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hi to all you aspiring Linux admins...
Let me add a few thoughts from both a aysadmin perspective and a employer pesrpective.
from an employer perspective:
I thinks what's important is yr actual experiance and skill. Not so much the Cert. Or which distro of Linux (you would most likely have to switch, to whatever your employer uses). Most small-shops, (smaller SW companies) would willingly look at someone with skills and experiance even w/o the cert.
However if you prefer to be in the Corp. or Gov segment, then the Cert is more important, if anything to get you passt the HR Dept's. shortlist, before someone even interviews you. Besides I think most of the jobs will be with small-shops, the big-guys cover their a** and go with MS or Sun, etc... However, if you do get an interview with a small-shop, you'd better be good with yr real-skills, becos the guy that interviews you will be technical, and will know his/her stuff.
How to gain the skills:
There's nothing like real experience! Just going to a course and passing the exam ain't gonna cut it. Don't go down the MCSE path, - get have a cert. but incapable of doing anything more than setting up a server! By experience, I dont mean job-wise, because you wont get hired without the experiance in the 1st place.
Instead, you get experiance by playing and using Linux. Install it into yr home PC or Laptop and really use, as your primary system. It will do most of the things you normally do on the PC, browse, read mail, word-processing, etc... BUT it wont be much good for games! If you do web-development, even better, set up your LAMP stack (or Java Tomcat/JBOSS, Python stuff (my favourite)), and use it. If not then find friends who do, then offer to set-up and administer their servers (make sure its not mission-critical).
You also have to be familiar with setting up Linux on a variety of HW, laptops, towers, rack-mount servers. Old obsolete/computers make great challenges (and learning experiance) - to install and get Linux up on. Although you might try your first install using one of the 'modern' Linux distros, with their (Life CD's) like Ubuntu, for later install (and probably on old HW) you should use a distro that DOES NOT have a GUI installer (Debian, Slackware). That way, if the Graphics card is not recognised, it will still install.
One of the first questions I ask in an interview, is "..how many Linux installation you have done in your life, and on what type of hardware?". If the answer is something like "... more than 10, and from Quad-core 64-bit servers to a 8yr old Mac PPC Latop" she's pass the 1st hurdle.
Also get familiar with more than 1 distro of Linux, there are surprisingly large numbers of them. There are vers. for setting up supercomputing clusters, to 'small' distros that will run in 255k of RAM and boot from a thumbdrive or CD. A painless way to get started is to play with one of the Live CD's, that allows you to boot up and play with linux without having to install.
One thing when moving into the Linux world, is you have to leave the comfort zone of your GUI and get friendly and profficient with the Command Line Interface (CLI)! Yes you can still have you GUI, but sysadmin work is done more efficiently through the CLI. Even the GUI world is different, in Linux, because there are so many, and all are very customizable! And often, for a server install, you leave out the GUI, it saves HD space and present less of a security risk.
Sysadmin work also requires you to do some programming - writing scripts to automate tasks (for e.g. rename 1,000 files spread over many directories - don't do that mnually) Hence most learn shell-scripting, but I prefer Python for that (Perl is pretty established for that too).
Being a good Linux admin means having depth as well as width. Not only knowing a few things well but also keeping up to date. Linux develops very fast and often have features that are only available on the latest commercial systems. One such cool technology (not so) recently, is LVM (Logical Volume Manager) which allows you to 'virtualise' your storage, allows you to add HD without screwing around with partitions and mount-points. So you have to be able understand the concepts, apply it and fix the problems!
Fixing problems is key, Linux if configured and installed well, seldom gives problems. However if there are problems, there is seldom a need to do a lobotomy - "erase the HD and resinstall" type solution for Windoze! Not when you have servers with RAID, LVM etc... but also with Linux, things can be fixed if you know how.
That's the next thing with learning/fixing Linux, "the answer is out there" - on the internet. If you know how to google and have the dedication & discipline, you can learn more by youself than you can by spending $$ for a course. (of course having a syllabus to follow is a good thing).
Aside from just learning Linux, you also need a firm understanding of networking, that will allow you to focus on applying yr knowledge to use Linux to be servers, network-devices (routers, bridges, firewalls), Web, database, SAMBA (Windows server, with Active Directory), Print servers, application servers etc... if you can do that well, and have a firm grasp of the principles behind it as well, then you'll have a job, no problem.
PS I've used Linux since 1997, too many distro's to remember, but current favourites are Debian & Ubuntu. I use Linux mostly for Servers for work, I've worked for NASDAQ listed dot.coms, as System Architect, Project Manager, been in a few start-ups, but am currently free-lancing and involved in another new start-up. I stll do Linux and code. But for desktop, I do use Linux, but prefer my Mac!
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