10 Yrs in Microsoft - Learn Linux?

[aasimenator]

Hey Guys, - apologies for the long post

So presently I am 30 years old, I did my 12th back in 2005, had no interest in doing graduation as much of it was bs so i decided to skip it & started working same year, I was 18 I guess. After working for 4 years in 2009 one day I decided that i'd like to follow my dreams and make a career in computers which is what i used to love & be fascinated about, I used to spend time in a cybercafe in my area and watch the guy perform installations & cleaning the systems, instead of sitting in lectures.

So in 2009 i quit my job and joined IIHT for a course that would include Windows, Networking & Linux. It was a 2 year course, and initially when the program was started with Networking i got bored and decided to skip them... then joined again when they started teaching about Windows and I had greater understanding of everything that was thought & sort of even became the teachers pet - use to come early & setup the lab with the teacher for our lectures - & during lectures i used to remotely turn off other students systems, or give then an error message during their setup

I was very interested in this field even so that I managed to passed most of my initial Microsoft (Server 2003) with more than 90% ( and no these were not with the help of dumps), After the Windows phase was over it was on to Linux & i sat for over 10 sessions and still couldn't understand or grasp what the hell was going on & why the hell were we doing things the old way of using command lines instead of GUI. I talked with the management and got my self into Windows Server 2008 course instead of the godforsaken Linux and i was happy again.

After "graduating" from IIHT started looking for jobs - back in 2011 found people still use server 2003 & they don't was just a windows admin but someone who can do everything including networking and desktop support etc.. I decided to hell with that and started to look up work online, found a great portal for freelancers (before that i didn't even know about freelancing) and signed up for the few months did basic work and some data entry jobs then finally got my first project as an Server Support Engineer - for a firm that had its roots in Canada and manages a hell lot of clients. Started working through, was in direct contact with the CEO of the firm, He was a tech guy as well & thought me a lot of the stuff - I am now "Technical Infrastructure Manager" at the same firm, I earn around $25k per year. and that should be good for most. But I am starting to feel like I am stuck

I've earned a hell lot of skill working with this Canadian company (even though remotely from home). I have a huge skill set now I know Windows Server 2016 - 2003, AD, DNS, CA, VMware, SQL Server, RDS, Group Policies, Veeam Backup, Office 365, pfSense etc. etc.

With a total of now 10 years of experience, I want or feel like I should maybe learn more? but i don't know which direction to take? I'd like to get deeper into VMware but it looks like people consider the certification valid only when you have done it through a training institute with its classes. but i've been using VMware since 8 years & need no training and can actually just give the exam.

So i am at a crossroad any help in a particular direction would be useful. I am not sure if I should learn
1. Linux
2. VMware
3. Microsoft Azure
4. Or something else entirely?

 

[tommy_vercetti]

You already are good at many things, you should look at the cloud, Azure or AWS, it is similar to you working remotely but with more stuff from PowerShell and the Azure Portal

 

[m-jeri]

Isn't VMware being killed by the cloud service providers with the whole saas/iaas thing? At least that's what I see.

Everything point towards automation & scaling. So, cloud it is. And I believe you have the skill set to have a head start in that.

btw. I am a Infra Engineer.

 

[vishalrao]

Have you looked at this thing called "DevOps" field and related tools and technologies? Seems to be the current hotness in cloud tech. Looks like you are currently "Ops" profile, so you might want to take a look at "DevOps" role online tutorials and what not, to pick up some decent coding/scripting skills.[DOUBLEPOST=1519268513][/DOUBLEPOST]I believe there's no other way, if you want a pay/salary upgrade then you will have to learn this godforsaken command line stuff on linux

 

[aasimenator]

You already are good at many things, you should look at the cloud, Azure or AWS, it is similar to you working remotely but with more stuff from PowerShell and the Azure Portal

I already have some experience in Azure but yeah a certification or training in Azure would be a good idea...
P.s. I hate PowerShell as much as I hate the Terminal in Linux but i can get by it as i know most of the commands to do stuff.

Isn't VMware being killed by the cloud service providers with the whole saas/iaas thing? At least that's what I see.
Everything point towards automation & scaling. So, cloud it is. And I believe you have the skill set to have a head start in that.
btw. I am a Infra Engineer.

Well yeah the whole industry is moving to cloud but for a business its not viable unless they have a high budget for IT each year and if you want to save a lot of money in the long run you don't opt for cloud. I've seen people switch to cloud then move back to either shared hosting / dedicated servers because what they pay in a year in cloud is twice or thrice more than what they would be paying upfront for hardware (if you know where to look). for countries like India it makes sense to move things to cloud as internet is not that great. but for other countries where they have proper internet speeds & quality - 90% of the time hosting yourself is the better option.

I can give you an example :
One of my client and home remodeling company wanted to move to the cloud for their homegrown CRM solution - it was a big one with lots of data (users used to save their designs in Document library). I told them it wont be cheap and it would be best to have an inhouse server as all their users access it from the local office or remote offices (VPN)
So for the 1 Year we had them on AWS - they were billed $30000 per year. (yes even after optimizations from a dev) After that the client wanted to look at other options.
I gave them this.
2 x Refurbished Dell R710 64Gb RAM 8 x 1TB SSD's Raid controller Gigabit Ethernet etc.. with 1 year warranty. each of these units was for $1200/-, We already had Volume licensing program and SQL licenses etc.
This was placed inhouse for them and then i used Amazon backup. even if you factor in the costs of electricity & internet etc. its not going to amount to what we were paying per year. a year passed we added 2 more servers at the office & sent 2 servers to a hosting company for offsite emergency backup.
If the clients were all over Canada or International - yes maybe it would have made sense
If it was a smaller operational site - maybe it would have made sense to stay in cloud but anything bigger its is always best to have it with you or hosting at a dedicated server farm.
IT is not about always having the latest technology & getting hands on with everything new and upcoming, its about saving money for the business and helping it grow. So yeah Cloud is the next big thing i agree there 100% and it will be for a while but unless things get really cheap really fast business wont be able to sustain on cloud for long.

Have you looked at this thing called "DevOps" field and related tools and technologies? Seems to be the current hotness in cloud tech. Looks like you are currently "Ops" profile, so you might want to take a look at "DevOps" role online tutorials and what not, to pick up some decent coding/scripting skills.[DOUBLEPOST=1519268513][/DOUBLEPOST]I believe there's no other way, if you want a pay/salary upgrade then you will have to learn this godforsaken command line stuff on linux

DevOps ? requires Programming right? yeah failed in C++ & java programming when i did 6 months in BSC IT

An example of a monthly statement from AWS

 

[nRiTeCh]

This isnt related to you but still have a look may be you can get some inputs.

I always think to change my field being in this IT Infra for 10 yrs now but starting something from scratch really needs guts and investment of time, money and efforts and most importantly patience.

I'm a purely MS guy and already know cloud and just did my vmware classes as well but dont know why but vm failed me to impress. I simply did it coz now every job position relevant to my filed wants vm+windows+cloud+itil and so on.
But now realized to be stick to whats running in market or best what are you good at. If you go by market you need to upgrade every now and then which ultimately lands you into hell lot of confusions and career depressions so its always better to be focused.

I'm bad at command line hence linux failed to impresses me and so powershell. I know I can excel in these two enemies but only if I make up my mind dedicatedly to do so but my inside gut feeling disobeys that command and will always restrict me.

So if you want to take a break go for it but shift in career then always have a second opinion. Learning is always good it aint going to waste but learning new and starting a fresh career into it at this stage needs thinking and proper planning. Ya I know people change careers at 50 as well but not everybodys condition is same.

 

[aasimenator]

@nRiTeCh You are more so in the same boat as i am - and i think its started sinking... I think us being in the same field doing the same job...feels like eating the same thing over & over again. And we just want something fresh to eat
I also have no interest in command lines & powershell etc. and like to do things GUI way.. like for example.. Yesterday i had to import 50 users into AD, i know there is a powershell script which can import CSV but i instead downloaded trial of ADManager and used that to import the users - just hate staring at the blinking prompt i guess
I know there are people who prefer the newer generation games like NFS, Assassins creed, GTA etc etc. but there will always be some who prefer retro games like Zelda, Mario etc.. and i think that's the same as preferring to use GUI for everything vs using PowerShell / Command line / Terminal for everything... at least in windows we have that choice but in Linux there isn't one. and not feeling the need to master command line - there isn't any shame in that!

I think cloud jobs are going be the next big thing to hit the market (if it not already has). And I can certainly feel the shift to Linux for server tasks in the market (more Linux jobs than Windows jobs). But at this point it feels like moving to something because everyone is doing it - becoming a sheep following the heard... and I've never ever done that since I was a 18.

I've watched Azure training ( a year ago) on YouTube I've watched Linux training (currently watching) on YouTube & both of them still fail to impress me. I think i'd give it a go again with Azure training and see how that goes...

 

[booo]

suck it up and learn coding. most of the infrastructure related jobs require some sort of scripting. seems all the cool kids are doing python these days. The idea with cloud is to eliminate the sysadmin related jobs. try to concentrate on consulting type of roles. infrastructure planning, storage / network infrastructure planning, migration to and from cloud, disaster recovery and business continuity planning, high availability etc...

 

[tommy_vercetti]

suck it up and learn coding. most of the infrastructure related jobs require some sort of scripting. seems all the cool kids are doing python these days. The idea with cloud is to eliminate the sysadmin related jobs. try to concentrate on consulting type of roles. infrastructure planning, storage / network infrastructure planning, migration to and from cloud, disaster recovery and business continuity planning, high availability etc...

Like someone mentioned earlier DevOps is the big thing I understand the hate for command line and Linux terminal but there are times when the tasks at hand are large and need automation and I'm sorry that is a no no with GUI, commandline is going to help you there, like we all are doing the same tasks, routine work, automating it is going to give you the edge over others, PowerShell is great and get much done once you know which modules to call, a little bit of coding does wonders, I myself and bad at it but you can look up google and get it done, but that skill set it something preferable to have

 

[m-jeri]

Well yeah the whole industry is moving to cloud but for a business its not viable unless they have a high budget for IT each year and if you want to save a lot of money in the long run you don't opt for cloud. I've seen people switch to cloud then move back to either shared hosting / dedicated servers because what they pay in a year in cloud is twice or thrice more than what they would be paying upfront for hardware (if you know where to look). for countries like India it makes sense to move things to cloud as internet is not that great. but for other countries where they have proper internet speeds & quality - 90% of the time hosting yourself is the better option.

I can give you an example :
One of my client and home remodeling company wanted to move to the cloud for their homegrown CRM solution - it was a big one with lots of data (users used to save their designs in Document library). I told them it wont be cheap and it would be best to have an inhouse server as all their users access it from the local office or remote offices (VPN)
So for the 1 Year we had them on AWS - they were billed $30000 per year. (yes even after optimizations from a dev) After that the client wanted to look at other options.
I gave them this.
2 x Refurbished Dell R710 64Gb RAM 8 x 1TB SSD's Raid controller Gigabit Ethernet etc.. with 1 year warranty. each of these units was for $1200/-, We already had Volume licensing program and SQL licenses etc.
This was placed inhouse for them and then i used Amazon backup. even if you factor in the costs of electricity & internet etc. its not going to amount to what we were paying per year. a year passed we added 2 more servers at the office & sent 2 servers to a hosting company for offsite emergency backup.
If the clients were all over Canada or International - yes maybe it would have made sense
If it was a smaller operational site - maybe it would have made sense to stay in cloud but anything bigger its is always best to have it with you or hosting at a dedicated server farm.
IT is not about always having the latest technology & getting hands on with everything new and upcoming, its about saving money for the business and helping it grow. So yeah Cloud is the next big thing i agree there 100% and it will be for a while but unless things get really cheap really fast business wont be able to sustain on cloud for long.

I agree with the idea.

I have worked with a Big 4 and few traditional no cloud companies. From my experience, you need to dive into details.

Lets talk about the small companies not affording cloud. Lots of companies are realizing that having a dedicated IT infrastructure, AMCs, Licensing, Staff salary & benefits etc are not just worth it when you can do it with a skeleton crew. Obviously I cannot show you the numbers as they are done by the companies I worked for and they are confidential. Again, if this is a small to medium sized company, more reasons are there to go cloud. Also, your cost analysis does not gel well with me. You pay the 30K for less to no downtime, data protection, round the clock support. If you want to put your revenue generating solution into refurb in-house solution, I am not going to stop you though. It actually means you don't generate enough revenue(or scaled enough) to need cloud at that point int ime. It is not the question of affordability here.

I hope you are aware of the S3 failure in 2016 end by AWS in NA zone and how they handled it. A+.

Traditional data on other network averse companies. Yes, here you have a stronger argument that they wont go into cloud. But here, there are few different use cases.
They will stand their own cloud. Dockers, Kubers and what nots. My current firm does this. However, this data is the revenue generating part. There is the non revenue generating data that they push into cloud. So here also, cloud wins in the end.

 

[aasimenator]

Lots of companies are realizing that having a dedicated IT infrastructure, AMCs, Licensing, Staff salary & benefits etc are not just worth it when you can do it with a skeleton crew.

Yes for a small scale that makes sense... on a large scale you already have those.

..... Also, your cost analysis does not gel well with me. You pay the 30K for less to no downtime, data protection, round the clock support. If you want to put your revenue generating solution into refurb in-house solution, I am not going to stop you though. It actually means you don't generate enough revenue(or scaled enough) to need cloud at that point int ime. It is not the question of affordability here.

Well less to no downtime > its been 2 years since we've self hosted and there has be 0% downtime & i mean that literally.
Data protection > we have backups - well right now we even have up to the minute sync of files on to separate server in-house. in case one ever goes down we can restore to that server while we recover the other.
Round the clock support > This is something I feel is irrelevant you have to pay $49 for even basic support & that with 24 hour response time anything better you need to pay higher. And they are not going to help you with anything other than basic issues which you can mostly handle anyways. I've experience that.. if you haven't looked at the invoice above there is a Dev Support in there which was for basic support.

And yes refurbished any-day better than paying overpriced hardware- there are specific companies that test refurbished hardware and sell them- we have a vendor that we have tested and actually visited their office to see the process before finalizing them they have yet to fail us... the only things that has ever died on our servers are SSD's & HDDs - these are built like a tank at least the Dell PoweEdge servers I've exclusively used for the past 5 years.

Traditional data on other network averse companies. Yes, here you have a stronger argument that they wont go into cloud. But here, there are few different use cases.
They will stand their own cloud. Dockers, Kubers and what nots.

Yes True, i support own cloud rather than AWS or Azure or Google Cloud.

My current firm does this. However, this data is the revenue generating part. There is the non revenue generating data that they push into cloud. So here also, cloud wins in the end.

I wonder why the company doesn't trust its revenue generating data on the cloud?

As I said on a small scale cloud makes sense, host a website, design a small scale application, but as the data & computing plies on, the pricing is extremely high.

 

[m-jeri]

Yes for a small scale that makes sense... on a large scale you already have those.



Well less to no downtime > its been 2 years since we've self hosted and there has be 0% downtime & i mean that literally.
Data protection > we have backups - well right now we even have up to the minute sync of files on to separate server in-house. in case one ever goes down we can restore to that server while we recover the other.
Round the clock support > This is something I feel is irrelevant you have to pay $49 for even basic support & that with 24 hour response time anything better you need to pay higher. And they are not going to help you with anything other than basic issues which you can mostly handle anyways. I've experience that.. if you haven't looked at the invoice above there is a Dev Support in there which was for basic support.

And yes refurbished any-day better than paying overpriced hardware- there are specific companies that test refurbished hardware and sell them- we have a vendor that we have tested and actually visited their office to see the process before finalizing them they have yet to fail us... the only things that has ever died on our servers are SSD's & HDDs - these are built like a tank at least the Dell PoweEdge servers I've exclusively used for the past 5 years.



Yes True, i support own cloud rather than AWS or Azure or Google Cloud.


I wonder why the company doesn't trust its revenue generating data on the cloud?

As I said on a small scale cloud makes sense, host a website, design a small scale application, but as the data & computing plies on, the pricing is extremely high.

Again, I am not saying refurb is a bad idea. Just the number of companies that is not opting for it is significant. Everything is fine until it is not.

You wonder why the company does not trust revenue generating data in cloud? Lots of reasons. Government(FDA&DOJ to start with. Canada apes those agencies as well. EU has its own weird restrictions as well) regulatory restrictions on Medtech & Insurance to start with, companies that are on stealth mode(magicleap for example).

For the regulated folks, there are some exceptions. They are allowed to push certain data to cloud. AWS, MSFT & G is coming up with a new service to allow complete cloud support. Think it is already in beta with AWS.

Also, read up on experian data breaches.

Your last sentence do not make sense. If you are scaling(for startups, the seed burn downs) or scaled(for established firms, it comes to cost benefit. Less workforce, things to manage, less liable etc.) properly, the cost of data & computing is minuscule compared to the hosting bills. I have seen years of data on it.

 

[aasimenator]

Everything is fine until it is not.

Thats the same for new hardware... am i wrong?

Also, read up on experian data breaches.

Read up on Equifax breach, Verizon Database breach all this on the cloud, but to me whatever breaches happens happen due to user error & issue with codes not because of the platform they are on.

Your last sentence do not make sense. If you are scaling(for startups, the seed burn downs) or scaled(for established firms, it comes to cost benefit. Less workforce, things to manage, less liable etc.) properly, the cost of data & computing is minuscule compared to the hosting bills. I have seen years of data on it.

I can actually give you a run down of how much we pay & what hardware we are hosting may be you can calculate the amount we'd be paying monthly to host similar / equal in performance on AWS or GC or Azure whatever your chose... are you up to that challenge ?

I don't understand your logic of workforce or things to manage with cloud, you still need someone to manage it unless you already have a tech person, and if there is a tech person adding another server / cloud infrastructure doesn't mean that the admin will say I wont do it & quit or you would add another admin just to manage another server / cloud account?

Regardless i think this conversation is going in a completely different route before the admin steps in lets drop it...

 

[m-jeri]

Thats the same for new hardware... am i wrong?


Read up on Equifax breach, Verizon Database breach all this on the cloud, but to me whatever breaches happens happen due to user error & issue with codes not because of the platform they are on.



I can actually give you a run down of how much we pay & what hardware we are hosting may be you can calculate the amount we'd be paying monthly to host similar / equal in performance on AWS or GC or Azure whatever your chose... are you up to that challenge ?

I don't understand your logic of workforce or things to manage with cloud, you still need someone to manage it unless you already have a tech person, and if there is a tech person adding another server / cloud infrastructure doesn't mean that the admin will say I wont do it & quit or you would add another admin just to manage another server / cloud account?

Regardless i think this conversation is going in a completely different route before the admin steps in lets drop it...

My comparison is with cloud. It is not the same.

Again, you seem to confuse affordability vs need. If a deployment does not make enough money or does not need to scale enough to warrant a cloud deployment, it does not.

I am happy to take that challenge. I will only be concentrating on one thing first, the need. Comparison between a bolt on solution and a cloud provider needs to be made after a cost benefit analysis. If you are going to share the details, I hope you have done that first.

Ah. Glad you pointed out the last part. There is a traditional big oil company(EU based. Popular name.) that hosted farms all over the world for their data needs. There IT department was over 10K people in the 2000s. They moved to cloud, completely. Now their IT department is true skeleton mode. Skeleton crew is defined by respective company SOPs. Not sure what is the actual number. This is the benefit. Not few numbers of people. Millions they saved. This transition was documented in few articles, if you can connect the dots you will find the article.

 

[Fenix]

Isn't VMware being killed by the cloud service providers with the whole saas/iaas thing? At least that's what I see.

Everything point towards automation & scaling. So, cloud it is. And I believe you have the skill set to have a head start in that.

btw. I am a Infra Engineer.

Its not , thats helping them as they have Vcloud Air for cloud and vRealize for automation. I guess you dont read the news, VMware is making so much profits that its almost on the verge of purchasing its parent company - Which was EMC and now its DellEMC. Plus they have tied with Amazon for the cloud part.

https://aws.amazon.com/vmware/
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/29/vmw...-would-bring-dell-back-to-public-markets.html

 

[Fenix]

Hey Guys, - apologies for the long post

So presently I am 30 years old, I did my 12th back in 2005, had no interest in doing graduation as much of it was bs so i decided to skip it & started working same year, I was 18 I guess. After working for 4 years in 2009 one day I decided that i'd like to follow my dreams and make a career in computers which is what i used to love & be fascinated about, I used to spend time in a cybercafe in my area and watch the guy perform installations & cleaning the systems, instead of sitting in lectures.

I know its a tough spot to be in. When you said VMware - You are talking about Management/Deployment/Development/Engineering.
Which VMware product - ESXi - Vsphere - Vcenter - Airwatch - Horizon - VMware View - vRealize.

And what are you looking for exactly ?

 

[aasimenator]

@Fenix
I have experience with vSphere / vCenter & ESXi - I've configured Horizon View 6 in a demo lab for testing out its use case for my environment but have not tried Horizon 7 yet. No experience about other VMware products you've mentioned.

Currently I am evaluating all my options I guess...