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Hi,

I had been in IT for nearly 2 years ,I serve as a Server administrator and basic network troubleshooting, was job hunting recently , but found for the profile which i’m , they get paid really less, More over since virtualization and cloud taking place everywhere , I doubt in the future there would be any job handling the server’s , But where as when I see people who are with Oracle apps , Oracle DBA , they get paid really high , Do u think it’s better I change my domain to Oracle. I did think of Ethical hacking , VMware but i’m confused , Don’t know where to go , I’m not good at programming so din’t opt to become a programmer. Currently I’m at middle east , wanna move to US or other place where I can be more techy, i’m a person who wants to learn new things everyday and update myself , but here I have less opportunity and people here doesn’t even want to upgrade to anything. Kindly help me out .

10 Spice ups
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If you are going to change specialisation, You really need to be passionate about what you are taking on. Certs alone will not be of much use, you also need to get some hands on experience

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Yep you are right , Hands on experience is very important

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Don’t move to Cloud/Virtulization just because it’s popular it will soon loose it’s newness and the fad will go away some just like everything else.

3 Spice ups
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Hows that? even in the virtual word we will need VM based servers.

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Hello,

I can say to you that one of the most important things is to find out what side of IT is the most suitable to you (you like it, you find it easy to learn etc.). Then, find out what are the best certifications and think which of them will benefit you the most.

I would spend some time in deciding what to learn, you don’t want to waste a lot of time learning something you don’t like and won’t benefit you so much.

2 Spice ups
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yes , Agreed with SMP Romania,

other side you need hands of Experience , so that you will be good in Cert.

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Great contributions by everyone in here, i would say i am also in a similar situation but am abit behind in the sense that i have a great flair for IT, cool gadgets and general stuffs in the world of IT. I studied electrical electronics in school and do not have any qualification in IT at all…I presently work in an office managing their IT department (a couple of laptops n workstations, printers a switch and an AP.)…I really intend to do my CCNA this year from the online materials i get and the little hands-on experience i get from handling issues that come up in the office. Presently i have been given a task to make the network setup in the office a server-client type cos we presently all just connect to the wireless AP router and LAN switch without any monitoring. Admin gave me this task because staffs have been disallowed from accessing websites like Youtube and any other video streaming site because of limited internet data (30GB).

I would like your advice on how i could sharpen my skills in server administration and how i could go about solving this problem…

I av been doin my research online and av found some very useful info like blockin the site from each system usin hostfile etc…sorry for the long story

Kehinde

Nigeria

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hands on expirience is really important IMO, sometimes more that certs.

having just got a new job myself and helped with the employment for my vacant role. The guy we took on was a apparent CCNA so we gave him some basic questions which he answered during his interview but he did say he didnt have any hands on experience.

His first week in which I trained him it was like he had never seen a Cisco before, the CCNA wasnt worth the paper it was wrote on and i believe they are still struggling with him now.

Along the same lines, the role that I took was for someone with a CCNA - i could prove that from hands on expirience that I had the understanding and got the job.

Dont follow the trend, find what you enjoy and excel in it. If you dont enjoy it that you’ll never really specialise as your heart wont be there.

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Why do you say that cloud computing and virtualization is a fad and will go away?

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Rafi,

Lots of great advice in this thread. I don’t think the work you do with servers is going to completely fade away anytime soon. I think you should ask yourself where your passions lie. Are you passionate about learning more about the cloud? Do you like working with servers? It is never a bad idea to broaden your knowledge and continue to learn. This will help you appeal more to potential employers and better equip yourself for the future.

If you do decide to pursue new certifications, make sure to check out CBT Nuggets. We offer online IT video training and have a lot of pre-built Certification Playlists covering many of the certifications mentioned above. Try us free for 7 days and see if we would be beneficial for you. Good luck and keep us updated on where your career path takes you!

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Hi Folks , Lots of great advice , Currently I take care of around 32 Server’s and basic network troubleshooting , I had studied CCNA but had failed in the exam , but practically I can handle it , I don’t have much certs in hand , but I have confidence in myself I can do it , There are so many procedures available online , More over spicework’s does help me in many ways . But when I go for interview in middle east they din’t ask much about my experience , but they asked for my certifications.

I think it’s time for me to figure out what I really need and stick to it :).

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Server Tech / Server Admin is never going to go away because physical machines will always be needed. It’s an entry level job type, though, and mostly exists only in datacenters. But everyone needs them. No amount of cloud or virtualization can change the need for physical devices at the bottom of the stack. Big shops have been fully virtualized for decades and they still always needed people in the datacenters to swap drives, rack servers, etc.

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That’s a pretty arbitrary change. Oracle is a company and makes a lot of stuff. There is Oracle Server Techs doing server hardware work too. You need to figure out where your interest and skills lie. Just picking something because it appears to pay well will not go well for you, especially when you are looking so specific that you are talking about vendor specific skills.

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It’s a fad to talk about, not that the architecture will change. In the enterprise space people don’t talk about virtualization because they’ve been doing it since the 1960s. Only in the SMB and media do people talk about it because it’s reached the level of “consumer” now. Cloud is not something that will require special skills in very long, it will just be another obvious part of every day IT and having skills specifically in it will be pretty silly.

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interesting… Was this a fortune 500 company or government agency?

I have considered getting a CCNA to help boost my chances of making $80,000 a year.

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http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/527333-finishing-my-mcse-soon-need-advice?page=1#entry-3476818

Given that thread, CCNA is an entry level cert, while better than NET+ still an entry level cert. If you desire to be a sysadmin or system’s engineer consider something towards that and gravitate towards it. CCNA is for folks wanting to dip their feet into the world of networking, and learn to configure them. However, CCNA is only touching on what’s really needed in the networking world.

Now if you’re just trying to stack certs on your resume, you might pull it off, but you won’t actually utilize the content of that cert making it fairly useless.