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I am currently looking for a Help Desk/Desktop Support position. I’ve had several Help Desk and Desktop Support positions and believe that if I just stayed in one place for long enough, I would naturally graduate to System Administration. Is this a realistic expectation or is there something I would need to do to push my way into System Administration?

I know a few things I can do that would help, like get certified (maybe MCSA Server to start) but I was wondering if anyone could provide a very clear set of short/long term goals or steps I can take toward System Administration.

Thank you for everyone’s responses in advance.

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Moving up from help desk can be done either at the same company or changing companies. Oftentimes in IT though, to get a good raise and a new title/responsibilities, it involves changing jobs. That’s how my career progression has been, and the reason I changed jobs when I did as I couldn’t progress where I was at. Certifications can help with that, but a big part is the experience.

How much experience do you have with managing servers or a network?

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I’ve been in larger environments before with dedicated helpdesk techs. In almost all of them, the techs felt ‘trapped’ or ‘pigeon-holed’ in that role, especially if they had been there over a year. They were always promised to move to other roles, and sometimes even got to job-shadow… but when it came time to fill a vacancy in those positions? They were always passed over… The easiest way to get into a ‘SysAdmin’ role is to find a job where the existing admins/network people are willing to mentor you over a period of time. The you can either get a position under them, or jump to a role in a company where it’s YOUR baby… But that’s a lot of risk if you don’t have the skills.

Oh, and what the path looks like? :wink:

path.jpg

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Experience is where you need to go. Look for a Junior Sysadmin job to start as a bridge the gap, usually they do 50% on each side and are a great place to start doing what you are talking about.

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Not enough to feel comfortable claiming Server or Network administration on my resume. At my last position I setup some Cisco switches as replacements for older Cisco switches and I’ve done some network troubleshooting. I’ve setup a router/firewall a few times and created a few rules. My CCNA expired on the 18th of this month. I’ve done a lot of creating users in Active Directory and I’ve made a few group policies. I also setup imaging with Windows Deployment Services using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit… But doing that doesn’t really mean I managed the server, I simply used the server to perform some tasks.

I did setup the imaging server from OS install but from that point I wasn’t actively monitoring that server. At this point, as I write this, I suppose I’m wondering what it actually means to manage a server. I’ve set servers up and added roles, I think that counts. I haven’t really setup any server backups though. I haven’t picked out the hardware for a server based on the work I expect it to perform. I’m familiar with what RAID is but I’ve never decided what RAID level a server should use and then configured RAID. I think I know that part of Server/System administration is patch management. In a windows environment, does that mean using WSUS to determine when to deploy new patches. Would a System Admin intentionally go through event viewer on all the servers BEFORE issues arise to monitor things or is there software (I know the short answer is yes) designed to monitor things for you. In my mind, I can think of 4 aspects of a network that a System Admin should have a deep understanding of: Servers, Network (Switches, Routers, VLANs, and Net Layout), Databases, and Phones (VoIP?). Forgive me for just spewing stream of consciousness right now because I’m sure I’m missing things or maybe even over simplifying but I’d like to share my current understanding.

I have almost no knowledge of Database Administration and would like to learn SQL. I want to learn everything, dammit, but I know I can learn everything all at once. Right now I’m waiting to get my next Help Desk/Desktop support position, sit still there for a good minute and see if they’re need will help guide me in a direction as to what I should pursue first. Rather than renew my CCNA I’m thinking of trying to study for an MCSA.

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In house IT, vendor support organization? I think we are hiring in a few of our centers.

This is a weird one for a few reasons.

  1. My first job I did some hell desk, but I was still a domain administrator and had root permissions on all networking devices, the PBX etc. Smaller shops you’ll end up wearing all hats. This doesn’t mean you’ll be a GOOD sysadmin, or some practices you’ll learn in a small shop will translate well up.

  2. There are high-end support positions. I’ve seen helpdesk L2 pay 90K a year in oil gas supporting energy traders. niche application helpdesk can go quite a ways up.

  3. If you’re expecting to sit somewhere and just over time be promoted up, I might recommend looking at a union job/field.

I’d focus less on certifications and more on just skills. What do you have in your home lab? What virtual machines are you running? What container distribution or orchestrator are you using? Tell me what your storage is (using a NAS, you roll your own DRDB system?). When I interviewed for Jr. Sysadmins asking questions about a homelab was a great way to get some insight into what they were curious about even if it was us both laughing about how terrible cheap SATA drives are with MDRAID and RAID 5.

If it takes 10K hours to master something, and sitting around resetting user passwords doesn’t give you hours towards being a sysadmin. Start getting experience now in your free time. There are a lot of great free lab on-demand systems to get started.

Go Learn Kubernetes -

Go Learn VMware - VMware Lab Platform

Go Learn Microsoft - Training | Microsoft Learn

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This is where you’re going wrong. You can’t learn EVERYTHING and be great at it. Given time, you can do it and be GOOD, if you’ve got the mind for it, but few others will take you seriously. You should pick a field and specialize in it. CCNA is one route. MCSA is another. Or do both! But keep your certs up. That’s mainly what the business community and HR will look at. Also, stop thinking of servers of some all-powerful, high and mighty, God’s gift to creation. A server is JUST a better-built computer, usually running a slightly modified desktop OS. That’s it. When I took my first one apart, it was, “This is just a big desktop. Let’s hop to it!” That’s all there was to it.

And Google all of your questions! You’ll see points and counter-points. You’ll see people calling others idiots for choosing ‘Brand X’ or ‘Technology Y’, and others, just as qualified, using exactly those brands and technologies. Everyone has their own experiences and biases.

Actively monitor a server? You can use a third-party monitoring tool, or remotely look at the WMI data. That’s it. Smaller operations, you react and put out fires a lot. If you can get ahead of the curve and proactively watch things? All the better.

Manage a server? You make sure the backups run. You add or delete users. You watch things to make sure it doesn’t run out of space or RAM. If you’re good, you figure out scripts and such to automate things. I remember asking a server admin at a large company, “That’s it? That’s seriously ALL you do?!?” They just laughed and said, “Yup. Make WAY more money than you do, too!” :wink:

Server hardware? Most of it is over-powered these days, anyway. You size them for VM loads, and most of that is simple math. You want four servers that need 64GB RAM and 4 cores each? A server with 256GB RAM and 16 cores will do the trick! Short on cash? THEN you have to pare down and figure how you’ll cut corners while keeping performance up.

RAID these days is the same as it’s pretty much been. RAID0 for a gaming system you don’t care losing with a drive crash, RAID1 for small, redundant systems, RAID5/6 for SSDs or smaller <900GB GOOD hard drives on a strict budget, RAID10 will do for almost anything else. RAID50 and the like aren’t really done all that much. There are more schemes now. Again, just Google them!

WSUS is if you don’t want a lot of bandwidth used, or if you want to control how often systems update and what they update to.

Actually, a ‘System Administrator’ is usually a Linux/UNIX server admin. We just use the term to portray an IT Generalist. Those of us that are good at everything. For the work that I do, others have wondered why new companies they go to have separate people, or TEAMS, to do the same amount of work. The overall arc to this? KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID… (KISS :slight_smile: ) I’ve seen IT people crumple in situations, and it’s because they did the opposite. But pick a tech you want to pursue first and go for it. Networks are always a good bet, so that if/when you branch out later, you’ll have a good understanding of them whatever else you end up doing.

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Learn what interests you the most. If you’re a helpdesk tech/desktop support guy see what you have access to and then check how things are configured and why it works for the business. You can then try to replicate things to learn more about it by doing it yourself. That’s how I got started…company used Veeam for back ups…ok, I got the free version and started playing with dcs and back ups. Company used O365, Vmware, etc…ok, did the same thing. One day I was asked if I knew anything about X piece of tech and I was able to say…well, yes…yes I do AND I also know about x, y and z.

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It sounds like you’re on your way, as you’re doing stuff that a sys admin does, as opposed to being stuck doing stuff that this sys admin doesn’t do anymore because there is a help desk that can take care of those things. :wink:

Getting into a place where you aren’t pigeon holed into “just help desk” is helpful, and probably the way a good many of us get there. Learning the material taught in MCSA courses helps. Passing the exams not so much. My goal is to pass onto the help desk folk as much as possible. They’ve installed VMware from scratch. Built VMs from scratch. Rebuilt servers. Replaced physical servers with new ones. Replace routers with firewalls (okay, that takes a huge amount of prep work and often some remote work, but they’re the hands and eyes).

My goal is to make everyone that comes in on help desk to be a competent sys admin, so I can offload more of my projects to them so we can get more stuff done. You need to show good troubleshooting skills, and be able to take a project to completion. Ask questions when you need to, and figure stuff out.

I would say that fundamentally a good sys admin is someone that can try something that they haven’t done before, research how to do it, and get it done with a good design. Note that a good design usually requires at least 2 previous not so good designs.

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Good advice from others above, i would stress that youre going to need to learn scripting skills, especially PowerShell if youre working with MS products and VMware.

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Imaging of systems is kinda falling out of practice for EUC. Modern endpoint management is more about over the top stuff using MDM, and out of the box auto-enrollment, than classic "image imagine, then use SCCM to push stuff and GPO. Note, understanding GPO (and why we did things) though carries forward on a lot of other policy management frameworks. It gets you in the mindset of “we should centrally do this”.

Ohhh god no. I had the logs, and syslogs from devices all going into a central log analytics platform (I used LogInsight but pick your posion of splunk, SumoLogic etc) and we had dashboards and auto alerts that would fire into our ticket system.

God I hated WSUS. In windows it could be this, or a host of RMM’s that can do this. In more devop’s land it might be a matter of having a CMP or an orchestration platform just redeploy entire servers with changes and a new version automatically (This is a big part of the CI/CD pipeline tools I work with). As we longer term move towards declarative management stuff, destroy and rebuild is becoming how we patch some things. That said, this magical future isn’t coming everywhere and it isn’t everywhere today.

VoIP is it’s own hell hole, and while I know it, I view it as a niche, legacy skill-set. In large companies they outsource this or have a team who just deals with this. The total number of voice minutes going over enterprise networks is going down, and really unified communication stuff is more about becoming a sharepoint admin (What Teams secretly is) or managing Slack or Zoom. having spent too much of my life dealing with 1 way SIP or trying to make a conference system work with a H.323 bridge I"m going to say “RUN” don’t walk away.

In larger old enterprises often the sysadmins have zero networking interaction (note this isn’t healthy and isn’t the trend but it is common).

Databases and application work can be it’s own dedicated career path. Be the guy who optimizes queries and manages Oracle RAC clusters is a good six figure job.
By the time you have a few PB of storage you might even have a storage team.

Virtualization and (slowly containers) are also skill sets I often see sysadmins with.

I thought i was going to be a CCIE and networking admin early in my career when I was young and silly. I got 2 days into a job at a MSP and got thrown into managing a few million in storage. I then started working more with virutalization (because that’s who I was handing off storage too!). I then learned VDI because it tended to break storage. Eventually I picked up this and that, but what I learned was largely driven by a blend of curiosity and opportunity that was in front of me. I dropped out of my CCNA class 4 classes in. It was too slow, and my career was going a different direction. could I still configure VLAN on a switch? Sure. Do I know how to setup VxLAN tunnels, and design a ECMP fabric on a sheet of paper? Why not. Even got asked this morning to troubleshoot ARP caching issues on a switch for a financial firm with over 2 billion in assets!

That said, I never finished by CCNA, and I’m most certainly not a networking person. I’m just a curious storage guy.

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Just want to acknowledge everyone’s responses beyond simply clicking the thumbs up. I’ve read what everyone has shared with me so far and find it valuable. Thank you again.

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I think like most things the answer is “it depends”

Does your current employer encourage you to follow through with things you escalate from the Help Desk? Are the people who pick up the jobs happy for you to watch / help with the resolutions? Did the people you escalate to get promoted within the company or did they come from outside? If the answers are yes then there is a path within your current company, although you then have to consider how likely is it that a position you can move up to will become available, you may have to be patient, if the company is growing then that’s a good sign, if people are looking to leave the company that could be a bad sign!

It sound like your picking up some good experience and skills where you are so that’s a good thing, do your managers know you’re looking to progress? Will they help you with courses etc.?

With regards to certifications, experience will always be more important to other IT people, the problem is HR are usually involved and they like paper qualifications so to get the interview certs will help!

The best of luck with you career!

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The road to system administration is paved with good intentions…

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15 years ago the Sys Admin at my previous employer committed suicide. More recently, our Sys Admin had a nervous breakdown and moved to Canada. I THINK he’s working on office equipment (fixing copiers, printers, faxes) for Konica-Minolta. As a result, I don’t think I’m too eager for promotion!

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Just a note, the MCSA/E/D certifications are being retired as of June 30, 2020 . Everything is getting rolled into the new “role-based” certifications.

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Wait a second - they’re doing away with the Windows Server and SQL server certifications? Everything’s either Azure or 365 now? What if we don’t use those? We still use Server and SQL. If I’m going to administer a non-Azure Windows server, then that’s what I want to get certified in. I mean, I don’t need a CDL license to drive a car.

Stupid Microsoft. Take away what people want and give us a bunch of stuff that we don’t need and costs more. I consider administering non-Azure or 365 servers a role just as much as administering the cloud versions.

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Hello Larry ,

I wanted to add this information to clarify the last information you probably saw about the Microsoft certifications,

The biggest response from the community was to extend the retiring of the MCSA, MCSE, and MCSD certifications (and their exams) to sometime around January, 2021. With the latest updates announced due to the Coronavirus, Microsoft has officially extended this retirement date to January 31, 2021.

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Thank you. I hadn’t seen the revised retirement date.

Of course the point still stands, these certifications are slated for retirement soon, so it’s time to finish up if you’ve already started and don’t bother starting if you don’t think you can finish on time.

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Certifications (MCSA, CCA-V, VCP) will definetly help you set yourself apart from other people applying for sys admin positions. Also, I would watch youtube videos in your spare time to get more knowledge as well.