I’m transitioning out of higher level programming and into the wonderful world of hardware. This is something I haven’t really done aside from my work terms 20 years ago. I’m pretty technically minded and the guy who supported me in this move says that he knows my skills and that it is right up my alley. It’ll make quite a change from programming in Pascal for 15 years and then .NET.
Here is the expected level of work:
The tasks I would have you do on arrival are:
Help with Server inventory, we have a collection of powershell scripts that go out to all the servers in all zones and pull WMI info to our central spreadsheet. There are a few things to automate there. We have a few firewall and port issues to iron out as well.
2003 migration – We have some 2003 servers to follow up on and help the client move to 2012 servers
Virtual template and build doc review. These are the OS images we clone our server build off of. We need some tweaks.
Help with SCCM clients on servers used for security patching
Regular HEAT cases – Troubleshooting server errors, looking through logs etc.
I think I can handle it. I’m learning Powershell right now through Pluralsight. Still, it’d be nice to have some concrete work to tackle.
PowerShell is your best investment for sure. It has branched out and become quite a cross-platform language. Dip your toes into DSC (Desired State Configuration) while you are learning it. It’s the way of the future IMO. Puppet is another good thing to know to manage large environments and is DSC but for Linux. Both of them are cross-platform. Chocolatey is good for packaging up installers for Windows programs and something else to have in the toolbox.
I’m stuck in the opposite direction at the moment. My new gig (only about 2 months in) is more development and I’m an old school hardware and data center guy. I’m trying to get back to system engineering and administration and at least I can pick and choose my options right now.
Also +1 for Pluralsight. I’m using it to study for some long overdue exams.
Okay, year 1 was kind of a bust.
My ‘boss’ was so busy that he didn’t have the time to train me to actually help lessen his workload. I’ve spent a shed-load of time just sitting in my office surfing the interblag. After speaking with the higher ups, they’ve decided to keep me on for another year, but will move me to another group.
So, I’m transitioning today from Windows Server Support to VMWare vSphere Virtualization support. This is a lot more interesting to me, even if it is a bit more basic. A lot of it seems to be monkey work, but more gibbon than chimpanzee. Getting info from HEAT to check IPAM entries to create new virtual servers from templates according to specs, and doing a bit of drive management. I should be able to do this in my sleep after a couple of weeks.
This is all being paid for by my home division, so they don’t mind keeping me around. They aren’t paying for me. Eventually I’ll show how useful I am to them and actually get deployed at a higher position than I currently have. That’s the entire plan. I’ll check back in another year.
The guy I’m going to be replacing just turned over his UDEMY.COM account to me with about a dozen VMWare courses that I can take, along with a $60 book on mastering vSphere 6.