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MJP posted:It's the actual boss. He's not really pushing it, he basically is making the noise that in a small company like ours, jack-of-all-trades is a good thing. Counterpoint: There are few things which will help your career in the long haul as much as understanding SQL, wages at your current job notwithstanding.
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Apr 3, 2015 16:22
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It sounds like his boss wants him to learn to be a SQL Server admin, not learn the structured query language. The first is a pretty involved process and will take months or years. The second is easy and yeah it's awesome to have on a resume.
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Apr 3, 2015 16:43
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1000101 posted:Excellent! Yep. It's going to more difficult because of how little routing I do at work. Giving myself about 2-3 months to study, shooting for taking ROUTE sometime in June. e: Even jumping back into traditional IOS was annoying after using nothing but NX-OS for over a year. sudo rm -rf fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 17:05
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MrKatharsis posted:It sounds like his boss wants him to learn to be a SQL Server admin, not learn the structured query language. Those aren't as orthogonal as you're making them sound. Becoming a DBA necessarily requires knowing SQL at a higher-than-dipshit level, though it doesn't take months or years to become a competent DBA at a shop so small that they're outsourcing it to one consultant on a part-time basis, since he presumably won't have to worry about nightmarish legacy column names and normalizing old datasets while also wrangling developers who think that linq is god's gift. Learning SQL can also take months or years if you're at a shop where developers are expected to maintain enormous sprocs at reasonable performance levels, when most developers are barely aware of what an index is, much less which columns are indexed, and have never heard of any joint other than left. There's a fair amount of overlap.
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Apr 3, 2015 17:07
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All true but we're talking about a windows/VM admin here. He's not providing feedback to devs, he's being asked to save some billable hours. Query language expertise doesn't appear to be part of the request. MJP: if you're not interested in a DBA career, you probably want something like SQL Server in a Month of Lunches rather than a full blown set of MS certs. It's a surprisingly decent book.
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Apr 3, 2015 19:21
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MrKatharsis posted:All true but we're talking about a windows/VM admin here. He's not providing feedback to devs, he's being asked to save some billable hours. Query language expertise doesn't appear to be part of the request. SQL expertise is part and parcel of getting the MS certs. They'll take you from "I've heard of SQL" to "I know how to use the query analyzer, best practice for disks, where tempdb should go, and I have mid-level SQL skills". And its on paper, which is something SQL Server in a Month of Lunches is not. Even as an admin, that's much more valuable long-term than VCP6 (it doesn't transfer well to Oracle administration, but SQL server has a ton of marketshare and it's Windows anyway). Both from a financial perspective and a personal growth perspective. Let's forget about what you think the best way to learn MSSQL is for a second. For someone who already has a VCP5, but knows little enough about SQL that he isn't currently able to take some of the workload of a part-time consultant, and someone who's an admin (who are, believe it or not, still expected to be relatively multidisciplinary, and it helps a hell of a lot with root cause analysis), do you think the SQL Server certs are a better investment of time for career and financial growth than VCP6?
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Apr 3, 2015 19:46
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MJP posted:I honestly couldn't possibly care less about SQL - my real interest is in the Windows/VMware side of things
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Apr 3, 2015 19:52
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My logic in going the MS cert route was to explore the possibility of getting the very nice cert as well as whatever basics of SQL that were required for it. My SQL experience is minor, mostly pertaining to backups/restores and knowing how to execute other people's queries, as well as connecting to separate instances on a server to maintain them. That's about it. I think that my ultimate goal would be to continue to specialize - I just don't really care about SQL and networking to be passionate about them, and without going into job search stuff, that might mean I'd have to be elsewhere. I guess that my ultimate growth would be into some kind of Windows and/or VMware engineering role, perhaps. My concern on the flip side of this is that the more I generalize here, the less focus I can leverage into the future. We have three major consultants: one for VMware/Windows/Xendesktop. Me coming in with MCSAs took a lot of the Windows load off, VMware even more so, and arguably the same for Xendesk with the CCA-V studying and exam attempt. I can't quite yet quantify how much I've saved the company by those but we still lean on the guy for some other stuff that I can probably build on over time. Another is a CCIE that does nothing but networking, and the third is the DBA/Great Plains guy. He works mostly for the business side of things, developing SQL reporting and GP integration with the DBs and the line-of-business apps that we use, but also DBA tasks. My boss never even made mention of the basic DBA tasks like checking job scheduling and execution (which I can do) until yesterday's performance review.
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Apr 3, 2015 20:25
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Learning SQL and a relational DB is probably one of the soundest career choices you can make at this point. The VMWare market is not going to keep growing because it's reaching a saturation point and competition from other virtualization technologies is ramping up. But databases just keep getting bigger and bigger and more and more necessary.
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Apr 3, 2015 21:06
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sudo rm -rf posted:Yep. It's going to more difficult because of how little routing I do at work. Giving myself about 2-3 months to study, shooting for taking ROUTE sometime in June. Routing protocols themselves aren't too difficult but certainly expect some redistribution stuff. It touches a lot on that.
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Apr 3, 2015 21:14
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Immanentized posted:CISSP application shot down yesterday. I used the wrong resume (internal instead of external) and left off my 4 years as an analyst. The ISC2 response was "[...]as you are at 59 months and fourteen days, with your education waiver, your application will be rejected. Your next qualification window opens on June 5th. You will be allowed to take the April 15th test to requalify for the updated certification." This man deserves more sympathy. gently caress that. I just passed my CISSP and am waiting to hear final approval. I will probably break something if this happens to me. 15+ years of experience, security required in every position.
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Apr 3, 2015 22:07
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Immanentized posted:CISSP application shot down yesterday. I used the wrong resume (internal instead of external) and left off my 4 years as an analyst. The ISC2 response was "[...]as you are at 59 months and fourteen days, with your education waiver, your application will be rejected. Your next qualification window opens on June 5th. You will be allowed to take the April 15th test to requalify for the updated certification."
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Apr 3, 2015 22:29
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I guess I'll just empty quote this useless post. Sometimes the best advice is to actually give advice and not just tell the poster what you think they want to hear. MJP posted:My logic in going the MS cert route was to explore the possibility of getting the very nice cert as well as whatever basics of SQL that were required for it. NippleFloss got it. Traditional virt is saturated. VCP is nice and all, but having a VCP5 and years of VMware experience/projects on your resume is going to speak louder than a VCP6 will, unless you really want to go the VCDX route or something. I would say that specialization is increasingly worthless as an admin (unless you want to go the networking route, where it's still totally viable for now). Every major operating system is already at or is moving towards some kind of congruence where the platform has ceased to matter for 99% of use cases because it's all virtualized, and even the cases where it's on metal are getting managed by lifecycle tools. That's not to say that knowing the nuts and bolts of an operating system isn't useful, but growth is towards applications and working with other teams instead of digging yourself into a hole. Specialize enough that you know what tools and resources to reach for to diagnose tricky issues. Keep up on best practice, which you're probably already doing by reading blogs and aggregators instead of cert prep books. Keep specializing at being an admin/engineer. Do that by learning storage and databases and basic development skills (since even Windows is moving towards the Powershell route really fast, and it's not a big leap for your tooling to go from a scripting language to a "real" language once people are comfortable with the fact that admins have basic coding skills). I know you may not care about SQL or networking or whatever. But they matter a lot. Because even if you're on the systems engineering team, being able to competently look at what's happening and say "network team, the MTU is wrong, please set it correctly so networking works" (yes, this is a real problem with GRE encapsulated SDN in some cases) makes you look great and saves everyone's time. Especially yours, because there's no all-hands calls and useless emails going back and forth about whose problem it is, which inevitably ends up with some team refusing to look at it until you prove it's them. You can focus on what your current company needs, or where you wanna be and how relevant you wanna be in 5-10 years. One of those things is probably not like the other. But it's obviously your call and not mine.
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Apr 3, 2015 23:42
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Is pursuing Linux+ worth a drat? Like, for someone who has very minimal experience in Linux and wants a semi-structured way to learn it? I'm not planning on a Linux+ cert impressing anyone, but my job pays for certs and CBT Nuggets, and I'd like to get some initial exposure to Linux. Figured as easy as the CompTIA exams tend to be it wouldn't be too painful to get the t-shirt (cert) at the same time.
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Apr 3, 2015 23:53
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evol262 posted:NippleFloss got it. Traditional virt is saturated. VCP is nice and all, but having a VCP5 and years of VMware experience/projects on your resume is going to speak louder than a VCP6 will, unless you really want to go the VCDX route or something. I get that traditional On-Premise virtualization isn't growing and if you're already in the field that's fine but investing your time into a product that has a decreasing market share isn't good idea. This makes sense however you're then arguing that specializing is or isn't a bad idea unless a specific tech - cloud, storage, databases? I'm not following this...
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Apr 4, 2015 00:15
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:Is pursuing Linux+ worth a drat? Like, for someone who has very minimal experience in Linux and wants a semi-structured way to learn it? CBTNuggets has a CentOS Prep video series but Micheal Jang's new RHCSA/RHCE with RHEL7 come out in the Fall. Once that occurs I'm betting quite a few of us will be setting up a good lets read thread.
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Apr 4, 2015 00:17
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Tab8715 posted:I get that traditional On-Premise virtualization isn't growing and if you're already in the field that's fine but investing your time into a product that has a decreasing market share isn't good idea. You should still invest time in traditional virt because it's not going anywhere, but it doesn't print money like it used to. I'm saying that once you're capable at something (Linux, Windows, VMware, whatever), you should start learning other problem domains which intersect with yours. Which is increasingly all of them. Networking and storage and databases have always been good skills to have for admins/engineers, but they're slowly becoming required. Don't "specialize" into a cul de sac. Japanese Dating Sim posted:Is pursuing Linux+ worth a drat? Like, for someone who has very minimal experience in Linux and wants a semi-structured way to learn it? You should do LPIC or RHCSA if you're not into self-directed learning
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Apr 4, 2015 00:20
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Ah hah, now I'm following you.
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Apr 4, 2015 00:22
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adorai posted:So who are you more mad at, them or yourself? Honestly? Them. I already have 2 other major certs that require the same experience and I earned them last year, so any vetting beyond "count the numbers" would show that I was qualified. On top of that, if they had confirmed my employment through my listed contacts, they would have gotten about 68 months of full-time work. I'm making excuses, and I've already got it sorted out but that was just a petty response from a group that tries so hard to be respectable.
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Apr 4, 2015 00:33
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evol262 posted:You should do LPIC or RHCSA if you're not into self-directed learning It looks like LPIC-1 and Linux+ are identical; if you get one you get the other. Interesting. And - I'm actually asking here - what do you mean "not into self-directed learning"? I'd be studying these on my own; do you just mean that the alternative would be spinning up a few *nix VMs and going at it? Japanese Dating Sim fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Apr 4, 2015 |
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Apr 4, 2015 01:08
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:It looks like LPIC-1 and Linux+ are identical; if you get one you get the other. Interesting. The alternative would be finding something you can use Linux for, deciding whether or not to do rpm or deb distros (rpm is more enterprise friendly and big on the web, companies using deb are almost invariably startups or pure web shops), and doing something with it. Or following the deployment/admin guides and actually doing the tasks. Or following a RHCSA book. I say RHCSA over LPIC because it involves actually doing stuff instead of just memorizing various command line utilities and config file locations. I'd honestly say the FreeBSD handbook teaches you more about Linux and how to do stuff with it than LPIC-1. Just spinning up VMs is tough, because what do you do with them once they're up? Linux is quite literally a different general purpose operating system, and unlike, say, IOS or JunOS (which is relatively single purpose), you need to use it for real stuff frequently to get comfortable using it and to ingrain it in your head.
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Apr 4, 2015 01:19
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Immanentized posted:Honestly? Them. I already have 2 other major certs that require the same experience and I earned them last year, so any vetting beyond "count the numbers" would show that I was qualified. On top of that, if they had confirmed my employment through my listed contacts, they would have gotten about 68 months of full-time work. Passed my test today. Guess I need to go over my resume to make sure the numbers are super obvious if they were like that with yours.
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Apr 4, 2015 21:08
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Thank you all for the candor and advice. So at this point, is it a better idea to shoot for the MS certs covering SQL, or should I just get SQL for Dummies or a similar basics of SQL book? I think I'll also go for the CCNA as well. I mean at this point, if I've got nothing else to specialize in with the OS and VCP certs, it's probably best to get that generalization going. My concern until now has been that I might get pigeonholed into stuff I really have no interest in doing or actual experience in doing, but hopefully if I show a resume whose meat and potatoes are all MS/VMware, having the CCNA and SQL experience would be a rounding-out factor rather than "congratulations, you are now the networking guy as well"
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Apr 6, 2015 14:55
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Failed my 70-685 exam yesterday. Did pretty poorly all-around. Kinda bummed out; moving onto Security+ for now so I can refresh my other CompTIA certs and get something new under my belt. I thought getting the Win 7 MCSA would be somewhat easy after getting my 70-680, which I had no problem with, but now I'm wondering if it's worth the effort of trying again for a OS that's (very, very slowly) on the way out. Work paid for this attempt but they don't pay for the same certification exam twice, and I'd like to move on to Server/CCNA stuff. I think my issue was that I honestly didn't lab anything, just tried to memorize the material in my book.
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Apr 6, 2015 15:05
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^ there's a free second shot promotion on at the moment. I assume your workplace can take advantage of that. If it were me, I'd want it done before moving onto something else. I know I would never come back to it.
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Apr 6, 2015 23:02
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Swink posted:^ there's a free second shot promotion on at the moment. I assume your workplace can take advantage of that. Yeah... this was my second shot after failed the first time.  Pretty decided on moving on for now, but I'm ready to set a lab up at home so I can do more of the AD stuff it covers afterward. It'll dovetail in with my Server 2008 stuff pretty well I think.And honestly, if I do never get it, I don't think it's the end of the world.
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Apr 6, 2015 23:12
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Bummer. The 685 exam is the one I put aside for a while and never came back to. That was 4 years ago :\ I have 70-680. Should I take 70-685? It'll get me the mctip:desktop cert right? See this, this is me distracting myself from the msca track that I've already started.
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Apr 6, 2015 23:32
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I tripped up on 70-685 a few times; my apprenticeship gave four free tries, I passed on my third. It is a lot to remember, particularly since some questions dive deeper into some technologies than generally would be done in everyday use (at least, where I've worked).Swink posted:Bummer. The 685 exam is the one I put aside for a while and never came back to. That was 4 years ago :\ It gives MCSA: Windows 7 now, but yes, 70-680 and 70-685 are all you need for that.
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Apr 7, 2015 13:45
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MJP posted:It's the actual boss. He's not really pushing it, he basically is making the noise that in a small company like ours, jack-of-all-trades is a good thing. The SQL stuff is really a "use it or lose it" type of skill set, a good DBA is a full time DBA, and sadly, knowing what's in the MS SQL certification tests is really a "dipping your toe in the water" type thing.
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Apr 7, 2015 16:52
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Maneki Neko posted:The SQL stuff is really a "use it or lose it" type of skill set, a good DBA is a full time DBA, and sadly, knowing what's in the MS SQL certification tests is really a "dipping your toe in the water" type thing. Fair enough. SQL in a Month of Lunches it is!
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Apr 7, 2015 19:38
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Still fighting with the ISC2. Update 4/10/15: Since my former employer has garbage record management and refuses to sign anything, I can't prove my 4 years there. In order to avoid pissing the cert issuer off and coming across as a dick,I gave up. In the mean time I'm going after a GLEG at SANS at one of their Summer conferences. Immanentized fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 20:58
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Immanentized posted:Still fighting with the ISC2. Their admin staff is just so bad at interacting with their customers. I previously thought this settled when I discussed this with their director of the investigation department last week, but the business analyst they had over my case just sent me another email. I haven't gone through the process yet but I thought if you pass the test but don't meet the experience requirements you just get listed as an Associate or whatever until you do meet the experience requirements. Why would you have to retake the exam?
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Apr 8, 2015 02:41
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What's the best RHCSA book currently? I know Jang is supposed to be great but according to Amazon his RHEL7 book doesn't come out until November  Worth waiting?
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Apr 8, 2015 13:51
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I need some STP practice for ICND2. Every time I come up on a diagram that has more than 3 switches, when needing to determine which is the alternate/blocking port Im getting my but handed to me. Anyone have some good links/tips for making this a bit easier?
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Apr 8, 2015 19:30
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Roargasm posted:What's the best RHCSA book currently? I know Jang is supposed to be great but according to Amazon his RHEL7 book doesn't come out until November The old book doesn't cover some pretty major changes (new services syntax & systemd for example) so you might as well just wait, honestly.
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Apr 8, 2015 21:04
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Sheep posted:The old book doesn't cover some pretty major changes (new services syntax & systemd for example) so you might as well just wait, honestly. Firewalld is the other huge change. Service syntax is the same, unless you mean systemctl (which isn't strictly needed) or actual systemd unit files, which fall under systemd and are really well documented and easy to read
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Apr 9, 2015 05:22
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Tab8715 posted:CBTNuggets has a CentOS Prep video series but Micheal Jang's new RHCSA/RHCE with RHEL7 come out in the Fall. Once that occurs I'm betting quite a few of us will be setting up a good lets read thread. Piggybacking on this question. I've been the only IT staffer for a while at a place that was small and is now less small. The environment was Linux & BSD when I got here and keeping things going has been interesting. I've picked up some of the skillset but I still feel like I could be a lot more polished. Also I'm stalling out a bit trying to replace the old infrastructure with newer up to date stuff that's KVM/Docker based. I feel like taking some classes towards this path might help keep my momentum up and also give me a piece of paper to use as leverage when I ask for that raise that I badly need and hopefully deserve. I went to Redhat's page and took their proficiency test. Because I tend to use manpages and google when I need to use a command rather than having them all committed firmly to memory it recommended that I start with their noob class and work my way up. Work is going to pay for me to do this, but time is always a factor. Any suggestions as to what might be my best course of action? I'm looking at Redhat because I'm trying to replace our old Debian based server with a new CentOS 7 box, plus Redhat is basically industry standard, right?
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Apr 13, 2015 21:38
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evilskillit posted:Piggybacking on this question. I've been the only IT staffer for a while at a place that was small and is now less small. The environment was Linux & BSD when I got here and keeping things going has been interesting. I've picked up some of the skillset but I still feel like I could be a lot more polished. Also I'm stalling out a bit trying to replace the old infrastructure with newer up to date stuff that's KVM/Docker based. I feel like taking some classes towards this path might help keep my momentum up and also give me a piece of paper to use as leverage when I ask for that raise that I badly need and hopefully deserve. Also, plain KVM is nasty to implement in most businesses. evilskillit posted:I went to Redhat's page and took their proficiency test. Because I tend to use manpages and google when I need to use a command rather than having them all committed firmly to memory it recommended that I start with their noob class and work my way up. Work is going to pay for me to do this, but time is always a factor. Any suggestions as to what might be my best course of action? I'm looking at Redhat because I'm trying to replace our old Debian based server with a new CentOS 7 box, plus Redhat is basically industry standard, right? RHEL/CentOS are industry standards outside of the web/cloud, where it's anything goes. But that's mostly because "business" apps like Oracle and Tivoli and whatever are certified on RHEL. But the tests are goals based. "Configure the server X way". You can look at manpages if you want to during the test (they're live systems), but having some flags memorized helps you get it done in time. Because there's a long list of stuff to do and a time limit. Also, it's not the LPIC, and there's a nontrivial amount of "redhat-isms" that you may or may not know if you're used to Debian or whatever (kickstart stuff, RPM stuff, yum options which help, subscriptions and entitlements). Take the RHCSA fast track course and go from there.
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Apr 13, 2015 21:56
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Finally signed up to take the ICND1 on June 6. I'd been very casually studying for the past two months or so, but my company just announced it's closing down at the end of the year, so my plans are rather rapidly accelerating. I've got Lammle's book and access to lab equipment at work if I need it/ GNS3 at home, and I've got about an hour a day to spare for studying, more on the weekends, and my downtime at work to do reading as well if needed. Any topics that were tough for people here that I should really focus on, or stuff that isn't well covered in Lammle's book? I took CCNA classes in high school, which was quite some time ago I know, but I don't remember having major struggles back then.
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Apr 15, 2015 01:59
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INCD1 isnt too bad. Know your subnetting, know the show commands for the subjects at hand.
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Apr 15, 2015 22:13
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