No more hiding in the server room
Becoming Systems Administrator instantly
There is a question on server fault today:
http://serverfault.com/questions/119706/picking-up-the-pieces-after...
The guy is a coder with some linux / server knowledge the previous SysAdmin has left and he is now definitely IT.
I expect most of us have got to be SysAdmins over a period of time, starting with a PC at home, test machines and non critical servers and moving on and on and on picking things up as required or as our curiosity takes us.
Then again, maybe not. I don't know.
How did you get to be a SysAdmin. Was it a steady progression, a chance encounter, or did you just get "promoted" into the role in a day?
http://serverfault.com/questions/119706/picking-up-the-pieces-after...
The guy is a coder with some linux / server knowledge the previous SysAdmin has left and he is now definitely IT.
I expect most of us have got to be SysAdmins over a period of time, starting with a PC at home, test machines and non critical servers and moving on and on and on picking things up as required or as our curiosity takes us.
Then again, maybe not. I don't know.
How did you get to be a SysAdmin. Was it a steady progression, a chance encounter, or did you just get "promoted" into the role in a day?
Views: 168
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Wesley "Nonapeptide" on
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Mine is a rather funny story that I might retell in detail some day (even if it doesn't reflect so well on me). Until then I'll give it to you all in capsule form:
I was shockingly content to wake up at noon and watch TV all day. That was placated for a little while by my parents. Until one day at the age of 22 I was given a book called "Windows XP for Dummies Gigabook". The year was 2004. I come from a geeky family and computers were always within my grasp, but I had never learned one from a professional standpoint. The thinking behind being given the Gigabook was that I needed to learn how to use a Windows PC rather than my familiar Mac OS and also learn the dull Microsoft Office apps. This knowledge would hold me in good stead in whatever job I would eventually enter.
After I lackadaisically consumed that book, I was given another book; this time about Windows XP desktop support. Specifically, this one. I wasn't thrilled about the idea at first and balked. My mother basically pointed out that living rent free and being fed each day didn't give me veto rights on this decision.
I took to it if for no other reason than to give me a job that could eventually pay for schooling in something I was more interested in. However, after several exams and Microsoft Press books on systems administration, something clicked in me. I realized that it wasn't about hooking printers up and showing people how to change margins in Word. The idea of systems engineering and designing the backends to business computing needs finally dawned on me. I was hooked.
I grew ever more fascinated with networks, security and vatching das blinken lichten. I've gobbled up cert after cert like a crazed IT pacman and hope to continue learning and being useful in this field for years to come.
The end. (?)
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Permalink Reply by Graycat on -
Mine was a bit of a strange and certainly nonlinear path to IT support's hallowed halls.
I went through uni on a mechanical engineering degree but after two years I became disillusioned with the course but stuck with it through the next year as it was in industry. After seeing what it was really about I found out I was pretty handy at problem solving and thinking outside of the box. Back in uni I found class learning to be the most boring thing going but eventually graduated with a degree in engineering. Until I could decide on what I was going to do with my life I took a bar job in a local pub quickly went from glass collector up through the ranks to assistant landlord and living onsite rent free thoroughly enjoying myself.
About then a good friend I'd gone through uni with was having a complete nightmare at an engineering company trying to be a graduate mechanical engineer but supporting the local network as nobody could make it work. In the end he gave the boss the ultimatum of "I'm an engineer or I'm IT support" and promptly gave them my number for the IT role.
Initially I was doing engineering design work, CAD and IT support but as things progressed the IT work took more and more time so I gradually moved over to there. Another office was built in the region so I got stuck into helping design and build that. Meanwhile I was discovering Active Directory, Group Policies and the other mind blowing MS systems whilst trying to make my job easier. Before long I had my two offices working so well that I was helping out with the other sites.
After all the domains were merged, the offices linked and a single Exchange environment implemented I started casting around for other jobs. The company then realised that they needed a "Chief Geek" to be based in London and asked me to head it up. Which brings us nicely to now where I head up the technical side of the IT group and oversee more than 60 servers, 300 desktops and laptops spread over nine sites around the country.
Actually I'm sat in the server room of the new site right now building the network. Once this place has been moved into I will have designed and built every office in the company ...... not bad for an ex-barman, huh? ;o) lol
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Permalink Reply by Matt Simmons on -
Short story: I found a computer laying in a field.
Long story:
I got my first computer in 9th grade. This was circa 1994. It was an
IBM Aptiva 486DX2/66 with 4 MB of RAM. It even had a CD-ROM. My mom
got it from Wal-Mart with her tax refund check, and I loved it. I
didn't do a lot with it, in the beginning, because I didn't know much
about it. My friend Chad came over and "lent" me a copy of Doom2, so I
spent a few months killing demons.
That spring, the father of another friend, Vernon, was running a
basketball tournament and he asked me to sit at the table and sell
t-shirts in-between the games. Since I knew I'd go a while between
sales, I brought a book. It just so happened that the book that I
brought was the PC-DOS 6.2 manual that came with my computer. I had
never opened DOS before, other than to launch Doom2, so it was all new
to me.
Because of what I learned that day, I became very proficient at the
command line, writing increasingly complex batch files and learning
more and more. I also found that my friend who had installed Doom2
also installed Telix, a modem dialer, and had programmed it with the
numbers of several local BBSes. I started tying up the phone line by
calling these BBSes and soaking up any of the text files I could get.
This went on for some time, and I gradually increased my knowledge. I
went to high school (which started in the 10th grade, where I was in
WV), made new friends, got an internet connection, and gradually got
more computer savvy. On the aforementioned fine day, my friend Paul
came and got me and we were headed to his house when something caught
my eye.
"Paul, pull over, and back up. I think I saw something.", I said.
We backed up, and I got out. Sure enough, laying in a field was a
computer. Part of one, anyway. It was the shell of an old Compaq. The
hard drive, CD-ROM, and anything else of use wasstripped, so it was
pretty much a case, motherboard, and power supply. Being a huge
computer geek, I took it with me. I didn't know much about hardware,
but I had hope that maybe I'd turn it into another computer.
It didn't do much besides sit on my desk for a couple of months, but
then a guy from high school, Jeremy, was telling me about his computer
at home. He said that the power supply conked out on him, and his mom
wouldn't buy another one. I asked him what kind of computer he had,
and, as fate would have it, it was a Compaq. I told him I had a power
supply that might work, and I brought it to him the next day. Sure
enough, it worked great.
He was so grateful that he brought me a set of CDs that his mom had
got from someone that he hadn't been able to figure out.
"it's supposed to be something different. I never tried it...it's
called line-ux", he said.
So that's how I found Linux. Fast forward through a little bit of
college and a lot of tech support for big outsourced firms in
Columbus, OH, and then a homecoming back to WV to do tech support for
a small ISP. They were mostly a Windows NT 4.0 shop (in fact, my
"desktop" computer was an NT 4.0 server), but had a couple of Linux
machines, though no one really knew much about them.
I had been warned to stay away from The Admin, Randy. He was very
possessive about his machines, and was grumpy to boot. So I stayed out
of his way. A month or two after they hired me, they were having
problems with the webmail machine. Users were getting kicked out too
soon, and it was a problem that had been bothering them for while. I
mentioned to my manager that I knew Apache, if he thought I could lend
a hand.
My manager hemmed and hawed a bit, weighing the admin's wrath against
eliminating the incoming calls. He must have decided the calls were
annoying enough, because he told me to head over to the admin office
and see if I could do anything.
I walked in and introduced myself. I mentioned that I knew a little
bit of Linux, and that I'd played with Apache before. Randy was at his
wits' end, so he let me log in, figuring I could only break it so
much. I fixed it, and he was impressed, and ended up taking me under
his wing. He didn't know much, if anything, about Linux, but he had
some ideas about administration. His junior admin, Brett, took over
after Randy left, and I took the junior admin job from him. When Brett
eventually left, I became the full-fledged admin.
So there you have it. Because I found a computer in a field, I got a
copy of Linux, which let me become an admin because of a broken apache
server. But of course, before that, my friend's dad had to run a
basketball tournament, my other friend had to come over and pirate
Doom2, and even before all of that, my mom had to sacrifice her income
tax refund to buy me a computer that I was probably just going to play
games on.
The End.
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Text message your mom a heart right now. =)
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Permalink Reply by Constantin Visan on -
Mine was a bit strange start. Starting like programmer in Fortran, Basic, and with Visual Basic again when I come to Germany and moving to Windows 95 and NT 4 because programming was not very funny :) ...
With learning how to install Windows 95 and use in small home network starting the first SysAdmin experience and learn more Win NT 4
So i have lot fun in one new position System Admin for a small office in Germany. After 2 years I move to a big one also in Germnay and starting the real fun with Windows NT 4 and Exchange 5.5 in one server farm with 10-12 servers. Was nice time but not to long because we moving to Windows 2000 and starting again to learn about AD, GPO and all the stuff in one 50-60 server farm.
Like Graycat I was promoted to "Chief Geek" in Germany for this company in the last 9 years.
Now we move all the servers outside our company and will see what coming new.
...and yes was a progression till now, hope will be not a regression after this outsourcing :)
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Permalink Reply by Simon Lye on -
My first (home) computer was an Commodore Vic 20. After that, we upgraded to a PC which was an 8086 XT with a 20Mb HDD, 512k of RAM, CGA graphics, and it ran at 6 MHz (or 2 MHz if you pushed the TURBO! button). Later we upgraded to a 386 SX 33, and the best thing about this was it had VGA graphics - being stuck with only 4 colours for so long made you appreciate that! So I always had an interest in computers.
However when I was at school, I wanted to be a pilot. On leaving school, I was accepted into the aviation school attached to my local university. However when I went for the required medical, I found out that the standard eye test said I was practically colour blind. In fact it said I couldn't tell the difference between red and green, which was totally wrong - and news to me! I did a second type of test which I passed with 100% ... but the first one was what mattered, and that was the end of that. I could still fly, but not at night, which would have made me useless to any airline.
So I went to university and did a degree which was basically a mix of electrical engineering and telecommunications. On graduating, I found it very difficult to get work as almost all the roles out there which I was interested required a minimum of 6 months experience. I ended up working for free for a couple of months in order to get that experience, and in the end managed to convince a life assurance company to hire me as a help desk analyst. I started off answering phones in first line support ... and 18 months later I had become a systems administrator in charge of all the company's server systems. The company had a fantastic self study program which encouraged me to get my MCSE (in Windows NT), and as one of the electives I chose Exchange 5.5. After this, despite very little practical Exchange experience, I was basically handed the Exchange system to manage (since no one else wanted it), and after a bit of trial and error (!) I became an Exchange specialist.
Shortly after this, the company was bought by a major bank, and my job was moved to the bank. On arrival in my new team I found that no one really looked after their Exchange environment, so I was given that job as well. So I spent the next few years as a messaging systems administrator ... and also became responsible for the bank's CRM system as well. The systems were fairly large and complicated, so I learnt a lot. The company was a typical financial beauracracy, but was a heavy investor in technology, so I always had something new to do. However my role was very focussed on messaging.
5 or so years later I decided that a change of scene would be a good idea, as I wanted to expand my horizons both personally and professionally. So I moved to the other side of the world, and got a job in a much smaller company where I could work with a much larger range of technologies. I'm still here - the company has grown rapidly so that has been a challenge, but I've been able to broaden my skills extensively, which is great.
Now I'm heading in a new direction - I'm moving into a role which is more DBA than SysAdmin. So that is an entirely new challenge ... one which will require a lot more learning!
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Hengesbach on -
I put this up a few months back: http://jeffhengesbach.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-i-became-sysadmin.html . It lacks some of my 'early' years. I started off with a Commodore 64c at home, learned Basic on Apple II in Junior High School. I actually wrote a pretty cool text based "Wheel of Fortune" game on the old green screens! Did some more programming on Mac classics in later High School and went right into Comp Sci in college. Bought my first Win 95 based system in 1997 and, like many, started playing with linux by some passing mention of it from a friend around 1995.
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Permalink Reply by John McGrath on -
My start in the IT world came from a different occupation entirely... Automotive repair.
Actually, it was a confluence of hobbies, and wanting a change of occupations that started my journey.
I was interested in electronics and Amatuer radio while I was growing up, and pursued it for the love of learning. In high school we had an Apple II, and played and programmed simple games with it.
After high school, life happened, and I didn't get into my love of electronics, computers and Ham radio until 10 years later.
I was working as a mechanic, and looking for a new occupation, when one of my friends visited and brought a box full of motherboards, hard drives, sound cards, a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and a computer case. We ended up pulling two computers out of that box (A 386sx, and a 386 with a math co-processor!), and I knew then that IT was for me.
I went back to school, and quickly learned that I the school was below my abilities. The second day the teacher took me aside, and stated that I could teach the course, and sent me to the IT department for 'Advanced Training'. It was there that I received my first taste of networking, Novell, and Windows 98, along with NT.
A couple of years of Phone Center Support work, and I opened my first business, supporting PC's in small businesses in my community. I relocated and took a position supporting, installing, and training customers using a proprietary medical imaging software/hardware suite. I interfaced with many different networks, and admins.
I relocated again, started another consulting business, contracting nation wide training support, all the while learning about different environments.
I relocated again, and now interface regularly with Network admins in my current position.
I discovered linux and have ran it on my personal machines for the last 10 years.
While I am not an admin where I work, I am at home in my test environment, and I am the administrator of many machines that don't reside at my home.
Its just a matter of time.... :-)
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Permalink Reply by Robert Chipperfield on -
Yay, someone else interested in amateur radio - I wonder if you're still active? Maybe time to start a sysadmin network on 20m :-)
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Permalink Reply by John McGrath on
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All I have right now is some 2m rigs... Perhaps it is time to get into HF. :-)
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Permalink Reply by Robert Chipperfield on
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Yup, 2m to the UK might be a bit optimistic! We're just starting to get some sunspots now so HF is coming to life again...
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How expensive is this hobby? You've intrigued me.
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