Server 2003/2008 experience???

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hey Guys,

Just looking around the jobsites at the minute and a lot of the 2nd line type jobs have, must have server2003/2008 experience in their required skills.

Thing is i'm not sure what constitutes Server experience, i'll give you a summary of jobs that i do that i think could come under this but i'm not 100% sure whether i can put Server 2003/2008 on my CV as having exp of it, so my normal day to day job consists of:

Adding DHCP reservations for Printers and then adding the queues on the print server.

Moving computers around in AD, this is for upgrading machines that currently have office 03 > 07, and is literally just moving computers into the Office 07 group so that it is installed over night or w/e.

Adding new machines to SCCM and building them for users.

...... and thats about it, i don't even think the SCCM counts so i'm really scraping the barrel here lol

So is this enough to say i have exp or should i just leave it out? And if it isn't enough then what would constitute experience of Server03/08?

Thanks

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Do you KNOW what the other things are though? IE, if I said we need to map some drives for everyone in the company, would you know where to start? or be completely dumbfounded? If you literally have no knowledge and all you know is what people tell you to do, for instance, you are moving AD objects to other OUs but do you know the significance of that? or do you just think "it's moving it to another group"

I'm struggling to highlight what I mean;

Experience: Performing the same tasks day in day out, but could do more without help if the need arises

Not Experience: Performing the same tasks day in day out because you are told too and not really knowing the significance of what you are doing (IE moving AD objects but not really knowing why you just know it changes an office setting but now how or what else is interacting)

Can someone else emphasise what I am getting at there...

 

I know that when i'm moving machines into different groups that it gives the machine a different group policy, so when i run a gpupdate /force /boot it grabs the new group policy that i've given it by moving it, restarts, sees that office 2003 is there, removes it and upgrades if nessecary. Thats about as deep as my understanding would go on that topic i think.

Re: Mapping drives for everybody, i would take a stab at there being a property in the Northants/All Users group or w/e where you can add a drive that is mapped at logon, add the path to the logon script or something... but generally no, i've never done that and that would be my educated guess as to where to start.

 

Well there ya go my man, I think you have an Understanding, any experience is experience remember and as long as it's not just doing things how of habit and not really bothered what it does, it's all worthwhile experience, so get it added to your CV.

Put "Experience of AD Administration" or something along them lines and keep plugging away.

 

Sweeeet, its just that i think i got my current job mainly on the basis that i would do it for less money than the other applicants when i signed contracts i had 2 people that told me my CV was a bit thin on the ground but i interviewed well and they were taking me on anyway, so i wanna beef the CV up a bit..... and i can b/c i'm using a lot more commercial stuff now than when i was in the forces, but i'm struggling to put into posh words what i do on a daily basis!

Thanks

 

It sounds to me that you're a Windows Administrator, which includes dealing with Printer and Drive mappings, Computer Builds utilising SCCM OSD functionality along with basic server administration to facilitate various requirements (Group Policy, DHCP etc).

As far as SCCM is concerned, are you migrating everyone over to 2007? if so why not suggest using a query based collection rather than a system group based collection (by moving the machines to a different AD OU you're changing the collection membership, the membership of said collection is usually updated once a day).

 

I would class myself a bit more lowly than a windows administrator i think! My job is to provide 2nd Line Support, and the majority of jobs that i do on a daily basis will be billy basics stuff like unpacking and building a machine, renaming local profiles to solve issues, sorting out printers that have started printing random symbols etc etc, but along the way there are also problems like office 03 and 07 being installed on the same machine and causing issues with outlook normally, i could clearly do the uninstalls and repairs manually but i've worked out for myself the shortcut which is moving the machines into different OU's, also the company printing policy has changed so (most of) the standalone printers are being scrapped and replaced with networked ones so i do a lot of reserving IP's in DHCP.

I feel i am on the cusp of needing to progress more into the server side admin to keep things fresh and interesting, i've only been at my current job for 3 months and i feel that i am cruising, (i think i seriously underrated my abilities when i was leaving the army) have even sent emails to our 3rd Line guys asking for some quick lessons on adding new users and changing permissions to directories, asked them if they could teach me these things and then maybe assign me the odd job in their queue! but i've heard no reply, which amazes me as they are busy guys and im sure they wouldnt mind giving me their repetitive/bone jobs, like creating new users etc gonna ask in person tomorrow i think but i'm currently trying to setup my own virtual lab in Virtualbox with server03 so with or without their help i'll learn lol

Not everybody is migrating over to office 07 atm, because a lot of the machines need replacing and upgrading so it would be a huge ballache if they just gave everyone 07, the new site up in nottingham is all windows 7 so i think the plan is to hold back on the office upgrade and just wait til northampton migrates over to windows 7 and then everyone will have it anyways, its just users who it would benefit that are getting 07 atm, or people who have random issues doing something on office 03 and the last line is to just upgrade them which solves a suprising amount of stuff, same with upgrading people to IE8 lol

But just so i have you clear on this point, are you saying is it not better to just move a machine into a different collection on sccm rather than move it into a different OU? We have like 3 main collections in Sccm atm, Legacy XP which is the default collection that we build new machines into, or the deployment collections, Deployment_WindowsXP (which is XP w/ office 07 already installed) or Deployment_Win7, so i could upgrade office by moving a machine from Legacy XP > Deployment_WindowsXP, but that would require an hour long rebuild rather than a gpupdate and a restart, i dont know if SCCM can be used more effectively or if i have not got your point at all (probably the latter ) b/c obviously to disrupt the user less and fix the problem immediately moving the machine on AD is the quicker solution. But like i said, your point has probably gone way over my head lol