MCDST passed - best options for future.

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.

Ok so basic back story. a year ago I passed my A+ and managed to get a help desk job in Basingstoke for 16K a year. the company have paid for me to do my MCDST which I have now passed. I am always looking to progress myself and earn more whilst at the same time no damaging my career prospects in the long term.

My Current Role:

It's a phone based helpdesk role in essence, users phone and we fix or escalate but it's a lot more than password reset and unlocking accounts in AD. We use Citrix on some sites and deal with issues arising from that, we deal with permissions on network shares using AD on multiple DC's, create and delete accounts in AD, do all the general troubleshooting BS that you have to do. We also do desktop support for the office we're based in, we jump on and off the servers as we please and have domain admin accounts. Wages aldo went up to 17k this year.

On the down side I live in Southampton so I'm doing 80 miles a day, costing £200+ a month in petrol. Thats about 2 hours per day on a good day of driving. My Boss is also a bit hard to deal with sometimes

What I'd like to achieve:

My ultimate goal would be to admin a system of some kind but I realise I'm no where near that level yet. Need to vastly improve my networking knowledge and gets some proper hand on experience doing admin alongside a team or similar. I enjoy desktop support but can't really see where this is going to get me long term but I don't know if there is a bridging job (or jobs) that would suit aiming towards my eventual goal.

Certs I'm considering doing are the N+ (for obvious reasons) and perhaps the S+ since security is a prime worry of anyone implementing networks or similar. I don't know what MS qualification might suit either, MCSE or MCSA seem the most obvious but I'm not sure of the leap from where I am (a confident MCDST) to the level I would need to be to pass those certs.

Any and all advice is very very gratefully received!

 

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.

Why don't you pursue the N+, and by then, you'll have more server experience under your belt... perhaps enough for the MCSA.

 

I agree with BM. Maybe even pursue the MCSA by starting with 270 and work your way up untill you accomlish the MCSA cert. You already stated that you do some server based task, thats experience that will pay off soon.

 

What the two previous posters said...

Then after a Network+ or MCSA, get relevant work experience, then go CCNA for broadening of skill set, then
go systems administrator, then go full MCSE .

 

And once you start working with firewall and server security, Security+ is a great option.