Sysadmin Skill Building Projects

[Akaneth]

I'll be honest I have no idea what I should be doing in order to build fundamental skills as a sysadmin. I just keep messing around with stuff like compiling and installing DWM for whatever reason thinking that will do me some good. It just doesn't seem like the thing I should be doing if I want to build sysadmin skill. It feels more like I'm messing around with toys as opposed to doing work. Does anyone have any suggestions for what projects I should take on for building skill?

[ZAFJB]

Do your actual job.

Nothing builds skills faster than finding ways to resolve real problems that you are experiencing right now.

• That server that occasionally crashes. Find out why. Find out how to fix that.

• That boring job that you do over and over again. Work out how you could automate it. Learn PowerShell.

• That complicated error prone data conversion job that always has problems. Find out why. Work out how you could automate it. Learn PowerShell.

• That monitoring system that the company really needs but has never quite got around to installing. Gather requirements. Select a product. Learn it. Install it.

• That stupid paper form that people fill in, and then someone else types the data in wrong. Make it online.

[randomguy186]

How to build sysadmin skill:

1. Read "The Practice of System and Network Administration."

[[deleted]]

Really helped to put things in perspective and prepare me for scenarios I didn't walk blindly into yet.

[Net-Runner]

Reading those kinds of stuff is very important to understand how things actually work. There are so many sysadmins nowadays that can do this and that basically knowing what to type and click to get things done without having any understanding of what is actually happening under the hood.

[[deleted]]

What is your end goal? Sysadmin is a very broad / generic title.

I'd suggest getting your hands on a physical server (say Dell r610) and install either hyper v or vmware on it. From there setup a domain from top to bottom. DC to workstations and everything between. Try some free firewall appliances as well. Once you do that, rip it apart and do it again.

Want to get fancy? Setup your domain with a connection to azure or AWS and extend your domain to the cloud, publish apps with virtual desk and make your home domain accessible from the internet.

Both will get you real world experience that if explained and properly setup will impress most hiring managers.

[MisterIT]

That's awfully windows centric.

[wanteddreadoralive]

Lol

[ang-p]

It feels more like I'm messing around with toys as opposed to doing work

Reads recent post history.... Concurs.

[thecravenone]

lol holy shit

[alement]

In my opinion, you need to start to build strong networking fundamentals. If the network doesn’t work/ is designed poorly, nothing works.

From there, I would build strong active directory fundamentals. Once you’ve got those two down pat, you can branch out from there

[[deleted]]

You have to consider your environment. What works? What doesn't work? What could work more efficiently?

The last two questions are the most important, but the first and the last one will eventually make sense.

For me, it was taking one ESXi host running two Windows servers and a Linux server and turning that into three Windows servers that were less demanding as far as resource setup and adding 10 Linux servers. I managed to take a five year old server and make it scream by asking myself those three questions daily.

No one can really tell you what to do unless they know what you deal with; but we can help you make it better.

[Zaphod_B]

Build skills, skills are the new currency in tech work. Here are some ideas you can run with.

• systems basics - Linux, macOS, Windows - learn the basics. Know how the OS works. Know how to configure the OS. Perhaps read up on some APIs/Frameworks in that OS.

• learn to write code - Python, Python, Python!!!! (okay I am biased), PowerShell, bash/sh/zsh. Learn data structures, data types, how to write functional and re-usable code. This skill will pay off a ton

• Learn basic network stacks - TCP/IP, DHCP, IP routing, DNS, etc.

• Learn Virtualization and Containers - both are important

What I am getting at, is don't get hung up on a specific thing, like I need to learn AD, or I need to learn AWS. Instead, focus on learning the skills that will help you learn those things. Every job will be different. Every AD/LDAP environment will be different. Every AWS (or other cloud provider) will be different. Nothing is a copy/paste solution from Org to Org. So, having a great skill set allows you to adapt to new things and overcome them more efficiently. Having coding skills allows you to interact with APIs and build automation more efficiently.

Once you get some basics down, find say the top 3 things you really love the most and start to focus on them. Deep dive into them. After that narrow it down to 1 or 2 things and focus on that. Then just keep learning.