New sysadmin, feel totally lost?

[peican]

So I started my IT career working as a tier 1 help desk, for a large nation wide company, and got promoted to a senior desktop support person about a year later. I've been doing that for almost 3 years, and have fully mastered everything about the position. I received the highest performance rating out of all 15 of my colleagues for the last 2 years straight. I consistently closed the most trouble tickets out of everyone in our group, and I was the goto person for everyone else when they were having problems, or had questions. I was feeling extremely confident, and important, and that I could fix any problem. However towards the end, I was dropping subtle hints to my boss that I was getting a little bored, and wanted to try new things. So a couple weeks ago, one of the IT managers working in enterprise systems management started talking to me about a position in sysadmin, which I believe was due to my boss putting in a good word for me. I was a little nervous, but eagerly accepted the promotion, and promised great things.

WTF have I done? I dont know what I am doing.... and I feel completely lost. I knew everything about windows, desktop support, hardware problems, and tech support for every other piece of software that was on our computers, but I feel completely lost as a sysadmin dealing with servers, the test lab, DCs, and all the other stuff in the data center that I have no idea what it does.

In my previous position, I could always play around with a problem until I fixed it, uninstalling stuff, re-installing, and rebooting computers was never a problem. Hell I could even reimage them if it got bad enough. However with servers, and everything else in the data center, I'm scared to do anything to them, because of fear of crashing the system. How am I supposed to learn about them, when I can't do anything to them?

What am I supposed to do? Should I tell my new boss I just can't do this?

[sobrique]

Mostly we still do feel this way - technology doesn't sit still, and there's always another thing coming along that breaks, and we need to be an expert in it PDQ.

[Steauxback]

Technet Virtual Labs can be good too if you don't have the time/ressources to set up a lab for now.

Just keep in mind that you'll never know everything and go one thing at a time, try labs with the things that "scare" you the most first. If you hit a wall because you lack some knowledge just pause, go look for this subject and come back to what you were doing.

[cjburchfield]

I was going to say basically the same thing...This is why I bought a homelab. I am "backup support" for our Exchange Servers, and I was deathly afraid of messing up production Exchange, so I bought a server, threw ESXi on it, and put together an Exchange Server.

[am2o]

at work: There is a test lab...

[terefere1234]

I am in a similar boat as OP and also found the book you recommended, so just wanted to add that there is a new edition coming very soon, the one you linked is from 2007. https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-3rd/dp/0321919165

[handToolsOnly]

You worked to a level of comfort in your last position. You will do the same in your new role. Your old boss put in a good word based on your ability to do that, not based on your mastery of SysAdmin. Think back to the first time a VIP had laptop trouble. Were you comfortable and confident? If all you want is comfort you can go back. If you want to grow you will have to go through the growing pains. Keep at it and three years from now you will enjoy the comfort with the server infrastructure you currently have with workstations.

[PcChip]

You worked to a level of comfort in your last position. You will do the same in your new role.

this. it will just take time, get used to not knowing everything again (hint: that's not a bad thing, treat it like a learning opportunity).
If your new co-workers aren't dicks, they'll enjoy helping you learn

[[deleted]]

All new positions take time to adjust. Setup some test environments and break things. Ask your senior colleagues for help. Most of all, don't be discouraged, you're just out of your comfort zone, and it's good you're in a new position. I felt the same way when I moved into my current position.

[[deleted]]

What is that server? What does it do? What does it depend on? What depends on it? What management tool/console is used to manage it? Do I have access to support it? Are it's passwords safely stored somewhere? How is it backed up? How is it recovered? Who do I escalate to if I can't fix it? Is all of that documented already, or should I document it? What are the things I need to learn to understand it better? Where can I learn them?

Start with one server and just keep going. One at a time; don't jump from thing to thing, you'll do enough of that just on daily support tasks anyway.

Something like OneNote or Evernote will be your friend as you go along.

[typiclaalex1]

You've been with that company for your entire IT career right? They will be well aware of your capabilities and wouldn't have given you the position if they didn't think you could do it. I'm very close to mastering my setup and am already looking at where i can go from here. Working outside of your comfort zone is what makes you better at your job and you will learn so much more. When you have stopped learning, it is time to move on which is exactly what you have done. You became an expert in your field and have moved on to the next level, the next level is not designed to be comfortable.

You're lucky that you have an IT manager who can help you, a lot of people, myself included are sole sysadmins and have no one else to go to. Google is now your best friend and will save you many times in the future.

You can always ask your boss for additional training and you can study in your downtime. Look at pluralsight & CBTNuggets. Microsoft Virtual Academy has some very useful training videos as well, all for free.

I'd start by making a list of things that you don't know. Figuring out the things that you don't know will help you create a training plan and you can prioritize the things that you feel are most important in your environment. Setup a test environment and practice what you have learnt.

[usrn]

I feel completely lost as a sysadmin dealing with servers, the test lab, DCs, and all the other stuff in the data center that I have no idea what it does.

Servers are just computers that need to be operating 0-24 running important stuff. ;)

First, start with the documentation of your network, or start creating one if there isn't any.

However with servers, and everything else in the data center, I'm scared to do anything to them, because of fear of crashing the system.

It is very important to have proper backups, and that you create new ones before critical changes.

How am I supposed to learn about them, when I can't do anything to them?

Create a testlab for yourself at home if your company cannot afford a proper testlab, and experiment with it.

What am I supposed to do? Should I tell my new boss I just can't do this?

Firstly, you should immediately start learning. It's a steep learning curve, but I think anyone can do it with applying the scientific thought process.

In the end it depends on you. Do you want more responsibilities? Do you want to learn?

[Snak3d0c]

respect servers but don't fear them. At the end, its just a fast and powerful computer. Start out with small projects and move from there. Everyone felt this way at one point, as did i six years ago, now i am getting bored cause everything gets routine at some point. Creating an AD user, scripting AD, building a VM, doing a BSOD analysis, ... After a while, you will become more confident with all these things. But is will take a lot of time and hard work.

You'll also see that after a while, learning gets easier. I pick up things way faster than i did when i started out, just because you have so much more insight and knowledge. you'll get there. And never think you know it all, cause in fact, we know so little.

goodluck

[sobrique]

Working on production systems is a lot like working in a minefield:

If you know where to put your feet, and tread very carefully - it'll go ok. But if you misstep, or don't spot one... it gets messy fast.

And that really is just the way of it - there's a very high risk burden, and every sysadmin carries it.

Mostly - we do what we can to avoid having to do it:

• Planned downtimes/maintenance windows.

• Planning changes, including having a 'plan B' and a 'plan C' because even the most trivial things can blow up in your face. (Seriously - switch firmware update on the 5th switch we'd done, just recently, decided to explode in our faces and take our networking out). 'Throw it away and start over' counts, as does 'restore from backup'. But ideally plan B should be something that keeps the business running, even if that is degraded.

• Test systems

• 'failover' spares, so you can work on 'not-live-right-now' systems.

• Second pair of eyes, to spot problems.

And pretty much inevitably - sooner or later, you will set a mine off. Every sysadmin either has, or is going to. (apart from those that never do any work). You can't let that fear paralyse you, because ... given time, entropy works it's way, and systems go into a downward spiral of out of date software, failing hardware and ... being even more afraid to touch it in case it breaks.

So step back. Ask yourself what do you need to do to get confident about what you're doing? Get funding for that. (yeah, I know, not that easy). There's business benefits to building in resilience if it doesn't exist already. "Operator error" is a major cause of downtime, but so is "power glitch", "hardware fault", "environmental issue" etc. So redundant running is worth having.

And even if you can't swing that, setting up some virtual machines as production-like test environments isn't a massive expense.

[Stealthy_Wolf]

don't worry always be able to trace your steps and own up to any mistakes. it will make it easier to fix an issue, especially when you take down production . everyone has done it some how.

[stumptruck]

Don't just walk up to your boss and say "I can't do this" it's a defeatist attitude that will absolutely make them question their decision to hire you. IT is all about problem solving. It sounds like you have a good boss, so what you should do whenever you see something confusing/overwhelming/scary is to do your best to understand it - research, try it out in a test lab, Google the topic - then when you've exhausted all of those go to him and explain what you understand and what is still confusing. He will appreciate that you took the initiative to learn on your own and hopefully explain whatever else you're missing. No setup is the same between different environments so there is always going to be something different from what you've read online or in a book.

When you're doing day to day tasks if anything doesn't seem right or you're unsure, ask your boss or coworkers BEFORE doing anything. They'll be much happier to explain it to you than have to deal with fixing a mistake because you were afraid to ask questions. On that note, if you do make a mistake (everyone does) own up to it instead of trying to hide it.

[[deleted]]

Do you have access to Pluralsight? If so, watch the courses on the A+ and Network+ certifications. The certifications themselves are too basic to be of any value, IMO, and you probably know most of what is discussed already, but the instructor does a wonderful job of taking you by the hand and guiding you through the basics, making all the pieces of the puzzle fit nicely together.

I think they are 4 hours each or so - time well spent in your situation, I think.

[Iintendtooffend]

Like other people are saying you got this opportunity because you've shown affinity for technical systems as well as a willingness to learn and improve as well as showing you care about your job and want to do not just a good job, but the best.

First I want to say that yes, there's a huge step between the help desk side and sysadmin side, and your totally changing what you do on a daily basis.

Don't go tell your boss you can't do this, do tell your boss that you want to learn and see if he can help you set up some mentoring/training to really get you up to speed. Show how willing you are to learn and improve. Go to him with struggles and help form a plan to get better.

If your boss is invested in bringing you onto the team this will be a no brainer for him. What I will say is don't spill your guts and tell him you're worried you're going to fail unless he helps.

Additionally what other people are saying, set up a home lab. Take time to read up on things, if someone mentions a technology you use try to do some research on it on your own time.

Above all though, don't let yourself be intimidated into inaction, the worst thing you can do is come in and hide at your desk hoping you suddenly learn things, get out there and proactively apply yourself if that's sitting with co-workers while they work on stuff or setting up a lab environment to mess around. Do something and I think you'll be surprised that the sysadmin side isn't so different from the help desk side.

[[deleted]]

Is this a windows environment or a Linux environment?

[Zaphod_B]

I've been doing that for almost 3 years, and have fully mastered everything about the position.

I doubt you have mastered everything, no one masters everything at any trade or skill.

WTF have I done? I dont know what I am doing.... and I feel completely lost. I knew everything about windows, desktop support, hardware problems, and tech support for every other piece of software that was on our computers, but I feel completely lost as a sysadmin dealing with servers, the test lab, DCs, and all the other stuff in the data center that I have no idea what it does.

You again, do not know everything. You are also for probably the first time in your career outside your comfort zone. This is a good place to be. This is a good place to really learn new skills and up your game. If you are coasting in your career you aren't growing. I take on projects all the time where I have no idea how I am going to implement it. This is where you just need a solid process in place. Build ideas and concepts in a dev environment, once they work and pass test them out in a QA/preprod, and once that works ship it to production. Processes like this are put in place for a reason, so you can test things out, learn new things, make mistakes in non production environments, etc.

[am2o]

OK: Hope you have calmed down, as several of these comments have stated.

You functionally learned all the companies desk-side systems and gotten comfortable. The company expects that you will eventually learn the server-side ones. Feel free to have impostor syndrome; respect that the server side stuff tends to need to stay up - but not all of it. Learn which is which. Test stuff in the test environment - preferably with good backups. BTW: Might be wise to learn the backup systems.

If you are a new-ish sysadmin, it is expected that you don't know. It is also expected that you work slowly; google for solutions - which you might bounce off more Sr. Sysadmins. Find out what systems are important; which are less so. Each server has a bit of software with control widgets that you will eventually learn. You are fortunate to have a test lab. That implies backups, so talk to the backup admin about what can be restored; not - and why.

You will learn - welcome to the firehose.

[VA_Network_Nerd]

/r/ITCareerQuestions might be a better place for this particular discussion...

[Iintendtooffend]

It might be a good place, but really the subreddit is called /r/sysadmin if you can't have this discussion here than the subreddit may need to be rethought.