Should I change schools or programs

Well, I guess I'd need to hear more about what you're learning. I'd say "probably not". Systems Administration stuff is, at the moment, more easily learned on the job than in the classroom. What I really wish I'd have learned in school is more infrastructure engineering type things (for instance, "how do you determine the likelihood of a failure in the system when you know the failure rates for each of the components" type stuff), and more statistics. I'd also like to have taken standard CIS stuff like graph theory, information theory, algorithms, etc.

What books or resources would you recommend I read or look at?

Start with the standard tomes - "The Practice of System and Network Administration", "DNS and Bind", and "$X Programming" where $X is the operating system that you need to learn and understand the most. I'd also invest in a good networking book that teaches you how networking works, both IPv4 and IPv6. You may need to get 2 books for that one, but it'll be worthwhile. I enjoyed reading "Cisco: A Beginner's Guide", but I don't know if even the newest edition includes IPv6. For that, I haven't read any great books. I read IPv6 Essentials, but it wasn't amazing, though it did help. Learn IPv6, though. Seriously.

What kinds of certifications do you recommend

I think this depends greatly on what you want to do and who you want to work for. Some big companies won't hire you without them. Some little companies are really impressed by them. Some companies know that some certifications aren't worth the paper they aren't printed on. It all depends. What do you REALLY want to do? Networking? The best, most respected networking folks I know are CCIEs or JNCIE. To do that, you need the entry level certification of those tracks first. The best, most respected UNIX admins I know don't have any certifications. The best, most respected Windows administrators I know...well, actually, I don't know a ton of Windows administrators, but I would like to know more of them. So if someone reading this is a Windows administrator, maybe they can tell you if the MCP program is well respected in the industry. I imagine it is.

What projects would you suggest I take on

Start with your comfort zone, and expand past that. You had a seedbox and a dedicated game server. You have made HTPCs. Maybe you could make a storage backend server that the HTPC connects to for media. Or multiple HTPCs connect to for media. That would get your feet wet in networking, a little bit in storage, and a little bit in providing services.

Once you get it working on the platform that you know, convert it to the platform that you don't know. If your first one is in Windows, after you get it working in Windows, try to get it working in Linux the same way. Then push forward. Maybe try to add some flair to it and set up centralized authentication, or start your own home DNS server so you can make the HTPC resolve internally. Or you could find some software to display the content in a website, then set up a web server. Once that works, for bonus points, set up a certificate authority and enable SSL.

Each time you do something new, you should learn something new. Use that. Take notes. I'm biased, but maybe you should start blogging your efforts. That has the double benefit of keeping notes for yourself and sharing what you're doing with other people, so they can learn too.

What projects should I take on

Pretty similar to the above question, but maybe you could be more forward thinking. Remember how I said "Learn IPv6" above? Why not make an IPv6 lab, where you play with it (both pure IPv6 and dual stack, because dual stack is important now and pure will eventually be important).

Final Thoughts

The single most valuable skill I ever acquired was the ability to learn quickly. It's vital in our field, because nothing is static. Don't get into the field thinking that things will always be the same, or that what happened yesterday is any indication of what happens tomorrow. Learning fast allows you to keep up. This almost always necessitates reading fast, and having a high comprehension. Those things can be taught, and they can be acquired by practice. If your school gives you access to Safari Books Online, then use it. If they don't, then take the initiative and make them provide it. Talk to the dean, write petitions, etc, because it's one of the most valuable resources available on the internet, and they SHOULD provide it to you.

Also, learn to program. You don't have to be amazing, but you should learn to program. We are quickly entering a time in system administration where we are developers more than tinkerers, and that's a good thing. Infrastructure itself is becoming code, and what I mean by that is the instructions we give to servers to do certain things is fading away from the idea of setting a configuration variable and moving to the idea of writing a small piece of code in configuration management software to make the change happen. Research Puppet, Chef, and CFEngine to see what I mean. We are going to be developers, even if it's infrastructure developers, and the best of us will be those people who think clearly, logically, and are able to communicate that through the tools used to assert change.

There's lots of good books, but not all are free. For free books check out google books
http://www.google.com/search?q=c%23&btnG=Search+Books&tbm=bks&tbo=1


But as far as good books for sale I would recommend the following:


Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET - This is a really good book that helps with more advanced topics like domain driven design and object modelling.


LINQ Unleashed: for C# This is not a straight up c# book. However, they do cover a lot of the more advanced topics upfront (anonymous types, extension methods) and gives a really good introduction to LINQ (a query syntax for .NET). Most real applications today use some form of LINQ so it's good to know.


*Pro ASP.NET MVC 2 - This book is about ASP.NET MVC which is a framework for building sites in .NET. All the examples are in C# and the other does a good job of introducing concepts that will help outside of web sites. Things like the repository pattern for data abstraction and unit testing. Overall a great book.

As promised here are the SCSM resources I have used over the years.

Microsoft Resources

Service Manager TechNet – Service Manager technical documentation.

Service Manager Engineer Blog – A blog run by the Microsoft product engineers for SCSM.

Microsoft Virtual Academy (System Center 2012 courses) – Online training course for System Center produces including SCSM.

Blogs

Marcel Zehner’s Blog – A Service Manager MVP

Chris Ross’s Blog – Another Service Manager MVP

Anders Asp’s Blog – Yet another Service Manager MVP

Anders Bengtsson’s Blog – He is a Microsoft Senior Field Engineer. This one is mainly around automation with SMA and Orchestrator, but also has some good SCSM info.

Books

Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook – I have read this book and it contains a ton of good information on setting up and deploying SCSM. It provides a great foundation on how and why things are done in SCSM.

Microsoft System Center: Optimizing Service Manager – I have also read this book. It provides some guidance along best practices when it comes to deploying and customizing SCSM. The kindle version is free.

System Center 2012 Service Manager Unleashed – This title has not been released yet, but the Unleased series is known for be great resources.

Senior Level Software Engineer Reading List

Read This First

1. Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
   
   

   Fundamentals
   

   
   

2. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
   
3. Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions
   
4. Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML
   
5. Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
   
6. Rework
   
7. Writing Secure Code
   
8. Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries
   
   

   Development Theory
   

   
   

9. Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
   
10. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications
    
11. Introduction to Functional Programming
    
12. Design Concepts in Programming Languages
    
13. Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
    
14. Modern Operating Systems
    
15. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
    
16. The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
    
17. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
    
    

    Philosophy of Programming
    

    
    

18. Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It
    
19. Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think
    
20. The Elements of Programming Style
    
21. A Discipline of Programming
    
22. The Practice of Programming
    
23. Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
    
24. Object Thinking
    
25. How to Solve It by Computer
    
26. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

27. Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
    
28. The Intentional Stance
    
29. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes In The Age Of The Machine
    
30. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
    
31. The Timeless Way of Building
    
32. The Soul Of A New Machine
    
33. WIZARDRY COMPILED
    
34. YOUTH
    
35. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
    
    

    Software Engineering Skill Sets
    

    
    

36. Software Tools
    
37. UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language
    
38. Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development
    
39. Practical Parallel Programming
    
40. Past, Present, Parallel: A Survey of Available Parallel Computer Systems
    
41. Mastering Regular Expressions
    
42. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools
    
43. Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C
    
44. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
    
45. The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
    
46. SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design
    
47. Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques
    
48. Data Crunching: Solve Everyday Problems Using Java, Python, and more.
    
    

    Design
    

    
    

49. The Psychology Of Everyday Things
    
50. About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
    
51. Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty
    
52. The Non-Designer's Design Book
    
    

    History
    

    
    

53. Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality
    
54. Death March
    
55. Showstopper! the Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft
    
56. The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth
    
57. The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad
    
58. In the Beginning...was the Command Line
    
    

    Specialist Skills
    

    
    

59. The Art of UNIX Programming
    
60. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
    
61. Programming Windows
    
62. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
    
63. Starting Forth: An Introduction to the Forth Language and Operating System for Beginners and Professionals
    
64. lex & yacc
    
65. The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
    
66. C Programming Language
    
67. No Bugs!: Delivering Error Free Code in C and C++
    
68. Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied
    
69. Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#
    
70. Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit
    
    

    DevOps Reading List
    

    
    

71. Time Management for System Administrators: Stop Working Late and Start Working Smart
    
72. The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services
    
73. The Practice of System and Network Administration: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT
    
74. Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale
    
75. DevOps: A Software Architect's Perspective
    
76. The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations
    
77. Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
    
78. Cloud Native Java: Designing Resilient Systems with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and Cloud Foundry
    
79. Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation
    
80. Migrating Large-Scale Services to the Cloud

Objective-C is a superset of C and so has a C base, although the syntax is different (mostly).
There are a few frameworks in Apple's library which are written in C but you may not need those.

I would recommend you use a game engine to write your game - particularly Cocos-2d, as it makes development quicker and easier.
As a previous poster has mentioned, Ray's website is very good at learning IOS programming and it also has good sections on Cocos-2d.

As for books, I can recommend: (I'm in the UK so I'll use amazon uk links).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Cocos2D-Hands--Building-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321735625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367517122&sr=8-1&keywords=cocos2d (Ray's own book)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-cocos2d-Game-Development-iOS/dp/143024416X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1367517122&sr=8-2&keywords=cocos2d

Objective-c
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Programming-Objective-C-Automatic-Reference-Developers/dp/0321811909/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367517200&sr=1-5&keywords=ios+programming

Plus there are LOADS of good tutorials online.

Distributed Systems is a fast growing field better understood in practice, I believe. There are good books around such as this but most of them are lagging behind. Conference papers are somewhat more popular nowadays but it is quite easy to get lost on the search.

My advice would be to get a quick overview from material proposed by others here and then go practical and try to model and implement distributed systems abstractions such as reliable broadcast, atomic registers, consensus and atomic broadcast. You can get a nice almost up-to-date overview of such abstractions here (totally recommended) while implemention-wise I would suggest actor based programming such as using Erlang (top-notch fun tutorial) or Scala Akka. If you know Java you can implement components using a message-passing component model such as Kompics. Do not hesitate to pm if you need help in the way! :)

The Service Manager Unleashed and Service Manager Cookbook are both great resources. the cookbook gives you a good overview and shows you how to do many common tasks, and the unleashed book provides a great deep dive.

There are also a ton of great community resources available.

MyITForum - The Largest, Oldest, and Most Active System Center Community

System Center Central - A community dedicated to Microsoft System Center 2012

System Center Universe - Past System Center Universe presentations

Microsoft Virtual Academy - Microsoft Virtual Academy – Various getting-started courses.

Channel9 – System Center and other Microsoft related video presentations.

Marcel Zehner’s Blog – A Service Manager MVP

Chris Ross’s Blog – Another Service Manager MVP

Anders Asp’s Blog – Yet another Service Manager MVP

Anders Bengtsson’s Blog – He is a Microsoft Senior Field Engineer. This one is mainly around automation with SMA and Orchestrator, but also has some good SCSM info.

Cireson Blogs - They make a ton of Service Manager add-on, some free

SCSM PowerShell Overview - A blog series I've been writing on how to use PowerShell with Service Manager

System Center 2012 Service Manager Survival Guide - A large collection of helpful Service Manager links.

The best thing for you are old books from that time. And they're cheap.

You're just looking for books that are in the Rails 2.x range, as it'll be hard to be specific to 2.1, but Rails release notes will help you bridge the gap between specific point releases.

The third edition of Agile Web Development With Rails and the first edition of The Rails Way are both Rails 2.x books.

Here's also an old online Rails 2.1 tutorial to help you in the meantime, but don't try to just get by on the few old web tutorials that are still online. Order books today. They're much deeper and broader than a web tutorial and they'll be invaluable if you're going to be working on this project for any real period of time.

EDIT: Michael Hartl's fantastic railstutorial.org has the "pre-1st edition" version of his book, which covers Rails 2.3, still available for free PDF download. Definitely grab that.

To date, the best programming book that I've read is C Programming Language by K&R. It's a pretty complete text on the C language. It is more than sufficient to enable the reader to be a good C programmer, yet it is still entirely digestable by new programmers. It is 274 pages. There are some recent gems, like Programming Clojure (304 pages). However, these days the norm seems to be more like Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET (576 pages), Real World Haskell (710 pages), and The C++ Programming Language (1030 pages). These books are all good. They just are hard to carry around and hard to hold while reading for long periods. I'm looking for good programming books that are short; an upper limit of roughly 325 pages. Post links to your favorites!

Yes, there is still lots of misconceptions about the OOP. But the way they were invented, like 30 years ago, they really promoted good design principles as a difference to Procedural Programming with mutation, procedures and state. You may find David West's book on objects interesting. And you may want to have a look at some proper OOP code in Takes. To me OOP and currently popular functional programming are very close friends.

First, read our Wiki. It is very thorough and answers a lot of these common questions such as

day to day? The Practice of System and Network Administration
And the topical reference books listed below.

Books to help in shaping a sysadmin? The above &:
The Phoenix Project
Time Management for System Administrators


Topical Books I see mentioned often and have been very helpful to me:
Powershell in a month of lunches
Learn Python the hard way
Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook
Windows Server 2016: Inside Out

Group Policy
AbsoluteBSD
FreeBSD mastery:ZFS
CCNA
RHCSA/RHCE
Pro Puppet
SSH Mastery

On my docket:
FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS

Michael W. Lucas and Thomas Limoncelli are very good sysadmin writers, you can't go wrong with a topic they have chosen to write about.

Most of the *nix stuff assumes a baseline knowledge of how to use a unix-based system. I learned as I went but did pick up an old copy of Unix Visual Quickstart Guide not too long ago at a used books sale, which seems like a good starting place for someone overwhelmed with sitting at a terminal and being productive.
I notice I don't have any Virtualization books, perhaps someone else can fill in good books. Most of my knowledge regarding virtualization and network storage has been a mix of official docs, video training, and poking at it. Seems innate but it isn't.

I'm mostly self-taught, so I've learned to lean heavily on App Notes, simulations, and experience, but I also like these books:
The Howard Johnson Books:
High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0133957241/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_I0Iwyb99K9XCV
High Speed Signal Propagation: Advanced Black Magic
https://www.amazon.com/dp/013084408X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_c3IwybKSBFYVA

Signal and Power Integrity - Simplified (2nd Edition)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0132349795/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_J3IwybAAG9BWV

Also, another thing that can be overlooked is PCB manufacturability. It's vitally important to understand exactly what can and can't be manufactured so that you can make design trade offs, and in order to do that you need to know how they are made. As a fairly accurate intro, I like the Eurocircuits videos:
http://www.eurocircuits.com/making-a-pcb-pcb-manufacture-step-by-step

If you would like a more in depth explanation, a pretty good book was released not that long ago called Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet.

It explains how networks interconnect, how fibers are laid underwater, etc. I work in IT infrastructure so I thought it was a fun read and surprisingly well researched.


http://www.amazon.com/Tubes-A-Journey-Center-Internet/dp/0061994936

Don't worry, it is a bit of a confusing first few steps as it can do a lot of things however getting it to do the basics isn't too hard as there are plenty of guides out there.

Do check on the needed prerequisites though as you may want to download them over the weekend, the biggest (and I think only hard requirement for MDT2013), is the Windows ADK:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=39982

There's a basic guide to getting MDT installed and setup here:

http://blog.itvce.com/2013/10/27/installing-and-configuring-microsoft-deployment-toolkit-mdt-2013-on-windows-server-2012-r2/

Although it references imaging server 2012 you should be able to do mostly the same steps but using a Win 7 or 8 image instead.

If you want a book to reference from give this a look, I've not read it but I've got the SCCM book by the same group of authors and it was really helpful, so assuming their MDT one is of similar quality it may be worth a look:

http://amzn.com/9187445093

I had done just a little bit of Python (like, a few weeks of tinkering) before I got started with Objective C. I read some of Kochan's book Programming with Objective C whilst also reading some of Learning Cocos2D, but ultimately I just started playing, getting stuck and hitting the interwebs to get unstuck (reading lots, not spamming forums). I'm about 8 months in and I think I'm about 3 months from releasing my first game.

With my limited experience my advice would be to pick a simple project that you're genuinely interested in, chop it up into little problems / tasks, and work through them. If you're totally stuck, you probably need to cut that task up into smaller pieces. Work hard, read a lot, take a break occasionally, write a blog or diary so you can track your own progress, and have fun!

Starting iOS development is one of the best things I've ever done, although I'm not sure the missus would agree!

First, welcome to the indie community! I'd recommend to start designing a small PoC. Grab some sheets of paper and start drawing your app's different views and interactions. The purpose of this is to clarify your ideas. At the beginning, that's all you need. Once you have something you think is "usable", then, just then, move to coding - it'll save you a lot of time. Just as a reference, I spent 7 months designing Memorigi 1.0 (no coding, just drawings).

​

How much programming you need? Well, there's no "right amount" IMO. If you want to go Java path, I recommend this book Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (https://www.amazon.com/Android-Programming-Ranch-Guide-Guides/dp/0134706056/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1551068980&sr=8-2). If however, you take Kotlin path this is my recommendation Kotlin in Action (https://www.amazon.com/Kotlin-Action-Dmitry-Jemerov/dp/1617293296).

​

One last advice, start small, then grow from there. Don't try to have your app fully complete in one pass. It's a recipe for discouragement and disaster. DM me if at some point you feel stuck and I'll do my best to help you.

​

Cheers!

If you have an Amazon Prime account.

https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Pride-Vol-Customizations-ConfigMgr/dp/9187445034/

https://www.amazon.com/Deployment-Fundamentals-Vol-Deploying-Microsoft/dp/9187445212/

Links I found useful

https://mdtguy.wordpress.com/

https://deploymentresearch.com/

https://deploymentbunny.com/

When you inevitably go down the rabbit hole of customsettings.ini and bootstrap

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions//bb490304(v=technet.10)

Driver Injection and all the fun that comes with it

https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/116865-add-drivers-to-mdt-all-versions-total-control-method

It's a lot of links but I think all of them are worthwhile. Either way, Google is your friend when learning MDT. These are all pertinent links if you are serious about learning MDT.

​

The way I see it, how you can answer design questions is a gauge of your experiences and knowledge up to that point, and an indicator of what you've been exposed to. In a way, how you'd answer those questions is very much your 'real world' answer, which may be different from someone else's, who would in turn have a different answer from a third person.

If, for example, all you did was desktop application development and never had to work on distributed system for data processing, or some kind of large-scale distributed web service, your answer would indicate that. The further discussions for those types of questions ("Why did you pick that?", "What happens if I need to convert it to a real time stream?", "How would you change the design if it was meant to handle 10x the load?") would be more difficult without practical applications of such knowledge. You can't just be like "Well, I'd throw a Cassandra cluster into it" and expect the interviewer to be satisfied.

Now, if you want to get 'better' at such stuff, I think you need to approach it a lot more holistically, because it involves many concepts.

At the base level you will probably in interested in some core concepts of distributed systems, like:

• Service Oriented Architecture
  
• Distributed Web Services
  
• Client-Server architectures, as well as n-tier systems
  
• You might want to look into the book In Search of Clusters - it's a dinosaur in terms of how old it is, but it talks about core concepts in parallel and distributed computing
  
  It's also good to see how companies in the real world do it: Amazon Web Services, Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, Etsy, Google, and more maintain developer/technical blogs where they discuss the design of their systems and software. Additionally, you could look at High Scalability which talks about this stuff too.
  
  The caveat for all of this, though, is that most things will just throw words and concepts at you without much explanation for it, so you will have to put in a lot more legwork to understand what they're talking about.

When I first started in college this one one of the first sources I went to as well. After a bit of research I stumbled upon this.

http://www.amazon.com/Internetworking-TCP-Vol-1-Principles-Architecture/dp/0130183806/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322702929&sr=1-8

This was quite possibly one of the best books I've ever purchased when it comes to the fundamentals of networking and was just updated a few days ago. I have the link below in my previous post and if you really want to learn networking I highly recommend you buying it.

Can't use free eagle (too big) for this, but kicad or probably other things would work. With a few good books you can lay out a big board without advanced tools, although it can take longer. With cheap/free tools you'll usually have to use some finicky or kludgy methods to do really complex routing (blind/buried vias, free vias, heat transfer, trace length), but that usually isn't too big a deal. Here's a timelapse of a guy using Altium to route a high speed, large (a bit smaller than op's) data board for a high speed camera. The description has rough steps with timestamps- 38 hours total to lay out.

According to the book Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, a key moment in the development of the modern Internet was the US government's funding of a series of Network Access Points (NAPs) to interconnect multiple networks. This funding was sponsored by Al Gore, who never claimed to have invented the Internet but was an early champion of legislation that created the Internet.

Get The Microsoft Manual of Style

Download a trial version of Adobe Framemaker

Learn how to do good screen captures using SnagIt or something similar.

Good luck.

> Yep. ... been trying to sign up since i got the email at work and i keep being put in a never ending cycle to update my profile.... yall should of know this would have blown up and been prepared

> Mark Darrah
> ‏Verified account @BioMarkDarrah
> It wasn’t publicly announced for precisely this reason

Mr Darrah, please give this level 23 book to your web frontend people: https://www.amazon.com/Release-Design-Deploy-Production-Ready-Software/dp/1680502395/

They will be eternally grateful for it.

Among other things, it explains why "we'll just not advertise the link" is a non-viable strategy.

It didn't seem that bad to me, I read through a book and ran through the whole cbt nuggets video set (which is pretty long I guess) and passed. I used: http://www.amazon.com/System-Center-Configuration-Manager-Unleashed/dp/0672334372 if that helps.

This is a pretty decent introduction to IPv6, though a little dated in some sections - it should be sufficient to understand IPv6 enough to get an IPv6 address on your server. How you get an IPv6 address might be the most difficult part. With a bit of luck your hosting environment just offers it. If they don't, you can do tunnels. In the US you'd pretty much be limited to he.net or sixxs.net.

Sort of? I highly recommend this book, it was a great read!

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet

Distributed systems is definitely good to know for some kinds of machine learning. This is a standard intro text for distributed systems. I'd probably dive into something about parallel computing while you are at it too. And then high performance computing when you got the basics covered.

System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (SCCM) Unleashed + R2 Update

• https://www.amazon.com/System-Center-Configuration-Manager-Unleashed/dp/0672334372
  
• https://www.amazon.com/System-Center-Configuration-Manager-Unleashed/dp/0672337150
  
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/
  
  I highly recommend installing, and testing in a lab environment as well. your first time installing it should not be your production server.
  
  Some of the Official MS Training is not terrible either, though it is expensive if you are paying for it directly and if you get a decent / experienced instructor.
  
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/course.aspx?cid=20696
  
  

If you go the MDT route, I can recommend Deployment Fundamentals Vol. 5 as a good resource for a ton of tips/tricks to shave off time setting it up for production.

http://amzn.com/9187445093

I took the first test, and it was a complete breeze. I read the Todd Lammle book, but honestly I didn't have to.

If you work Nexus often, it is a breeze.

I plan to take the second exam sometime next week, and I've been reading the Cisco guide book to NX-OS.

For Rails, pick up whatever edition of this series matches the version(s) you want to be familiar with. Keep in mind that learning Ruby and learning Ruby on Rails aren't exactly the same thing.

I can't really imagine why you would want Rails and Java at the same time, as it would be faster to get comfortable with one and view the other as a sum of the differences instead of re-learning all the similarities.

I found this book to be very good. It's technical but the Author manages to explain complex concepts in straight forward ways.

Internetworking-TCP-Vol-1-Principles-Architecture

I have not read read this book personally, but I read a lot of reviews waiting to board a plane thinking I was going to buy it on my Kindle. Anyways, it seems like what you are looking for:


http://www.amazon.com/Tubes-A-Journey-Center-Internet/dp/0061994936/ref=pd_sim_b_9

I used excerpts from this textbook in one of my classes and it seemed pretty thorough if not brief: http://www.amazon.com/Distributed-Systems-Concepts-Design-Edition/dp/0132143011/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1371163267&sr=8-5&keywords=distributed+computing

Also this one: http://www.amazon.com/Distributed-Systems-Principles-Paradigms-Edition/dp/0132392275/ref=pd_sim_b_1

I agree with OP. If you are looking for a good architecture book(s), beside fowlers, I've enjoyed

• Release it (nigard)
  
• sam newman's microservices (o reilly)
  
• Just enough software architecture (g. fairbanks)
  
• but by far, the higher recommandation I can give is
  designing data intensive applications by M. Kleppmann https://dataintensive.net/
  
  I really can't praise Kleppman's book enough.

Comer's stuff is what helped me. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0130183806/

You are probably like me and need more background to understand things. Comer was part of creating the Internet and was chosen to write a book to document the technology IIRC.

"This edition explains emerging technologies such as Mobile IP, Virtual Private Networks, resource reservation with RSVP, and Ipv6."

"I would tell you a UDP joke but I'd never know whether or not you got it."

I do tech. writing for a software company and use the Microsoft Manual of Style 4th Edition. Depending on your audience, The Global English Style Guide may also be useful to you.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735648719/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_CYUyCb7G6WSE1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1599946572/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_AXUyCbD9VHMSZ

Stealing with Pride from the best OSD leaders in the industry. Stealing with Pride, Vol. 1: Advanced OSD Customizations for MDT 2013 and ConfigMgr 2012 R2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/9187445034/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_NCqkzbV2DQ8P1

He also got a book out: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005E03MMY/

I bought it and can recommend.


Another book I got this here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006FOHWDI/ But I haven't started yet.

For a distributed and system-level perspective on some problems, incl. message passing, read In Search of Clusters. It's awesome.

If you're looking for books, I'd recommend Kotlin in Action. It's by a couple of core developers for Kotlin. The book is relatively short, it's pretty practical but not platform specific like it's not only for android.

I can't recommend this book enough. I started off much like you had, and learned everything I know from this book that is incredible. https://www.amazon.com/Absolute-FreeBSD-3rd-Complete-Guide/dp/1593278926

These have black magic in the title:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0133957241/

http://www.amazon.com/dp/013084408X/

;)

there's this book - https://www.amazon.com/NX-OS-Cisco-Nexus-Switching-Next-Generation/dp/1587143046

I have a copy..in fact it's sitting on my desk. I've used it some in the past as a reference. It's been a while...I think it was OK as a reference. It's not specifically troubleshooting but seems a decent reference book.

no problem, check out Johan Arwidmark's book for a great reference to deployments with MDT. Deployment Fundamentals

Absolute FreeBSD

https://www.amazon.com/IPv6-Essentials-Silvia-Hagen/dp/0596100582

I recommand Kotlin in action : https://www.amazon.com/Kotlin-Action-Dmitry-Jemerov/dp/1617293296/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1543497633&sr=8-2&keywords=kotlin+in+action

​

If you haven't bought the "Black Magic" books written by Howard Johnson (real name!), consider doing so.

• (Book 2 on Amazon)
  
  
• (Book 1 on Amazon)

What about the follow up book?

Se intendi quale materiale ho seguito:

• Documentazione ufficiale, molto chiara;
  
• Kotlin in Action, libro introduttivo ben fatto.

Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol.1: Principles, Protocols, and Architecture (4th Edition)
Jan 18, 2000 by Douglas E. Comer
http://www.amazon.com/Internetworking-TCP-Vol-1-Principles-Architecture/dp/0130183806/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1420826585&sr=8-6&keywords=tcp+ip

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006FOHWDI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_yJKxCbNR7YNG4

That link points to an old edition .. here's the link to the latest (3rd) edition: https://www.amazon.com/Absolute-FreeBSD-3rd-Complete-Guide/dp/1593278926/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=absolute+freebsd&qid=1573610579&sr=8-1