technet subscription, now what?

SephStorm

So I finally bought a TN subscription after all these years. I dont have a well defined career path at this point, but I want to get my feet wet with everything, systems, networks and security. I've got the networks portion covered with my slow CCNA studies. I want to get into the server/client admin and microsoft products in the area of security, patch management, and whatever other topics you guys throw at me.

So I'd like to know, what are you guys doing in your jobs? AD support is one thing, I have some experience, and i'll likely be watching some training in this area. I'd like to use Hyper-V to deploy my environment, i'll get to that shortly. I know i'd like to get to know SCCM, I was planning Forefront, but it looks like that is on its way out with no replacement, is there anything I need to be aware of in that arena?

These are the only MS products that I see myself using for this iteration of training, feel free to add to the list. My understanding that Hyper-V is part of Server 2008, and I believe also a standalone product. I'll likely get a large hdd for my laptop, install WS8 and run only the hyper-v role, I assume that would make sense. then install WS8 DC as a host, W7 Pro host. Anything else I should be looking at?

FYI, this isn't for certification purposes just want to learn these technologies. Any help is appreciated.

the_hutch

I just let mine expire. Fortunately, the licenses are still good even after. I'd argue that the best administrative cross platform tool for microsoft technologies is Powershell. It interfaces with nearly everything Microsoft. One thing that's helpful about setting up a scaled enterprise network with Microsoft software is to get an opportunity to use Powershell to its full capacity. Hope you enjoy your subscription.