The search for big iron

[umbletech]

Hi All

I posted this here as well as in the water cooler areas because I want some advice from in the trenches guys.

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 old 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.

 

[newBPhoneGuy]

RAID is pretty much one of the most easiest things to learn on almost every brand has their one software to do so...you know its just point and click if you do take those courses to get cert. and there is lab work that goes with that you can put that lab work for exp.

 

[umbletech]

Thx newBPhoneGuy

I was toying with the idea of doing my proliant AIS - is the material up to date and worthwhile or is it just a channel presence type of thing?

 

[newBPhoneGuy]

Im not sure what youer asking and I dont know what AIS is. I just started in this field my self its been about 7 months i know a lot but i dont know it all

 

[umbletech]

well sort of happy ending - bought a couple of 1 generation back servers - did my hp study - playing with arrays, ILO, product options, etc.

Just landed a 6 mth contract with a big project and vendor support so guess study and patience works