Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Getting Exchange and SQL Experience?
william.meaney1 writes: I'm the sole network admin at a 25 person company. I was lucky enough to get the opportunity less than a year after getting a technical degree in IT. I've had some huge opportunities here (for a first time network admin). I've been able to:
- Migrate an old Win2003R2 domain to 2008R2
- Maintain the enterprise level CAD system (The license/file server runs a combination of Oracle and Apache databases.)
- Facilitated the purchase of networking equipment
- Cut our yearly costs by over $20k by moving my boss away from the T1 lines ("But we're a business, ALL businesses run on T1s!")
After my schooling, I went ahead and I'm now CompTIA A+, Network+, and CCNA certified. Now, being hired out of school, I was grateful for the job, and the boss hired me for peanuts (Less than $30,000/year) I've been living at home, using that money for loan payments, car payments, and certification expenses. I've started looking for other work, and I feel more than qualified for most of the requirements I'm seeing. The big hurdle I'm coming across that EVERYONE seems to want is experience with SQL databases, and Microsoft Exchange. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for getting usable experience on a low budget. I have some SQL experience, I deployed a source control program here that uses a SQL express backend, but what else do you need to know for database maintenance?
Also, Microsoft Exchange, this is the one that I think will be hardest for me to get experience with. We have an exchange server. It's out in Arizona, at our corporate HQ. I never deal with it except to inform the corporate IT guys that things are going wrong. (Had an issue yesterday with MX records. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS!) All I know is its a little too expensive to set up an exchange situation to practice in, and I really can't afford the bootcamp classes for the Microsoft certifications.
Does anyone have any suggestions for me? The company doesn't do well enough to give me educational reimbursement. I had to purchase some routers and switches to practice for my cisco cert. Luckilly I found some old cheap ones, but even they weren't quite adequate enough (I did a lot of reading and iOS configuration, however I ended up having to take the cert twice because my switches weren't vlan capable, among many other drawbacks, and I failed my first time)
Thanks in advance!
- Migrate an old Win2003R2 domain to 2008R2
- Maintain the enterprise level CAD system (The license/file server runs a combination of Oracle and Apache databases.)
- Facilitated the purchase of networking equipment
- Cut our yearly costs by over $20k by moving my boss away from the T1 lines ("But we're a business, ALL businesses run on T1s!")
After my schooling, I went ahead and I'm now CompTIA A+, Network+, and CCNA certified. Now, being hired out of school, I was grateful for the job, and the boss hired me for peanuts (Less than $30,000/year) I've been living at home, using that money for loan payments, car payments, and certification expenses. I've started looking for other work, and I feel more than qualified for most of the requirements I'm seeing. The big hurdle I'm coming across that EVERYONE seems to want is experience with SQL databases, and Microsoft Exchange. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for getting usable experience on a low budget. I have some SQL experience, I deployed a source control program here that uses a SQL express backend, but what else do you need to know for database maintenance?
Also, Microsoft Exchange, this is the one that I think will be hardest for me to get experience with. We have an exchange server. It's out in Arizona, at our corporate HQ. I never deal with it except to inform the corporate IT guys that things are going wrong. (Had an issue yesterday with MX records. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS!) All I know is its a little too expensive to set up an exchange situation to practice in, and I really can't afford the bootcamp classes for the Microsoft certifications.
Does anyone have any suggestions for me? The company doesn't do well enough to give me educational reimbursement. I had to purchase some routers and switches to practice for my cisco cert. Luckilly I found some old cheap ones, but even they weren't quite adequate enough (I did a lot of reading and iOS configuration, however I ended up having to take the cert twice because my switches weren't vlan capable, among many other drawbacks, and I failed my first time)
Thanks in advance!
