying for a career in IT Security. Currently I work in help desk. My company is being bought by a much larger company. Our main VMWare guy trained for the last two years with little VMWare experience, and now has his VCP, and is our main VM guy. This guy is most likely about to get a higher paying job else-ware. My boss will contract this lost position until someone else is hired. Should I step up and educate myself on VMWare until this guy is replaced? I do not want a career in Virtualization, but these days I feel pressured to do so. What do you guys think?

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Comments

ptilsen

Do want you want. If you already know you don't want virtualization or VMware specifically, don't do it.

Now, if they're going to pay for you to go training and work you into that role, it's better than helpdesk and doesn't really hurt you. Just don't go study it and pay for your own VCP just because the position is opening up.

kanecain

Thanks for the reply. It just seems that if you're not pursuing a career in Virtualization, then you're not going anywhere. I love IT Security, and I absolutely hate server administration.

ptilsen

That's just your company. There are plenty of other areas with lots of jobs and money to be made, especially in security. Virtualization is only one component of infrastructure.

kanecain

ptilsen wrote: »

That's just your company. There are plenty of other areas with lots of jobs and money to be made, especially in security. Virtualization is only one component of infrastructure.

Thanks man.

blargoe

An alternative viewpoint:

Learn virtualization, and learn how to secure it. You'd be surprised how many leave their VMware environments at out of the box settings without tweaking anything. If you're going to be securing IT infrastructure, I believe it would be to your advantage to learn a little bit about virtualization.

Yes, most of the day to day work is more around VM administration, but understanding the environment encompasses host, network, storage, and security layers.

Even if you do not want to work as a virtualization admin long-term, it has to be better than helpdesk, right?

Bloogen

Do it if you can. A system admin with virtualization skills is really where you want to be if you are staying on the systems side.

EDIT: I had this saved as a draft for a bit so didn't see you didn't want to do system administration.

tpatt100

Like blargoe said, learn virtualization and how to secure it. Even if you hate server administration odds are you need to know your way around server administration anyways to be effective in security. Unless you end up a scanner jockey, scanning and generating reports all day.

docrice

IT security generally encompasses things like virtualization, especially with servers and networking starting to become virtualized top to bottom. Even if you're just scanning targets, you'll get vulnerability data that you need to parse through and if you don't know anything about systems administration, you won't be able to put things into context.

dave330i

Had a vulnerability test done against our ESXi host while back. The gal told us she found all sorts of vulnerabilities. I took at her list of vulnerabilities and most of it applied to Cisco network equipment.

kanecain

Thanks to all for your responses. I really need to talk to my boss.

Zartanasaurus

What's your experience with server administration or virtualization? How do you know you don't like it?

jibbajabba

Long story short : If you don't like it and don't really want to do it, you will end up hating your job / being miserable so hence no point. Just my $0.02 ... Do what you enjoy, only when enjoying what you do, you will be able to excel in your job and become SME ..

pamccabe

It might be a great opportunity as others have pointed out about securing virtualization. Not only that, but if we have learned anything, it's that to stay relevant we need to learn new skills and adapt.

kanecain

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

What's your experience with server administration or virtualization? How do you know you don't like it?

Even though I'm in a help desk role, I do light Win2003-2008 administration and AD stuff. It's just not for me.