Haven't been around lately

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I've been away for a few days because lately things kind of got pretty busy. Let me start by saying that I had to fly to different provinces to get certain tasks done and that was a lot of hard work. I am pretty much drained, thank god I have next week off.

Well like I mentioned above the last couple of days have been busy and so to add to that, one of the senior network admin resigned today and since the IT department consisted of 3 IT personnel including me is now down to 2, me and the other senior admin. I don't know whether I'll be promoted or not since being a network admin is a tough job and you really have to know what you are doing, but I am going to do my best in learning as much as possible so that maybe I can at least be an assistant network admin. My goal of course is to be a network admin. With all of that said, I've been told by my boss that I will start administering WSUS starting right after the holidays and in my books thats a great opportunity since it seems like my boss is trusting me more and more.

I have a break from college so I'll take the time to start cramming for the 290 exam since lately I've been working with server 2k3 quite often. I did the transcenders practice questions without studying and managed to get around 65%. I am sure that with a few weeks of cramming I'll pass the exam.

So far I have around 16 months of experience in desktop support. What my job entails is basically repairing, troubleshooting, building pc's, ghosting, repairing printers, photocopiers, fax machines, etc. Also on the server side of things I manage the AV server, do some work with Blackberry Enterprise server, email filter server, very minimal exchange tasks such as tracking email messages through the exchange utility that I have installed on my workstation, create user accounts in AD. Other task that I do in AD are very minimal such as forward of emails, mailbox right assignments, etc. I work a little bit with VB scripts, user profiles, permissions, etc.

I am just curious as to where do I really stand at the moment? Do you guys think that from the experience I have so far, would I be able to a job of a network admin or at least an assistant network admin? I know it's one of those questions which I should be able to answer my self which in my mind I did. I think that there is a possibility that I could at least do an assistant network admin tasks and looking at the paragraph above it looks like I have done some tasks that an assistant network admin would do. If I am getting it wrong please explain to me what a job role of an assistant network admin would be?

To be honest I learn pretty fast, it doesn't take long for me to figure things out. If I am stuck I look for info online, I don't really ask for help much at work unless I am really clueless about something where even Google or certforums can't help me and I am not afraid to take risks.

Thanks in advance

 

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Doesn't matter what your title is... what matters is the experience that you're getting... and it seems like you're getting a lot of good experience!

Every company has a different definition of what a "network admin" does... but it usually involves a lot of the infrastructure, communcations, and security stuff... routers, firewalls, links between sites, IP design, and advanced server stuff. A "systems admin", which is typically a step above desktop support, generally handles a lot of the server stuff... AD, GPOs, user accounts, application administration, patches, etc.

There does tend to be a bit of crossover between the roles, especially in smaller companies. For example, I was in a 450-user healthcare company, and I was the "senior network admin", but the entire IT department consisted of two level 1 techs, an applications systems manager (not so much tech as manager), a financial systems manager (again, not so much tech as manager), the IT director, and me... so I basically handled the servers, the network, and the technical stuff the lower-level techs couldn't handle. There really was no systems admin - I was it.

So... in a smaller company, you might be able to land an assistant network admin position, but you're not really doing network-level stuff. In a larger company, you're doing the job of an assistant systems admin, moving up into the systems admin area.

Again, what's important is that you're advancing steadily. Keep at it, and you'll be given more and more responsibilties as time goes on... and you WILL be working on networking stuff before you know it!

Congrats! Sounds like things are going well!

 

Just to add to what Michael has said you might want to try and get a bit more done on the server side of things and with networking they're lots of similarities.

On the other hand maybe start with the CCNA cert just to show initiative and enthusiasm plus you'd learn lots if you get a router and a switch to do your lab practices on.

Best wishes

 

Welcome back

It does sound like your getting good experience and advancing at a steady rate.

In my opinion advancing at a steady rate is better than advancing at a fast rate, because if you do a job then move on or away from that then you may forget it but doing the same job over and over again and then moving on means you will remember the job you have done in the past and become more valuable to employer because of it because you are multi skilled.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. I am hoping that maybe I could start learning towards network administration since the other admin left and that they would hire someone to do a desktop support job. The tasks that I do which I mentioned in my previous post, I pretty much learned them pretty well to a point where I will definitly wont forget. Thats why I am going to do my best in learning as much as possible and working hard to at least be up to the standards to where my employer might trust me more.

Also he knows that I am always honest with him and that I will never lie my way through things, which is very important I find.