Sys. Admins. Your advice. New job.

by Little Drummer Boy 6 Replies latest social humour

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  Little Drummer Boy

  Ok, first off I didn't know where to put this thread, so jokes and humour seemed as good as any since there isn't a "Sys. Admin " thread starting section....

  ANYway....

  I just gradu-a-macated and I have accepted my first post-college posi-ti-one' extordinaire.

  I'm going to be a System Administrator. And I start in under 2 weeks. And my education was not focused in System Administer-ator-ing. I studied networking (Cisco) and PC repair. For some reason, they think I can do this job, they are gonna throw sick money at me (well, what I consider sick money), and I want to do a great job because that's the kinda guy I am. I have Microsft 70-290 (the general Server 2003 cert.), A+ (whoop-dee-frickin'-do....twirls finger in air), and Net+ (again, yawn..."So, of these 4 protocols, which one is non-routable?"....yawn).

  Part of my hire agreement is to get 70-297 in under 6 months. I have the Microsoft Press training kit on order and it wil be here in a few days to help me prep for that.

  I will be working with Exchange Server 2003 which I have never touched because we didn't cover that in school and I'm a newbie. I have in my hot little hands the Microsoft Administrator's Pocket Consultant for that and will be studying it like a mad man over the next week and a half. Pocket Consultant? That thing is 2 inches thick...sheesh.

  The servers are running Server 2003, and there is Novell involed as well. Many, many servers spread across several buildings. There is a small team of other people that I can call on for help there, but they have their own reponsibilities ofcourse,

  OK, now that all of that is out of the way, do any of you have any general advice, thoughts, feelings, vibes, whatever to give me?

  Books or resources that have been helpful to you? Huge mistakes that I should avoid but you might think I wouldn't think of? (Besides "Don't delete the RAID setup unless you really, really mean it.")

  I know that the info I gave is very vague...I won't know more until the day I start really. Anything at all that you want to tell me would be great.

  Thanks for everything.
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  Chameleon

  Hey, I remember you. =p

  I don't have any advice, but I wish you the best with this new job.
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  IP_SEC

  You ought to be able to get CCNA with just a little study.

  You can do this. It is not hard. If you understand mail, exchange is no big deal.

  Get group policy under your belt. You ought to know what not to do to cause too big of a cluster fuck. There arent really any secrets I can think of that you shouldnt already know..
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  UnConfused

  Well as the System Admin one of the many, but common duties will be to create and maintain a consistency in users and permissions. So be sure you understand the MS way of putting all users into Global Groups, assign permissions to Domain Local Groups and then put the Global groups of users into the Domain Local group.
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  Finally-Free

  I've been a network administrator for 12 years. Technology is easy. If you don't know the answer to something, research on the internet. Tip - Google is faster than Technet or MSDN, and gives you much less unrelated stuff to wade through.

  I found the greatest challenge was being patient with end users. The most utterly stupid end users will keep bothering you because they believe the help desk support staff are too stupid to help them. These are the people who don't know that a user name and password are two different things. I've also had people call me because they can't scan a document by holding it up to their monitor. Then you have the "power users" who have just enough knowledge to fuck up not only their own computers, but their entire department's. Hell, why shouldn't the entire engineering department use AOL instead of our network? Then you have the people who have heard the word "Citrix" and now, suddenly, everything is "Citrix". Outlook is "Citrix". The Internet is "Citrix". Their Blackberry is "Citrix", even for the users who don't use Citrix for anything. If I shoved an eggplant up someone's ass and called it "Citrix" everyone would believe me. If I told them it wasn't, they would argue with me. I'm not exaggerating.

  I better quit ranting before my blood spurts from my eyes. Good luck!

  W
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  Little Drummer Boy

  Chameleon - Thanks for the best wishes!

  IP_SEC - Group policy...will refresh memory on that. Thanks for encouragement that exchange won't be so bad. Thank you!

  Unconfused - Global Groups and Domain Local Groups, yup will check up on it all. Thanks to you as well

  Finally-Free - Patience...yes one of the most important things to have in life. Good call. I can expect that there will be ass hats who can't type their password and then get bent out of shape as if it is my doing. I will pull out some good business advice I learned long ago. "When confronted with an angry customer, fix the customer first and then the problem." They will feel better, calm down, and in the end might actually respect you more because they will begin to view you as being on their side working with them.

  Thanks!

  A big thank you to everyone so far. Will be more than happy to get even more great advice if anyone wants to share.
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  Finally-Free

  By the way, July 27 is Systems Administrator Appreciation Day. I strongly believe this should become an international holiday. Imagine what would happen if all sysadmins worldwide showed up for work drunk on the same day. People should appreciate our restraint.

  http://www.sysadminday.com/

  So far I haven't been successful in getting anyone to buy me toys, cake, or balloons.

  W