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Old 08-28-2013, 7:48 PM
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stilly stilly is offline
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Originally Posted by stonith3901 View Post
I am currently in the technology industry. I came in with a music degree and no certificates. Although I did have the big words in my resume and experience through smaller companies, it really came to the technical questions. How I was able to learn, apply, and converse about things on a technical level.

My advice is to bring up a virtual machine, run something like VMware ESXi, KVM, Xen server or whatever virtualization technology and learn the enterprise operating system you want to excel at. Run it on a cloud based server, Amazon, Linode and the likes and dabble. Dabble and break the server, fix it, learn from your mistakes and apply your knowledge. Cant fix it, no harm done, reinstall and learn from it. The beauty of virtualization, redundancy, clustering and expensive toys. The enterprise world.

There are also simulators so you dont have to have the money to dabble with real physical network gear or load balancers.

I remember interviewing a person that had everything under the sun (as in microsystems), oc48, bgp, mpls, hp aix, netapp, emc, brocade, mcdata, f5, netscaler you name it, couldnt answer any of my technical questions and had to inform him that the position was for a systems engineer. Not a project manager that lead projects with those fancy names.

I also did not progress with another candidate that worked for NASA and has worked with **** that involved in hubble telescope. He was an excellent storage engineer, unfortunately thats all he knew and literally lived in that fenced world. We needed someone with a more overall knowledge and not specialized in one particular area. It can be a double edged sword.

Aside from the technical aspects, one needs to have the drive and passion to be in this industry. If you want to clock in and clock out, not participate with oncall (like doctors) to fix an issue at 3-4pm in Europe then the bigger enterprise world isnt for you. Stay in the smaller companies or helpdesk we dont want people that puts in their time and clock out, it hurts the team.

Good luck.
Good stuff to know. But how do I get started in vmware and the virtual machines? I saw references to people wanting to run an ESXi box on another thread I was reading about but I did not know what one of those was. That sounds like a couple of books might be needed.

Also, I know you did not, but just in case ANYONE has that opinion of me: Please do not EVER call me that. When it comes to computers they are my life. I am no poser that just wants to wear the team colors and look cool. Sadly though I have not had my eyes opened to the world that is really there and I only know what others have shown me (with extra exploration needed on my part) with the exception of this Linux stuff that is getting to be more and more fun each day. I have never been a guy to take a job and just show up to collect a paycheck. I like to think that I am making a difference with even the little things that I do.

Matter of fact, today another lawfirm (on the opposite side of the building) gave me their contact info and they want me to give them an estimate on "fixing" their completely wireless network to be wired. All I thought was, My gawd this is a HUGE job (not a high paying job, just a huge job) that may take a couple of days or more to straighten out. But I think that based on what ESRI told me and after talking, I think I can do that as well. I will be calling them back in a day to set up another more detailed appointment to get all of the work straightened out. But damn, I might need another thousand feet of cable and some more rj-45 ends... I also need to look up ways to make a solid bullet proof wireless connection that passes through a hallway to connect one office to the other two. I am not wanting to drill holes in the building and run cables up the walls and over the lighting tiles. I even thought about getting that thin cat-6 cable that is meant to go under carpet. Maybe fish that puppy through and cut a piece of the carpet out...

Anyways. In reality I might just go with a strong WAP on the walls of each office maybe. :\

Damn, now that I think of it, if I gain any more clients there that want networks installed, Maybe I will just rent an office there and build up a huge network over the entire building and then just run each office out on subnets... Oh this could be very enterprising... pun intended. (yes, I suspect that I might be bi-polar with delusions of grandeur at times...)
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Last edited by stilly; 08-28-2013 at 7:59 PM..
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