How to get more server experience 1

[umbletech]

Hi All

Guess this is a follow-on from the last question. I'm facing a career block.

I'm trying to get enterprise level jobs but getting knocked back on big iron experience, itanium, blades etc. The annoying thing of course is that they all have maintenance but what can you do - customer is king.

I'm up with it in terms of AD, Exchange, SQL and Citrix.

My problem is that the servers I work with are lowest end hp ml ibm 226s that kind of kit. Some of the sites I work on have the bigger boxes but they have maintenance. Got to be after-hours or weekend need my day job.

So I guess its a bit of a variation on the IT foot in the door question. Anyone got any brilliant ideas on how I can get big iron experience or hands-on traiing.

I could go do HP or IBM certs but I can't imagine that really helps you when you're facing complex raid array builds or intermittant hardware errors etc.

 

[langleymass]

Certifications generally do not help. This is where your ability to "play the game" is critical. You are finding now that this is the only job skill that matters. It doesn't matter if you are willing to work at break-neck speed nor does it matter if your IQ is 180. All that matter is that you can convince someone else to do the work you are capable of doing.

 

[jrbarnett]

Try and do what I did. In two separate jobs I gained real world server experience through two different jobs.

First one I was hired as a software developer in a small software house (5 employees), but ended up being their internal network administrator, DBA and IT support because I was the only person who knew anything more than the basics of the operating systems running on the host.
There was no "server room" as such here, they were just sitting on a trolley in the corner of the office, but it gave me proper server operating system experience and knowledge.

Second job I got a trainee support assistant post within a public sector organisation. In this I was partly responsible for the upkeep and smooth running of the servers and in particular, the relational database hosts (SQL Server and Oracle).
As a result, most days I ended up going into the server room about 2-3 times per day.
This job also got me paid training towards my MCSE in Windows 2003, and while I have undoubtedly gained technical knowledge and experience from the training that is relevant to my work, the certifications themselves are only of value if an employer or potential employer values them. My previous employer (the second job) did so, but my current one doesn't.

Additionally, you may find that although an organisation has support cover for such systems, they will only call on it when it cannot be handled by in house staff.

John

 

[umbletech]

Thx for the reply John.

My problem's not the foot in the door as such. I've played with plenty of low-end servers. Eg. last week I was troubleshooting a problem with a dell 2600 and failing backups - turns out its got onboard scsi with 2 chains and you have to set in the bios whether its for an array or tapedrive.

Its really getting experience with the bigger beasts and the foot in the door with the larger corporates. Where I live its really a tale of two cities - smally guys just don't pay much - there's a lot of competition from international labour in that end of the market.

One thing I was wondering about is I have a supplier of 2nd hand server gear that I use. Now surely they get a lot of stuff "as is". I was wondering about approaching them free of charge to check out stuff on weekends. They could start me out on the 'junk pile' and once I was up to speed play with the more recent gear. What do people think and how should I frame the approach?

 

[robbieguy2003]

What kit do you want experience with?

I use lots of Compaq/HP kit where i am, we have old Compaq 1850R boxes doing stuff like DNS and also have the newer DL580 Machines which are beefier and have Fiber Channel Arrays etc.

But with Compaq hardware the trick is knowing SmartStart (the compaq/hp configuration software) - and it is with most of the enterprise level kit.

Can you get some spare cash as the low end stuff old stuff is on Ebay for peanuts now and would be worth buying bits to train yourself on (if your a self learner).

It doesnt give you realworld experience of it but it would give you the ability to 'talk the talk' on the kit and at least get in there.

The enterprise kit isnt massively different - the initial configuration is ususally different and can take longer but the machines are built to run once there in with as many parts as possible hotswap (certainly across dell, hp, ibm).

Maybe get an old 6400r, copy of smartstart and x4 4 or 9GB disks, get windows on and play with 'breaking' the array by taking a disk out. Get used to how the raid systems work.

Maybe get a 90Day windows trial and play with the server OS like JR suggested?

Find out what the big guys want and bring it to them.

I wish someone would just call me Sir, without adding 'Your making a scene'.

Rob

 

[NickFerrar]

Short of taking a pay cut and looking for a job in datacentre ops I can see you're a bit stuck. I'm in a similar situation (but not looking for a job ) in that we use pretty much all Dell kit for our internal systems. I notice a lot of seniorlevel server admin jobs want HP/Compaq/IBM experience so I could see it being an issue if I were looking for a job to.