Virtualisation career advice

[United_90]

Good day all.

I currently have 10 + years of experience in desktop/end-user support type roles with a vast amount of experience in supporting Windows OS, Office applications, in-house applications for the companies I have worked for, mobile support, hardware support etc.

I want to take the next step in my career and venture into the land of Windows server/virtualisation/storage/back-up etc. I do have a degree in Information Technology but no formal certifications.

Can anyone please assist me with some advice/guidance on how to enter this field without real-world experience? Whenever I search for jobs/vacancies they all require a minimum of 3-5 years experience and I obviously do not have that, unfortunately. I also search for "junior" roles but I do not seem to come across many of those, so how do I bridge that gap without experience?

Any advice on what are the best technologies to learn in this field will also be highly appreciated, Veeam/Hyper-V/VMware etc.

Thank you all in advance.

 

[InvisibleJim]

In terms of getting a foot in the door, you want a role where you can make use of your desktop support experience but get some exposure to administering servers in the real world - perhaps a small IT team or where you are IT manager for an SME and you have to be a bit of a jack of all trades.

In terms of learning and certification, I believe Microsoft are pretty much doing away with on prem Windows Server certifications in favour of the Azure based technologies. Even if you want to aim straight for the cloud stuff, knowledge of traditional server and virtualisation environments will help you get there faster.

The nice thing about all of this is that it is very cheap to set up your own virtual lab to learn virtualisation and server technologies.

Virtual Box is very good for this and this series of articles should still be pretty much valid (although it's quite old now.) If you have a physical box you can dedicate to your lab, you try setting up Hyper-V, VMWare ESXi, Proxmox or whatever on bare metal.

You can download Windows Server Evaluation editions for your virtual test network and then setup a network as you might for a small corporate network - Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, WSUS, Windows Deployment Server, file server etc. Throw in some Linux VM's

Hyper-V and VMWare are the most common virtualisation technologies (not sure which is statistically most common these days) but Virtualbox, KVM, Proxmox or XCP-NG are all fine for learning virtualisation principles.

 

[SAguy]

Good day all.

I currently have 10 + years of experience in desktop/end-user support type roles with a vast amount of experience in supporting Windows OS, Office applications, in-house applications for the companies I have worked for, mobile support, hardware support etc.

I want to take the next step in my career and venture into the land of Windows server/virtualisation/storage/back-up etc. I do have a degree in Information Technology but no formal certifications.

Can anyone please assist me with some advice/guidance on how to enter this field without real-world experience? Whenever I search for jobs/vacancies they all require a minimum of 3-5 years experience and I obviously do not have that, unfortunately. I also search for "junior" roles but I do not seem to come across many of those, so how do I bridge that gap without experience?

Any advice on what are the best technologies to learn in this field will also be highly appreciated, Veeam/Hyper-V/VMware etc.

Thank you all in advance.

Have you considered stepping into the cloud support engineer space?

There's so much room to grow from there into cloud architecture or devops. Massively sought after skillset

 

[shadow_man]

My 2cents - steer clear of HyperV as it has no API and thus isn't applicable to the modern way of working.

e.g. Terraform --> Hypervisor --> spin up infra --> ansible to configure etc.

With that being said I echo @SAguy - look at cloud space instead.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Forget on premises virtualisation ideas, the ship has already sailed.

Get into the Cloud. And as was said about infrastructure as code options more specifically.

You’ll learn virtualisation regardless. And then you’ll figure out Docker makes more sense in most cases.

 

[Moosedrool]

Forget on premises virtualisation ideas, the ship has already sailed.

Get into the Cloud. And as was said about infrastructure as code options more specifically.

You’ll learn virtualisation regardless. And then you’ll figure out Docker makes more sense in most cases.

In a way I agree with this but the big players, the banks, will always have their own datacentres.

What frustrates me is how people tend to say "put it in the cloud, that on premise ship has sailed" but never consider the idea of people asking aiming to maybe one day work for Azure, Amazon, tereco etc...

 

[SauRoNZA]

In a way I agree with this but the big players, the banks, will always have their own datacentres.

What frustrates me is how people tend to say "put it in the cloud, that on premise ship has sailed" but never consider the idea of people asking aiming to maybe one day work for Azure, Amazon, tereco etc...

Thing is if you work for Azure/Amazon you’d do the same work.

The people who do on premises stuff are mostly just technicians and low level ones at that.

The ones building the actual systems are much higher level engineers so again on premises virtualisation knowledge doesn’t really come into it.

Also AWS South Africa has only happened because of the banks…they all want to get onto that ship too.

Besides the fact banks are prehistoric in the ways they work and that’s exactly why the ship has sailed. Learning this stuff now is effectively aiming towards doing legacy support and being out of a job in a few years. Banks also aren’t really the big players any more, or at least they are a tiny part of the market when it actually comes to jobs.

It’s not a very future forward outlook.

Teach yourself virtualisation in your own time and have some insight sure, but don’t try to make a career of it.

 

[United_90]

Have you considered stepping into the cloud support engineer space?

There's so much room to grow from there into cloud architecture or devops. Massively sought after skillset

I have but I have seen most, if not all of these require some sort of devs skills or am I looking in the wrong place?

 

[United_90]

Thing is if you work for Azure/Amazon you’d do the same work.

The people who do on premises stuff are mostly just technicians and low level ones at that.

The ones building the actual systems are much higher level engineers so again on premises virtualisation knowledge doesn’t really come into it.

Also AWS South Africa has only happened because of the banks…they all want to get onto that ship too.

Besides the fact banks are prehistoric in the ways they work and that’s exactly why the ship has sailed. Learning this stuff now is effectively aiming towards doing legacy support and being out of a job in a few years. Banks also aren’t really the big players any more, or at least they are a tiny part of the market when it actually comes to jobs.

It’s not a very future forward outlook.

Teach yourself virtualisation in your own time and have some insight sure, but don’t try to make a career of it.

Would that then still involve, creating the VM's and administering the infrastructure etc?
I figured that with my desktop experience this would be the "easiest" sort of role to transition to and then with time I can find a niche. Be it networks/security or potentially even solution architecture?

 

[SauRoNZA]

Would that then still involve, creating the VM's and administering the infrastructure etc?
I figured that with my desktop experience this would be the "easiest" sort of role to transition to and then with time I can find a niche. Be it networks/security or potentially even solution architecture?

The platform is Azure/AWS and you create the VM’s directly on it yes.

You don’t really have infrastructure to manage in the conventional sense as it’s all done for you, but you still need to have network configurations and security and such to manage.

Solution Architecture in the Cloud space is a very achievable goal and half of what I do.

I’d recommend doing something like AWS Practitioner to get you a head start.

AWS Skill Builder

explore.skillbuilder.aws

That’s entirely free and also makes use of the AWS Free-tier only as I recall so it should literally cost you nothing to do and learn.

Then you write the exam and off you go hello new career.

You can then branch it out and

This one is also free.

AWS Skill Builder

explore.skillbuilder.aws

 

[ubercal]

dont take shortcuts.Rather get to grips with bare metal hypervisors and then progress to cloud.Problem these days is people want to take shortcuts.Best to start at the basics so you actually know what is under the covers.Problem with IT newbies these days ,is they go straight to the cloud without understanding core fundametnals such as networking (routing , switching etc).Since the cloud masks all the underlying infrastructure ,you going to be getting less knowledgeable IT people coming into the market.

 

[SauRoNZA]

dont take shortcuts.Rather get to grips with bare metal hypervisors and then progress to cloud.Problem these days is people want to take shortcuts.Best to start at the basics so you actually know what is under the covers.Problem with IT newbies these days ,is they go straight to the cloud without understanding core fundametnals such as networking (routing , switching etc).Since the cloud masks all the underlying infrastructure ,you going to be getting less knowledgeable IT people coming into the market.

You aren't wrong about networking and switching and routing, but I find that completely removed from Virtualisation as a concept.

You don't need to understand bare metal hypervisors in any major depth to understand anything on the cloud.

You don't really need to go any further than running some Virtualboxes on your Desktop or even in HyperV on your Windows machine if you choose to suffer like that and have the fundamental concepts under wraps.

There's also something to be said for people going "cloud first" not bringing along prehistoric and irrelevant logic that can lead them astray. Sometime starting at the thing you used is the better way.

It's not a shortcut to go Cloud first or cloud only, you still need to understand the fundamentals of how cloud works to do the work. Especially if you are getting certified there are no shortcuts.

So sure spend some of your personal free time to get yourself familiar with on-premises virtualisation with some old hardware and you certainly won't do yourself a disservice, but don't go waste money and time getting certified for what is effectively old tech. You are deeply career limiting yourself going down that path.

 

[SAguy]

dont take shortcuts.Rather get to grips with bare metal hypervisors and then progress to cloud.Problem these days is people want to take shortcuts.Best to start at the basics so you actually know what is under the covers.Problem with IT newbies these days ,is they go straight to the cloud without understanding core fundametnals such as networking (routing , switching etc).Since the cloud masks all the underlying infrastructure ,you going to be getting less knowledgeable IT people coming into the market.

I definitely agree that there is a lack of networking skills in the cloud engineer space, I've pretty much given up trying to find someone to backfill my old role doing cloud network architecture.

Having said that though I don't believe there is a need to understand bare metal in all but the most niche of companies. I've found the opposite in many cases, guys who were hard core on premise hypervisor specialists struggle to let go of on premise ways of thinking.

There's definitely a need for people to still know the hypervisor level of technology, but it's becoming a shrinking job market. That does mean though that these guys may become in demand in the future when companies like banks realise that there aren't any youngsters coming through with the skill.

 

[SAguy]

I have but I have seen most, if not all of these require some sort of devs skills or am I looking in the wrong place?

As a cloud engineer eventually you'll be spending 90% of your day looking at code... but as a starting point it's not critical in many places. Knowing some bash scripting basics and your way around Linux is a must though.

 

[Benedict A55h0le not]

Yes, forget about "a career in virtualization". Look at cloud infrastructure support, devops, ARM templates etc...

I would recommend to look at Azure roles like Azure Infrastructure Management. You can also go for AWS but I am Microsoft biased and I just think their documentation and learning is better. Also take into consideration that the 4th revolution (automation) is very actively being developed in the cloud. I am a no-Ops developer and my solutions scale completely automatically so it just does not need any infrastructure support. There are many things to learn and many opportunities in the cloud space, Azure or AWS.

 

[valentinozy]

Would encourage you to look at the new Windows Server Hybrid Admin Certification from Microsoft then proceed to Azure Fundamentals (AZ900) then Azure Administrator AZ 104. This sounds like the kind of mix that you need at this point in time and will make you understand both cloud and on premise skills. That being said, there are many points raised by others here saying the ship has sailed. Truth is, it hasn't - Hybrid cloud is the future not just cloud only. Just like virtual desktops are becoming mainstream, but the old corporate environments still need desktop support engineers and still very much use their physical infrastructure.