Here is the deal, i HATE my current job but my heart and passion has always be IT or computers in general. Now i have my own “rack” with some unity stuff and learning allot by myself. However i do not have any job-related experience, only a certificate in “ICT” (help users and basic stuff).
How do i tackle new job and how can i present myself (without any “paper” experience ) against master bachelors. There is no way i can compete with them, but i do want a opportunity to prove my self. Also note that i am from belgium so some rules may not apply here.
Any thoughts? ANY feedback of good suggestions are always welcome.
The best way to get experience is to lab. I agree with Greg that you should be looking at a helpdesk role and the JD should tell you what you need to know for the job. If you teach yourself MS Server (AD, DNS, File shares, GPOs) you should be able to get a job quickly. Don’t worry about people who have degrees, etc… What matters the most is you can do the work.
Learn AD, but also Azure since many places have gone to cloud.
I’d also suggest learning everything you can about Microsoft Intune, we have a serious lack of experience with this product, and it is used for more than mobile computers these days. More and more stuff is taken out of GPO and moved to MDM management, and Intune is often the product that people get rolled into their enterprise licensing.
Simple example. Our new desktops come with WIFI and BT. I wanted to defeat the WIFI (all are wired), and limit the BT profiles to just audio for headphones. Back in sever 2012 you could do this, but they took it out of more recent versions of server and put that function into Intune.
Also study up on Microsoft SCCM, again a tricky tool that that is not well used in a lot of facilities. Starting to get phased out for Intune from what I’m gathering, but not certain on this.
Any good place to learn AD? Ive heard allot about it, but never used it. I think i have the hardware for it. I do have an old DL380 with winserver2012, ive seen it in there and server mangement
I would download Windows Server 2022 and Windows 11 and build VMs with them. Learn how to build a domain and join additional servers and workstations to it. Create different accounts and group policies to get familiar with how things work.
Top things to learn which is mostly mentioned here is AD, Group policy, Windows DNS server, DHCP, Microsoft 365 and basic networking (private and public IP’s and subnets). If you have a fundamental understanding in these areas you can easily be tier 1 or 2 helpdesk.
I’ll also mention that google and youtube will be your friend in learning all you need to know. I guarantee everyone in this forum and elsewhere (including myself) are google ninjas and there is no possible way someone knows everything. I’m a infrastructure engineer and still use google pretty much everyday and I’ve been doing this for 15 years.
IT helpdesk seems to be the easier starting point
if you want to start somewhere, I would suggest personal learning networking first.
Look on the internet for Networks certs like Network+ , CCNA, etc. (look on Udemy for cheap training to make sure it’s something you like before subscribing to IT Pro or more advanced training that cost more)
when you understand the network part everything else makes way more sense
personally, I had a much harder time learning AD than networking
when you have basic network knowledge, try to get a job in a call center or a local ISP to get some qualification you can put on your resume MSP like people that learn fast and have hand-on Exp and will probably take you over someone who just got out of school and don’t have a lot of real life Exp
When you download the Windows Server and Windows 11, to be perfectly legal, download the evaluation versions. You can get around 3 years worth out of the Server evals, not sure how many times you can rearm the desktop.
There are a few reasons why you should use the evals, but the root of all this is that there are specifically designed to be used in a lab for testing and learning, not in production. I think all you need is a valid email address to be able to download these, Microsoft wants to know who has what but never a big deal. The second reason is that if you are running a KMS server, the evals will not use it to activate and mess up your license count, at least mine have never done this. License audits are not fun, especially when they find a whole bunch of things that were done against the terms.
That’s why you should run the evaluation versions in your lab, they don’t shut down as long as you activate them (needs internet). I have a couple that have been running for almost a year and have had one running for over a year before that. When I mess them up enough that it isn’t worth fixing, I destroy them and start again.
Evals can be run on VM or on real hardware. I think you need to rearm every 90 days for desktop and every 180 days for server. Up to 6 re-arm for server but not sure how many for desktop as I don’t test with it longer than a few days. Servers I’ll set up on my lab and test for longer periods as I build out complete domains for testing. Again, in my lab, not in production.
The only thing I don’t like about the evals is that you can not convert them to real production servers/workstations. Changing the key to a MAC or activating KMS still times down to the 180 days each activation. I wish they would change this so you could prototype your production system on eval, then change the key to real production and just keep moving.
I don’t think MS Eval for Server and Win11 require an email any longer. I’m working with a recent grad to build out a Windows lab and it just let us download it.
Do they update the eval iso’s like they do with the enterprise iso’s? My server 2022 is from the first week it was out, might be nice to have one that closer to updated.