(Part 2) Best products from r/sysadmin

All the above, with a few extras;

• Cable ties
  
• Electrical tape
  
• Masking tape (for temporary labels)
  
• Small/preconfigured wireless AP - bigger businesses this tends to be a big nono regardless of how secure it is but it's nice when you can use it.
  
• Powered USB hub.
  
• Some kind of hands free system for your phone. The headphones that came with it will do just fine, but bring something. I have seen so many technicians either slowed down to one hand/hurting their neck or dropping their phone because they didn't bring one.
  
• Derp, completely forgot - multimeter!
  
  Things to have but probably leave in the car depending on how often you find them in use.
  
  
• Basic toolkit (I carry a leatherman and keep a 4-in-1 screwdriver in my bag, that's 99% of the tools needed but it's nice not to have to run around looking for the other 1% when they're called for.
  
• Basic drill set, include spade bits. It's nice to be able to quickly make that hole yourself rather than "OK I'll run the cable allllll the way around here..".
  
• At least one of literally every cable you can possibly think of, especially things like console cables that you can't get at the local electronics store.
  
• One of literally every X to Y converter you can think of - again, if you can't walk into the local electronics store and pick one up you should have it with you.
  
• Various power boards and extension leads (power and things like USB etc)
  
• Decent coil of CAT6 + connectors/crimper.
  
• External HDD, bigger the better. Keep it separate from 'your' drives so you can leave it on site or mail it somewhere if you need to (it happens).
  
• A few blank USB sticks, preferably encrypted. Same deal as above.
  
• Small switch or hub.
  
• Spare monitor - honestly I would love to find one that had USB power and a VGA connection. I haven't really looked as this really is just a 'eh maybe' thing for me but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want one. Failing that, just a small spare monitor.
  
• External DVD drive
  
• External Floppy disc drive and a disk. Putting that SATA/RAID driver on and plugging it in is faster and easier than building custom install media on the fly.
  
• Snacks and water! Seriously, keep a few things in the car (or even in your bag) that won't go bad for those times you're stuck and just don't have time to find food.
  
  Some 'maybe' things - nice to have them in your mind but for most technicians it's overkill. Do the space/cost/how much you'll use it math.
  
  
• Lockpick set - honestly it's a bit extreme and there can be laws etc to consider depending on where you live, but picking equipment locks is super simple and when you add up how many hours you've spent standing around because "Who the HELL either has this key or authorisation for me to get a hammer?!" it's suddenly not so silly. Unless you're charging by the hour, in which case make them call a locksmith!
  
• Something like this - any spare KB/mouse will do but these are super nice. Edit: apparently this webpage is super dodgy? I didn't buy one from here, just googled the item. They're on Amazon and other places as well.
  
• Bluetooth to serial connectors are always nice - direct is better but if you're going to use converters why not do it from a comfy spot instead?
  
  Probably more I'm forgetting. Big part of my last job was going to sites with lots to do and little time.. there was always a bunch of things that came up so I learned it was best to just be prepared for anything, it saves you so much time and stress in the long run and makes you look like a god to the clients when every time something comes up, you handle it easily.
  
  Edit: Cool stuff others have posted:
  
  
• Make an ISO pretend to be a real hardware DVD
  
• Portable KVM.. just... drool. I am buying one. Though if anyone knows of a wireless version my soul may be up for bargaining.

It's not stupid - what you're proposing would work, but give Ubiquiti a look before you commit to buying WRT54GLs.

You can get a 3-pack of Ubiquiti Unifi APs for just a little more than what the old Linksys units are going to cost, but the extra cost is very well worth it.

Edit:
Expanding on the above:

That little Linksys box was phenomenal for its time, and the independent/community firmwares do give you a lot of performance and stability that wasn't present in the stock firmware, but the design is old and using the internet in general requires a lot more bandwidth now than was available back when the WRT54G series came out.

The Ubiquiti hardware is superior and better featured. The radios are 802.11n, so you'll get better throughput than 802.11g with similar coverage, and with the controller you get things like different VLANs for different SSIDs and smart client roaming between APs, both features missing from the Linksys. ( While you could give the Linksys APs the same SSID, most clients aren't smart enough to roam to a stronger AP when it's available until the old connection is dropped. iOS devices will roam, for example, but Android doesn't without 3rd-party apps, and whether Windows clients do or not depends on the drivers. )

The price of a UniFi setup is comparable to your consumer Linksys stuff. Amazon sells single WRT54GLs for $50/each. Those aren't ready for use out of the box - you need to reflash with your preferred OS and load your config on each unit individually. A 3-pack of Ubiquiti Unifis can be had for $180, or $60/each. Your controller will update firmwares and configs for you. (If your preferred consumer unit is more expensive than the WRT54GL, you'll probably save money upfront.)

Installation is super easy. Pick a box you can install Java on where port 8080 isn't already used (Linux or Windows). Install the Unifi Controller software (~40MB java stuff). Create a DNS A record and point it at the IP of the box you just installed your controller on. Log on to controllerbox:8080 and manage your APs. Even if you have no other monitoring in place, the controller will email you alerts when APs go offline/come online. (If you have no other monitoring in place, fix that!) The lack of centralized management on the WRT based firmwares becomes a liability once you're dealing with larger installations. You're only talking about 6 APs now, but you may find a need to change that in the future.

I've been down the WRT54GL route before, back in 2009, and it worked okay. Some of those APs are still in place now, and they work as well as they ever did, even if they are showing their age. If you do go down that route, I can share the settings that have worked well in that environment:

OS: DD-WRT build 14929

Setup > Basic setup:

• Set the WAN connection type to disabled.
  
• Check assign the WAN port to the switch.
  
• Enable NTP client and use pool.ntp.org or time.nist.gov.
  
• Make sure the Router IP section is correct for your environment. (Easy way to tell: power cycle it and check whether the Time shown in the top corner is correct.)
  
  Wireless > Security:
  
  
• RADIUS if you've got it, otherwise use WPA2 with AES.
  
  Wireless > Advanced Settings:
  
  
• Max associated clients to 32. (This solved a lot of lock-ups for me, but I didn't need to support a lot of simultaneous users.)
  
• Transmit power to 120. (This gives a little better coverage than the default and worked fine for my laptops - if your intended devices are mobiles or other things with tiny antennas, leave this at the default.)
  
  Services:
  
  
• Disable everything except SSHd if you plan to use it for monitoring.
  
  Security:
  
  
• Disable everything. (This is just an AP, not a router, right?)
  
  Administration > Keep Alive:
  
  
• Schedule reboot for 00:00 Sunday. (This is why you set up NTP earlier. Reboot takes less than a minute and keeps you from having to troubleshoot mystery issues.)
  
  
  Whichever route you choose, once you have your devices in place, walk around and check your coverage, and make adjustments if necessary. The easiest way I've found to do this is use inSSIDer on Android - it lets you visualize where you've got signal and where you don't. Or, better, HowtoGeek has some good reading on this here: http://www.howtogeek.com/165614/how-to-create-a-wi-fi-heatmap-for-network-analysis-better-coverage-and-geek-cred-galore/
  
  There's some conflicting information in other comments about which channels to use. I suggest using 1, 6, and 11 to control your overlaps and minimize your interference - again, HowtoGeek has some useful reading here: http://www.howtogeek.com/129231/do-limited-wi-fi-channels-restrict-network-availability/

This is what I try to do when taking over a new team.

• Review finances (historical (3-5 yrs), YTD and budgeted). The good part is that most of your current year has already been determined for you, so take that time to get the lay of the land so you can hit next year strong.
  
• Outline objectives and priorities from your boss for the department.
  
• Establish 1:1 weekly meetings with all your direct reports.
  
• I like to provoke my new teams to tell me two things in the following areas: Where are we poor/weak? What do we OK but should do better? What do we great at? What would you like to see?
  
  Things I strive for as part of my team as their manager:
  
  
• Do great work consistently.
  
• Be the go to team in your organization.
  
• Be a team and manager willing to push envelopes or create positive disruption.
  
• Protect your team as a manager in all settings.
  
• Reward people by the way they want to be rewarded. Not everyone wants beer. Not everyone wants money. Some people are just happy solving a difficult problem others couldn't figure out.
  
  A few books I would recommend in no particular order:
  
  
• Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager
  
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
  
• The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
  
• Writing That Works
  
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

I say this all the time, but: Who would have thought that in the 2012, the greatest OS war of our day would still be BSD vs SystemV (iOS vs. Android)?

Generally, a focus in Windows is going to take you into corporate IT, building internally-oriented tools to support organizations. Here you'll want to learn bout VMWare, the full Microsoft stack, and look closely at tools designed for Enterprise support. There's less demand in this arena for nix, but also less chance to make a real impact on the world. Sure, there's something to be said for helping maintain the compute clusters inside of banks, or using Altiris or similar tools to manage hundreds of desktops for gigantic offices. I've done this myself, but I didn't have very much fun.

For my money, where you want to be is in web operations, building the systems that drive popular websites. Think about Instagram, Etsy, Netflix, companies that move enormous amounts of data around on the cheap, with relatively tiny staff. Read the blogs by the infrastructure team behind Etsy, and you'll realize quickly that these guys are geniuses.

Here you'll want to learn about how to interact programmatically with cloud compute providers, such as Amazon AWS, Rackspace Cloud, and the OpenStack providers that are starting to pop up, like HP. (A cloud provider is generally not just virtualization, but virtualization coupled with an API. It may sound small but it's a big difference!)

Here's some reading: If you want to learn a lot about nix operating systems, check out The Armadillo Book and The Practice of System and Network Administration.

If you're interested in learning web operations-oriented sysadmin, which is a VERY interesting place to be, also check out The Art of Scalability -- well, the first 2/3 anyway -- and the followup book, 50 Scalability Rules.

And especially, especially read and understand this, because there won't be many web-oriented companies still in business by 2014 that don't follow this process: Continuous Delivery.

Good luck! You picked a GREAT time to get started in the industry. The 00's were pretty boring by comparison. :)

EDIT: I KAN SPEEL

so everyone seems to be giving some good but general answers so here's a few specifics. They'll be most useful for learning unix but will also give you a good overview for any administration.

The Design of the UNIX Operating System
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Operating-System-Prentice-Hall-Software/dp/0132017997/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344385714&sr=8-1&keywords=the+design+of+the+unix+operating+system
Very good book to understand how a kernel works and interacts with different functionality of an operating system.


TCP/IP Illustrated
http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344385781&sr=1-1&keywords=tcp+ip+illustrated
Basically the bible of anything tcp/ip related. Volume 1 is the most important. Volume 2 and 3 are good as well but require knowing some calculus.

Really anything by W. Richard Stevens is great, though some of it is more on the programming side
http://www.amazon.com/W.-Richard-Stevens/e/B000AP9GV4/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Then there's the man pages.
Go into /bin/, /sbin, /usr/bin/ and /usr/sbin/ and just read the man page for every command.

If you want to learn how mail works, learn how (buy books or whatever you can find online) the protocols work not the applications. So learn how smtp, pop3, imap all work. Read what you can find, read RFCs for the protocols, etc. Then once you know how the protocols work you can read how an application like sendmail or qmail works. Books by oreilly are usually pretty good for this as well.

Set up linux systems, slackware is a great distro to learn linux from, and just setting up things like a lamp server, mail server, etc. Don't install applications from a repository, compile applications when you want to install them.

If you search my comments far enough back (maybe a month?) I posted something for someone asking a similar question and went into a lot more depth and a lot more chronological of what to do to become a unix sys admin.

edit: oh the two most important things about being a sysadmin.

• It's not about how much you know, it's about how fast you can figure out what you need to know.
  
• A good sysadmin has automated everything. Sysadmins are inherently lazy and hate to have to do anything twice.

Setting up a homelab is a great way to gain some experience. Pick up an old server off ebay, or if you've got a solid comp at home start up hyper-v and get some VMs running. From there you can set up a domain, explore DNS & DHCP, windows updates, things like that. Or you can go down the linux route if you're more interested in that, get a spacewalk server set up, provision out some servers to do those same basic stuff. Set up a web server, a file server, a mysql server. The beauty of linux is that you can grab centOS for free and just start building up these servers. I saw on here the other day someone plugging the Linux Bible, I think it's a great book, a great learning tool, and a great way to get your feet wet building up servers and administering them. Beyond that, most of the info on the red hat system administrator cert is in the book as well, so...2 birds 1 stone? That's what I'm doing to explore things beyond my current scope of just SQL Server. Good luck!

https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Bible-Christopher-Negus/dp/111821854X

Right now, you have your new monitoring system stood up. This is a great time to go deeper and integrate it with more of the systems your team manages and customise it to each systems purpose. Going through this process will help you understand how everything in the company communicates with each other and what dependencies each system has on other systems.

​

Your boss is pushing for you to be involved in a new project. He's looking to expose you to more technologies the company uses. You've mentioned nginx, MySQL, PHP and Python above. A lot of these are individual tools which can enhance one system. I would advise at this point you're better off looking at the fundamentals of how everything works in your organisation. DNS, DHCP, general server configuration, virtualisation, certificates, storage etc.

Config management is an interesting area, but if you have gaps in the fundamentals you are back to copying config files you do not understand, creating automation based on assumptions of the requirements.

​

Regarding the "always going too deep" comment, this is why it's good to have long medium and short term goals. Long term you want to have a deep understanding of x y and z for a future job role. Medium term you focus on X and have a project to implement it. Short term you have some smaller issues you want to resolve within your environment mainly relating to X with some hints of other skills you're interested in.

​

This all said, you really need to sit down and go through what you want to be doing in a number of years time. Keep an eye on what you need for other jobs in the market. Right now you may not want to move on but you should be staying at the company because you want to work there, and not get trapped there because you don't have the right skills to get a job at another company at the same or above pay. And most importantly you don't want to spend time learning a skill that will be irrelevant to your career path as you become more specialised.

I'd recommend giving "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World" a read as it helped me gain focus:

https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692

Another "lunches" book to read after the first is Powershell Toolmaking in a month of lunches there's another book coming out on the matter of Scripting later this year.

Also, for reference see if you can get Powershell in Action

It was written by the man who architected and designed the bloody thing, so you're in good hands. I've not read it cover to cover, but it's certainly the definitive reference on the subject.

All above books rated 5/5 stars on amazon by a lot of people.

If you're so bogged down, stitched up and scared to even think about automating anything, then I'd absolutely recommend The Phoenix Project this is the paradigm shift IT has gone through over the past decade. Essentially, IT has taken on board efficiency and best practices that have been standard in the manufacturing industry for decades, to incredible success.

Seriously, "Bag of Nails" IT shops are on their way out. If they're that unwilling to take a step back and do things the smart way, they're a shit company to work for. Learn about technical debt and why it's critical to pay it off.

DevOps and Site Reliability are in essence the latest buzzwords in IT service management, but there's a lot of positive change going on in the industry off the back of it. There's a sort of productivity Gold Rush.

If you're bogged down your current job sounds like the perfect place to cut your teeth and leapfrog off the back of it to move into a better organisation who wants to work smart.

Have fun!

What?! NOTHING IT related that you would find interesting enough to learn about on your own time?

Did you do this for the money? That's insane.

No Chef? No Puppet? No Docker? No obscure language? No embedded systems? No Nutanix? No ESXi? No nano server? Nothing IT related tickles your pickle? What about vulnhub? Red teaming? Game development? TELL ME.

/u/ProfFrnswrth -- I can't relate with the sentiment of not having energy after 8 hours. Hell, there are times we were updating systems until 1 or 2 AM and I STILL went home and dicked around in a VM. Do I have an unhealthy passion for this stuff? Probably.

As a child, very awkward, you can imagine, I had a computer and I was trying to play Deus Ex. The colors were terrible and the game stuttered and spewed, eventually freezing on that terrible sound looping: "EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN" -- being borderline retarded as a child, I didn't think to turn off the speakers, I just ran and told my Dad the computer is broken.

Being a good father, he assumed what all good fathers assume: porn. I was lectured and berated about not getting caught with my weasel in my hand, my dad unplugged the computer and turned it back on. I was defeated, never again to play this game my friend told me about.

The next day, whilst at school, I told my friend, the one in which of whom recommended the game, that my computer couldn't run it, I was doomed.

"What, ho?! Nay! Bringith thine tower to my domicile once within we leavith our studies!" -- Told you, fucking awkward.

So I bring this HP wanna be Blue Bubble Macintosh computer to my friend's house. My friend and his father ripped apart the internals of that poor HP tower, and replaced what looked like the internals to the backup for Johnny Five. Some brown circuit board and a lot of fans.

I was terrified. I was instructed by my friend to take my computer back home and try Deus Ex again. So, I get home and connect everything. Fearful of being sternly spoken to about pornography again, I left the speakers unplugged.

My God, man! It's beautiful! Normal colors, smooth textures, fast movement. But there wasn't any God damn sound! Oh, the speakers, right, so I plugged the speakers back in.

From there, I said "I want to be able to fix anything". It was very humbling and earth shattering to be honest.

I mean, if you think about it, as a preteen, you don't know what a computer is. You use it and you play on it, but you don't know what it is unless you're born into a family that teaches you or you're some Matilda freak that reads CPU and motherboard manuals in your free time.

But here... My friend, my peer, my ALLY! He knew exactly what it took. He took an impossible problem (can't play a video game), and not only made it a reality, he did it with spare parts in his closet LOL!

So, because of him, I am where I am today. Do I know how to fix everything? No, of course not. Don't be silly.

But! I have taken to using scheduled, distraction free time to learn something or get better at a skill. I go into that with a furious frenzy and get shit done. An hour? Half an hour? Five hours? I don't care, I'm going to tackle the living shit out of my objective.

Scheduled, distraction free time? What in the name of Almighty Christ on his Throne is this?!

First, I recommend a very subjective and biased book:

Deep Work

The concept of "Deep Work" is not foreign, but you may not have heard it called that before. It's a great book about finding time to get work done in a world of distractions.

Second, I recommend Earl Nightingale's "The Strangest Secret". You can find the audio on Amazon or Youtube, whichever you prefer. In YouTube he sounds cooler but speaks much quicker.

Earl Nightingale, again, came up with nothing new. This is some Oprah shit before Oprah was out. This broadcast changed my life. It builds off Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and takes concepts from Philosophy and Religion. The best "Power of Positive Thinking" speech I've heard. Listen to it, and see if it vibes with you.

Anyway, get your goals down, write them. Don't put them in your God damn phone, WRITE IT DOWN. Look it everyday. If you miss a day, you have to see it, you can't just delete it from your phone (yeah, you can rip the paper out of the notebook, but I'd like to think you're not a destructive person ;) ).

You like Podcasts? Yeah? YEAH?

Check out Entrepreneur on Fire. He doesn't talk about tech, sysadmin, hacking, NOTHING. But he's super positive, he is successful, and he loves sharing his tips for success. He markets his little notebook a lot (yeah, I bought one), so take it how you will.

This last part is what no one wants to hear. Everyone knows this and rolls their eyes:

Take care of yourself. Seriously. Drink coffee, that's fine, but don't drink 6 - 10 cups a day. If you have a desert, that's fine too, but don't rely on cakes, cookies, Starbucks, Monster, Redbull, etc. as your daily driver. Eat fruits and vegetables. No, not V8/Naked/Sunny D. Eat some celery and hummus, or a salad with lettuce, kale, and olives.

Short on time? Almond Milk + 1 Orange + 1 Cup of Kale + 1 Cup of Spinach + 1 Cup of mixed berries + 1 Banana + 1 scoop Sunwarrior Protein powder. Or whatever. Don't use whey or casein. Don't buy into this hype that you need 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight or any other dumb shit bro-science that's out there.

Exercise your body: go for long walks, brisk or light jog. Calisthenics, too. Burpees, push-ups, situps, squats. Don't be one of those bench press monkeys either, do real exercises. Deadlift, Squat, Overhead Press. Don't have barbells? DON'T CARE. Goblet Squat, Farmer's Walk, Lunges, Man-Makers (Push-up + Dumbbell row), Dumbbell swings, dumbbell snatches -- Get to work. Ton of programs on the internet, and you can YouTube the exercises.

If you want to study, learn, stay abreast of tech news you can make time to do it. Schedule time, write it down, and stick to it. Don't be afraid to unplug. Leave your phone and go for a walk without headphones. Go bike riding at a park or through the woods. Go sit at a beach or pool without anything. Just listen to the birds squawking and screeching. You'll enjoy it.


Well this escalated quickly:

TL;DR

Deep Work - Book

EoF - Podcast

The Strangest Secret - Earl Nightingale broadcast

Diet and Exercise

Git Gud

Long post ahead.

LEARN YOUR OSI LAYERS. Learn what's at Layer 2 (Ethernet), Layer 3 (IP), and Layer 4 (TCP/UDP/etc.)

I feel like throwing in the beej bible is necessary here (even if you never want to learn how to do network programming; it's still interesting, i.e. how the kernel opens a socket, translates network addresses, etc.): http://beej.us/guide/bgnet/. This is what I used in my Network Programming course 5+ years ago; still relevant today.

Then there's also the classic W. Richard Stevens tome: TCP/IP Illustrated: here. It's dated as fuck (telnet and rlogin were still prevalent and it still discusses classful routing (Class A, Class B, Class C) which hasn't been relevant for at least 20 years) though it does talk about CIDR which is current) but it's the most comprehensive explanation of how TCP/IP works there is. It does a GREAT job explaining how TCP and UDP work; TCP is a challenging protocol to really understand. It also goes into other application-layer protocols like DNS and HTTP but not in depth (and not relevant to the question at hand). It doesn't discuss IPv6 unfortunately (it's referred to as IPng, which is what it was called back in '94).

There's an updated version of this book that's been edited by a CCIE somewhere; I haven't been able to find it but it's quite good. I heard some of the edits are inaccurate, though.

Then there's the tcpdump manpage and tutorial to teach you how to inspect packets; you'll NEED to know how to do this. (Lots of folks like to use wireshark in the first instance but it's not on every box whereas tcpdump almost certainly is; the biggest differences lie in the filtering language)

More specific to #devopslife are software-defined "cloudy" routers like Neutron, Hyper-Vswitch (if on a Hyper-V virtualization backbone, I believe Azure uses them as well) and OpenVSwitch (from which Neutron descends). Neutron docs here.

Most CCNA material descends from these resources. CCNP and higher cover more specific details that you probably won't care too much about unless you really want to get into networking (which is a career in its own right, networking is HARD)

Unfortunately, if you spend a lot of time on cloud infrastructure, you won't deal with networking too much as an admin unless you get into tweaking kernel parameters or troubleshooting the (very) rare network-fucked-up occasion. Still good knowledge to have though.

You'll pass a Google SRE interview (in networking) if you read these; almost guaranteed.

I bought one of these years ago for the same reason at work ... One of the best things I ever bought. Came with special filters for toner, powerful as can be so totally replaced canned air ... and very very well built. I recall it was a bit pricey, but it was completely, totally worth it.

Edit: Found the one I had -- Looks exactly the same. I miss this thing! What a great unit, and it looks like it's still American Made, too! Good for them.

Double edit: looks like they have two versions now ... this is the actual one we had -- Appears this one has the two speeds (as I recall) and a more powerful motor -- but is more than 2x the price.

I just saw you said low on funds, but if you have a birthday or something coming up these two books have been great resources for me, and others that have taken a dive into it.

https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Bible-Christopher-Negus/dp/111821854X

https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Command-Shell-Scripting-Bible/dp/111898384X/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=J9RW2JJ25KF0HEW2DDNK

One thing I'd say is DON'T BE DISCOURAGED. There's a lot to Linux, and it'll feel like you are drinking through a fire hose sometimes with concepts, everyone has been there, and I'm still very much there. In addition to reading a butt load, one thing that helped me take the edge of was getting a box up with something I'd use. My personal pet project back in the day was setting up a redhat instance and run a ventrilo server. It helped me learn things like security, package management, patching, getting real comfortable with things like awk and sed. I didn't expose it to the internet except for a few whitelisted IPs but it kept me learning for a long time, and made it fun.

Powershell in a month of lunches (as you've already seen), Powershell Toolmaking in a month of Lunches as a follow up looks good. Check out the sidebar of /r/PowerShell, Master-PowerShell was helpful for me, but ymmv. There's also the Hey, Scripting Guy! blog.

The things that always help me out when I'm just getting started is how do I find help, and how do I find commands/functions.

Finding commands

get-command [verb]

and

get-help [command]

also, check out get-help get-help, there are quite a few useful flags attached with get-help like -examples, which is really nice when you're just learning PowerShell.

It's pretty early for me, so this is just kind of a quick brain dump and I'm not entirely sure the coffee has hit my brain, yet, so I hope this helps.

10000 limit again. Reserving this comment for the Programming section:

PROGRAMMING
Gray Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers
Beginning Python
The Python Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library)
Shell Scripting
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible, Second Edition
Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
sed & awk (2nd Edition)
The Ruby Programming Language
Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional
Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example
Agile Web Development with Rails
Automating Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Windows PowerShell 2.0
Pragmatic Guide to Subversion
Programming Perl
C++ Primer Plus
The AWK Programming Language thanks sjhill
Modern Perl thanks three18ti
High-Order Perl thanks three18ti
The Art of Scalability thanks mr_chip
Scalability Rules thanks mr_chip
Continuous Delivery thanks mr_chip
The Varnish Book thanks mr_chip

When I was a field tech, mostly working with structured cabling and networking equipment I took the following along with me, some of these things are no longer needed with VOIP phones though:

• Klein Scissors, great for working with cabling. http://www.amazon.com/Klein-2100-7-Electricians-Scissors-Stripping/dp/B000VL03NC/ref=pd_sim_sbs_hi_2
  
  
• Klein 11-in-1 screwdriver (I actually had two) http://www.amazon.com/Klein-32500-Screwdriver-Driver-Cushion/dp/B0015SBILG/ref=pd_bxgy_hi_text_y
  
  
• Harris puncdown tool ( I think fluke took them over though in quality) the little flip out hook is really useful when doing 66 blocks or panels - something like this http://www.amazon.com/Fluke-D914S-10061810-impact-EverSharp/dp/B000GA6QEI/ref=sr_1_2?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1377872619&sr=1-2&keywords=harris+punch+down+tool (You can get cheaper here, but I burned through the ideal ones pretty fast. The harris ones seemed to last a while).
  
  
• Multimeter (Fluke makes some nice ones)
  
  
• Cable Tester - this will do phone, coax, cat5/6 and isn't crazy priced. You can buy more remotes for it too: http://www.amazon.com/Test-Um-TP300-Resi-Tester/dp/B000J15CEE/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1377872779&sr=8-7&keywords=test+um+cable+tester
  
  
• Tone and probe kit (sends a signal over a cable and you can use the wand to figure out what cable it is. Killer for unmarked cables. You'll probably want to take some jacks and make up your own adapters too) - http://www.amazon.com/Fluke-Networks-PRO3000-Tone-Probe/dp/B000FTADX0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377872864&sr=8-1&keywords=harris+tone
  
  
• Banjo adapter is nice if you don't want to make your own: http://www.amazon.com/Paladin-Tools-1902-Modular-Adapter/dp/B000099O64/ref=pd_sim_indust_13
  
  
• If you have traditional phone lines to deal with, a buttset (or linemans set) isn't a bad thing to have either.
  
  
• Some coax tools (crimper/stripper)
  
  
• A drywall saw
  
  
• A decent tool bag. I used a generic husky one from lowes.
  
  
• A drill (keep the charger in the bag) and a decent bit set
  
  
• A box of random screws and anchors
  
  
• Bigass roll of velcro
  
  
• Double sided tape
  
  
• ALL the connectors (in bulk)
  
  
• Electrical tape
  
  
• Pull string anytime you fish a conduit or a pain in the ass space, leave a string.
  
  
• Various standard hand tools, spackle isn't bad to have and a putty knife, I had a cheap soldering iron and some basic stuff for it too. Sharpies (a whole pack of them). A level, a tape measure.
  
  
• A label maker! Brother makes a bunch. Label everything!
  
  
• Flashlight. I carried two. One small penlight on myself (streamlight) and one that shared the batteries with my drill.
  
  Obviously this all doesnt go in one bag, but I had mine in my car/truck all the time. It'd be a lot easier in an office.

I agree that the OEM docks are always the best, hands down - but I recently had a surprisingly good experience with an aftermarket USB dock. Plugable makes one that's compatible with just about anything, tablets included (using an OTG cable). This wasn't on an important system else I would have gotten the OEM dock for a little bit more.

I was having trouble getting it to work, and while suggesting a BIOS update first would have been helpful, they were happy to 2-day a tested and working dock to isolate the fault, and provide free return shipping on the test unit.

Of course, you don't get the built in charging ability, which for most users is a dealbreaker because an extra cord is too much to remember and "my laptop keeps dying ever since I started using this new dock you put in."

I've been struggling with the same thing in my environment, so I'm not sure I can answer this question for you. That being said, I've been doing a fair bit of reading on best practices for this issue and from what I can tell the general consensus is "what works best for your environment".

I've been organizing users and computers into their own OUs by department. That may not work best for your environment though. You may need to do by physical location, both in the office, and nationally/internationally.

I've been architecting mine to best be able to use GPOs and GPPs. Again, you'll want to think about your final setup here. Are you going to have printers mapped by location? Are you having specific printers for specific users or groups? Do your users move between floors? Between sites?

These are questions I've been learning to ask when thinking about AD design. I've been reading The Practice of System and Network Administration and I can't recommend it enough. Another book I've been reading is Group Policy: Fundamentals, Security, and the Managed Desktop. The Group Policy book is a great resource and poses different scenarios out to help with organizing AD which I found particularly helpful.

As for those "migrated" users, you'll likely want to put them in the proper OUs, it sounds like there was a merge or something similar in this environment. It may be best to just start over and rebuild the domain, but that's a big if.

We've gone all-in on Plugable USB 3.0 docks with our Surface Pro 4's and new Dell Latitude 3390 2-in-1 machines. They've been damn near flawless. This is after a year of suffering with SP4/Surface Docks.

Downside is it seems like a lot of the rendering is done on the CPU, so dragging windows across the external monitors can cause CPU usage to spike, but we haven't had any issues from it. Just something to note. All machines are specced with i5 CPUs at a minimum, wouldn't recommend anything lower with it.

Plugable support has been very friendly and helpful in the two times I've contacted them. They also offer discounts when you buy a "case" of docks (a case is 12). You have to e-mail support for that.

The Klein 11-in-1 Screwdriver is an amazing companion. The torx bit is perfect for the screws in HP desktops and the phillips bits have good bite.

Otherwise, you pretty much have that I would carry myself. I would add what /u/bitbucket87 mentioned for sure.

When I started learning it, I just setup a spare PC running Windows 7 as the server, and followed a bunch of random guides I found online. It was confusing as hell at first, but then suddenly one day it just clicked and i "got" it, but here's a list of resources that I know I've used for learning

/r/MDT and /r/sysadmin

https://msadministrator.com/guides/mdt-2012-step-by-step-guide/

https://mdtguy.wordpress.com/getting-started/

(both of those guides talk about capturing a custom image and importing that, but as mentioned above I like to just use the .wim file from the Windows 10 ISO and use that)


https://deploymentbunny.com/


https://deploymentresearch.com/

At one point I had an older volume of this book which was also really good

https://www.amazon.com/dp/9187445212/ref=cm_sw_su_dp


If you have any questions or anything you get stuck on, definitely feel free to shoot me a PM and I'll try to help at least push you in the right direction, otherwise /r/mdt and /r/sysadmin both have some very knowledgeable people in MDT as well

That is great for getting you comfy with the language but if you're like me you need to use it a lot / have a practical purpose in mind to help focus you so with that in mine, the follow-up book may be quite useful

One resource that I would strongly recommend is Building Virtual Machine Labs: A Hands-on Guide by da_667 which has a step-by-step guide to building a pretty great lab that can then be augmented very easily.

If the price is a bit steep ($63), the ebook version is up on leanpub for $20.

I highly recommend starting with The Phoenix Project. Don't pass by this book just because it says "DevOps" in the title. It quite specifically addresses the ideas of change management, why they are important for IT, and more importantly why they are important for the business.

Then once you're sure you're ready for Change Management, The Visible Ops Handbook is a more prescriptive book that will help you on the beginning stages of implementing Change Management.

College made me a more well-rounded individual. Science, philosophy, literature, mathematics, history, all these things helped me learn how to think.

College did absolutely nothing whatsoever to teach me how to be a systems administrator.

Want to get ahead in IT, out of that lowly helpdesk position? Here's what you do:

Get this book. Study it for a few months. Next, save a few hundred dollars and schedule an appointment to take the A+ Certification.

Congratulations, you are now professionally qualified to work a series of contract jobs or maybe a full time position fixing computer hardware all day. You will get these jobs by spending a lot of time on www.monster.com and filling out your resume completely. Update that resume every few days by moving words around to ensure your resume continues to be on the top of the new resumes list for recruiters to see. Congratulations, you've just advanced your career. It's still not a lot of money, but it's more interesting, and pays more. Regardless, you will be making significantly more money than at a helpdesk, and it's a lot less frustrating.

After this, I recommend you get this book and repeat the process. I should caution you, the Network+ is more difficult than the A+. With an A+ and a Network+, a hiring manager deemed me qualified for entry level at a web hosting company, where my career really took off. I learned everything I could, focusing on Linux administration.

Why Linux? Because there's too many Windows administrators and not enough Linux administrators. Your opportunities will be more lucrative and easier to obtain because there will be less competition.

My certifications, in order of receiving:

• A+
  
  
• Network+
  
  
• Security+
  
  
• RHCSA
  
  
• RHCE
  
  

You get what you pay for. I wouldn't touch a $40 cable tester, much less a tool kit.
You can spend money wisely, like buying a Klein 10-in-1 or 11-in-1 for PSTN/POTS outside work.
For precision drivers, Wiha is what you want- this is a nice portable set which works on the bench as well.
For crimpers I currently use an Ideal Telemaster but will be switching to an Amp. For cable testing I use a Fluke Cable IQ or LinkRunner.
Your tools need to be better quality that the amateurs that banged on it before you. You definitely don't want crappy tools to be holding you back.
If you are worried about theft, sign the tools out to individual techs and make them responsible for them. Part of the sign-out process should be an authorization to withhold the replacement cost from their paycheck if they lose anything.

Some literary resources you should find helpful. When in doubt, track down the best in your field and find out what they are writing/doing (Good Luck!)

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches https://www.amazon.com/dp/1617294160/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_c--CzbBZM4SFB

https://www.manning.com/books/learn-windows-powershell-in-a-month-of-lunches-third-edition

Virtual Labs
Building Virtual Machine Labs: A Hands-On Guide https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546932631/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_4b.Czb24JYXTM

Microsoft Books:
(I am positive you can scrape some useful AD information from this collection)
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mssmallbiz/2017/07/11/largest-free-microsoft-ebook-giveaway-im-giving-away-millions-of-free-microsoft-ebooks-again-including-windows-10-office-365-office-2016-power-bi-azure-windows-8-1-office-2013-sharepo/

If you're interested in change control, then I recommend The Visible Ops Handbok. It's an excellent, short, introduction to how to implement effective change control in an IT environment.

Yes, this is what i used. Excellent stuff. This guy also has a really great series of videos on microsoft Channel 9: https://channel9.msdn.com/Search?term=Johan%20Arwidmark#pubDate=all&ch9Search&lang-en=en

He also literally wrote the book on MDT Windows 10 deployment: https://www.amazon.com/dp/9187445212/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

A+ is pretty entry level so I'd suggest teaching from an A+ course book. Michael Meyers' book is where I'd develop lesson plans from. He goes above and beyond so he covers A+ plus additional helpful skills. Buying used textbooks off of Amazon can help as well. I even use them to give myself "refresher" courses.

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.

​

I went through Mike Meyers' All-in-One A+ Certification exam guide in about a months' time of reading a couple chapters a day, and averaged 95% on the tests. Started off feeling like it was mindlessly simple, then ended up learning a lot. Not to say this is the best exam guide to use, but it worked great for me.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/007179512X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

EDIT: The book also comes with the basic exams, that I took a bunch of times throughout. That helped a lot (but isn't a substitute for actually learning the material, because the practical application questions require you to actually know what you're doing).

Mike Meyers really is 'the guy' for Network+. I absolutely recommend any of his material(s). I read his book cover to cover in 2 weeks around 10 years ago and it really was absolutely everything I needed. I highly recommend getting the book as well as watching the videos to be honest:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CompTIA-Network-Certification-Seventh-N10-007/dp/1260122387/

Edit: Just realized you said you have SIX AirPort Extremes....your MSP sold you $1200 worth of home networking stuff, plus labor to set them up. Consider firing them.

Apple wireless gear is great for homes, terrible for business. Put them on Amazon used or eBay and sell them, and buy a 3-pack of UniFi access points instead (you might even come out ahead on this trade): http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-UniFi-Enterprise-System/dp/B005EORRBW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1417536036&sr=8-2&keywords=unifi

Install the UniFi controller app on your own PC to get started (you can always move it to a server later if needed, and the controller doesn't need to run 24/7 for the APs to function): http://www.ubnt.com/download/

Ubiquiti support is limited to their forums, which are great, and lots of people here and /r/networking use them, so you can find help if needed.

In modern computing & when dealing with a domain, you're rarely going to touch the Registry much less consider fucking with it exception for very rare circumstances or if you're a very very very very big organization.

There are some books this book is usually the standard recommended that I've seen. Otherwise, you're using sites like these from the source. (I wish that site wasn't so hard to find.

I also recommend, judging by the comments, reading this may be helpful: https://darksim905.com/blog/index.php/2017/02/17/rsysadmin-frequently-asked-questions-an-ongoing-series/

As another poster said, you don't necessarily need a SAN, these days you would be best off starting with storage connected over your network (VLANed and QoSed), you could start with a NAS device and use NFS datastores.


If you wanted to go for a SAN you can get an iSCSI SAN as also already mentioned Dell EqualLogic is a good option

A couple of books to read :

Scott Lowe et al. Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VMware-vSphere-Scott-Lowe/dp/1118661141

Storage Implementation in vSphere 5.0

http://www.amazon.com/Storage-Implementation-vSphere-VMware-Press/dp/0321799933/

The latter book is a good in depth look at storage from VMware press.

The main thing to be aware of for storage is IOPs and latency, these are the biggest performance killers as you scale. So design around desired IOPs (Input/Output Operations Per Second).

If VMware is the route you want to go then I'd watch the VCP-DCV video series on CBTnuggets.com. Keith does a great job walking you through setting up a nested ESXi lab and prepares you for the VCP550 exam.

I'd also pick up a copy of Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5

Please keep in mind that if you are wanting to get certified in VMware you'll have to take one of their mandatory [classes].(https://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/plan.cfm?plan=45082&ui=www_cert)

At work we use a Zalman Virtual Drive. Any .iso's stored on it can be emulated as an optical drive. Useful so instead of you burning tons of disc you just upload all the iso's on it and have it emulate like a usb optical drive is hooked up. Much easier to carry that around then tons of disc.

Network Warrior by Gary Donahue is supposed to be pretty good and highly recommended. It's billed as a sort of, "you've got your CCNA, now what?" real world approach to networking design/t-shooting/application.

We shifted to a couple of these Nyrius Aries wireless display options in our conference rooms. Plug it in, and it "just works" (which was very important for our non-techy users). So far, its worked great (we're a few months in).

​

We tried a Barco Clickshare, but after connecting to your PC, you had to install an extra piece of software from the thumb drive it created. which was "too much" to ask for our end users. ;)

Read this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Visible-Ops-Handbook-Implementing/dp/0975568612

It's short and provides excellent guidance through the process of stabilizing a fragile environment. It saved my life at my last job and ensured that my current job never got crazy to begin with.

We use these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009E6R89C/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They work well, are wireless, and don't require software to install on a persons machine. So it's great for when clients come in and want to put a demo up on our screens, all we have to do is give them an HDMI dongle to plug in.

I have ordered these two books.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/111821854X/ref=pe_385040_30332200_TE_item

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071765654/ref=pe_385040_30332200_TE_item

I read some of the linux bible in a pdf and really enjoyed it so decided to order the two books.

I have also picked up the centOS CBT nugget videos and will VM it at home and hopefully in a couple of months I will know whats going on in RH.

At the risk of sounding like I can't read (VGA, I know), I'm going to suggest a wireless HDMI device. Almost every new(er) laptop has HDMI, mini-HDMI, or DP/mini-DP. We've been using the Nyrius ARIES Prime wireless HDMI to 3 TVs and a projector and it's nearly flawless (except it's not VGA...). We've also gathered a few converters to get iPads and the above-mentioned alternatives converted into HDMI, and they all work really well.
See it on Amazon.

If you go down the VMware route (which is what I did):

Free online entry level training: VMware Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals

Free Automated Lab Builder: http://www.labguides.com/autolab/

CBT Nuggets or Pluralsight have training videos available (not free)

An excellent book on the subject is: Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 (Amazon UK) / Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 (Amazon US)

Ignore the poor reviews on the Amazon UK page, it's just a bunch of people whining about the Kindle price (check the previous edition, or the US store for more representative reviews).

Sounds like your boss is just being a dick.

However, from an ITIL perspective, Incident Management and Problem Management are designed to catch these "problems" and share the wealth of knowledge that was gained in order to prevent this problem from happening. Your boss is doing this wrong.

You may want to get him this book. It'll show him how to adjust his monitoring/tracking policies to actually have some benefit to the business. By adopting some ITIL processes, he can actually provide some value to the business, rather than being just a dick.

Don't send him that book if you are an 18-year old consultant who sets up BIND DNS servers w/o documentation.

https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Universal-Docking-Station-Ethernet/dp/B00ECDM78E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1481135935&sr=8-2&keywords=plugable+docking+station

These are cheaper and just work in my experience. Never had issues with these.

The external dell docking stations that are usb-c tend to be absolute garbage. The usb 3.0 ones also are garbage.

I've had better luck with this cheap plugable branded one than anything else.

A few ideas: For best results, do all 3.

• The 'Book' route. There are some very solid books that will give you a grounding in the fundamentals of what UNIX/Linux is and how to (generally) work with it.
  
• The 'Play' route: I am a big fan of Vagrant (free!) as it makes it extremely simple to get scratch servers of all flavors up and running. Once you have that, pick a howto and start playing. I would start with doing something you are interested in -- say, setting up a DNS or mail server, or maybe something more fun, and then find/follow a howto for it. Every time you get stuck, figure it out. For next level goodness, look at provisioning your Vagrant servers with something like Ansible, Chef, Puppet, or Saltstack.
  
• The 'Dogfood' route: Install Linux on your laptop or desktop and start using it for daily work as much as possible. This may not be as educational as it would have been some years ago, because there are more things that will 'just work', but you will still find some things you'll be forced to solve to get your work done.

Use a computer vacuum like this one http://www.amazon.com/Metro-Vacuum-MDV-1BA-DataVac-Computer/dp/B00006IAOR/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417703098&sr=8-1&keywords=computer+vacuum

it works alot better then can air and its cheaper then always buying more cans.

http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

Great, I'll grab a copy tonight!

As many other users have stated, it really sounds like you're dealing with a bunch of dinosaurs. For a guide on getting things right, I wholeheartedly recommend Jeremy Moskowitz's group policy book. http://www.amazon.com/Group-Policy-Fundamentals-Security-Managed/dp/1118289404 (you can get a taste on google books too)

For a more practical guide I think this is the best book:

http://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Gary-A-Donahue/dp/1449387861

"TCP/IP Illustrated Vol 1: The Protocols" (pdf)(amazon).

from wikipedia:

> TCP/IP Illustrated is the name of a series of 3 books written by W. Richard Stevens. Unlike traditional books which explain the RFC specifications, Stevens goes into great detail using actual network traces to describe the protocol, hence its 'Illustrated' title.

> The first book in the series, "Volume 1: The Protocols", is cited by hundreds of technical papers in ACM journals.

I just read the majority of this: Group Policy Fundamentals... - thought it was great. It filled in a lot of little gaps in knowledge I had.

> I have my A+ cert
>
>they recommended a segmented network. and I had to google what that even was.
>
>I am the "IT Guy" The previous "IT Guy" got me this job

You need to start reading cbks right now in all your free time. Even if you don't take the cert exams for the cbks below, it is knowledge you need to know asap.

​

I suggest these (in order):

​

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Network-Certification-Seventh-N10-007/dp/1260122387/ref=sr_1_3

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Server-Certification-Guide-SK0-004/dp/125983803X/ref=sr_1_1

https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Server-Complete-Study-Guide/dp/111885991X/ref=sr_1_4

https://www.amazon.com/Windows-PowerShell-Cookbook-Scripting-Microsofts/dp/1449320686/ref=pd_sbs_14_5/143-0552349-3403540

https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Server-Complete-Study-Guide/dp/1119359147/ref=sr_1_3

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-Guide-Fifth-SY0-501/dp/1260019322/ref=sr_1_4

You are luck that fans are electric motors, not electronic and power supplies are designed to supply more power that a static discharge can create.

You can use a pc vac,
https://www.amazon.com/Metro-Vacuum-MDV-1BA-DataVac-Computer/dp/B00006IAOR/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_60_tr_t_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=PB9T9ASTV4TZ2BJK3AA6
or compressed air, either from a can or from a compressor.

> http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-UniFi-Enterprise-System/dp/B005EORRBW/

Those UniFis are great, however the units you linked only have fast ethernet. The UniFi Pro and the 802.11ac one both have gigabit, however those units are around $250-300 a pop.

All the stuff listed is great. Something I think everyone should have in addition is

A Zalman VE300 or 400. This USB attached cdrom emulator let's you use any ISO on the HD in it as a real CD/DVD. I can't tell you how much of a time saver this has turned out to be.

http://www.amazon.ca/Zalman-ZM-VE300-Drive-Enclosure-External/dp/B007B5Y4BI

OP: This book is cisco-centric, but there's tons of good networking information in there. I bought it because I was in the same situation as you and it helped a lot, even though I ended up doing more system work than network work. Check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Gary-A-Donahue/dp/1449387861/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398779258&sr=8-1&keywords=network+warrior

https://www.amazon.com/Building-Virtual-Machine-Labs-Hands/dp/1546932631
By far the best resource you can get.
He had the unpolished/unfinished PDF for free for a while on his site but removed it when it was published.

If you are just starting out, begin with A+ (not for the certification, but for the knowledge). Buy this book, get some old desktop PCs, and learn everything about computers. Then, buy the Network+ book by the same author and learn about networking.

This gives you some basic knowledge of computers and networking. From there, try to do what I did, if you like. Just get a basic "office job", and then see if you can either work your way into their IT department, or offer to fix their computers for them.

Time Management for System Administrators: Stop Working Late and Start Working Smart

The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition

Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Windows Server 2016 Unleashed includes Content Update Program

The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services, Volume 2

The Practice of System and Network Administration: Volume 1: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT

Network Warrior: Everything You Need to Know That Wasn't on the CCNA Exam

On the cheap end, get a 3 pack of UniFi WAPs: http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-UniFi-Enterprise-System/dp/B005EORRBW/

Set them up with zero-handoff roaming: http://blog.gowifi.co.nz/2013/11/configuring-unifi-zero-handoff-roaming.html

On the expensive side, Meraki's a good choice.

Something like this? http://www.amazon.com/Nyrius-Transmitter-Streaming-Satellite-NPCS549/dp/B009E6R89C/ref=pd_sim_e_3/186-8481547-7454732?ie=UTF8&refRID=1B1E7585EBM6ZA0BCMA1

So something like this?

> http://www.amazon.com/Nyrius-Transmitter-Streaming-Satellite-NPCS549/dp/B009E6R89C/ref=pd_sim_e_3/186-8481547-7454732?ie=UTF8&refRID=1B1E7585EBM6ZA0BCMA1

We've been using the Pro version of this for our newer conference rooms. It's bulky, but it works well for full desktop. With a couple different HDMI adapters, you can use with any display output.

I recommend: https://www.amazon.com/dp/9187445212/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
and you can find more books here: http://deploymentartist.com/Books

Scott Lowe has you covered with the bible.

Buy this one first, then whatever else you want.

Next up, if you or your company can swing $30 a month is a Pluralsight subscription. This is extremely worth the money.

I can almost guarantee you that you could get 3 UniFi's , configure, and install them in the time it would take you to add another residential point to the mix. Not to mention the headaches you'll prevent for you and those on the floor using the wireless. As far as cost, 3 UniFi points will cost a very affordable $180 and take about 5 minutes to set up.

If you add a second, non commercial access point, you're going to have overlap, it's going to disconnect clients when they transition between networks (if they even do transition) and you have to manage each point individually. It will introduce issues you'll never see in your current setup.

We had a customer who went the residential route for their network. We were out there every damn week for wireless issues. It got so bad we fucking GAVE them a UniFi setup and installed it all for free. We've had not one call about it and it's been over two years.

I feel the Network Warrior book would be a good introduction for any of those "real-world" questions you may have. It covers many of the topics you may not be confident about.

> Any thoughts?

rather than type up shit, ima link you to a great book. https://www.amazon.com/Building-Virtual-Machine-Labs-Hands/dp/1546932631

amazon link so do the needful for affiliate links or buy somewhere else. Or do whatever. I'm not your dad.

please read. it will alleviate many of your headaches. http://www.amazon.com/The-Visible-Ops-Handbook-Implementing/dp/0975568612

i cant recommend it enough

However, the regular AP is $199 for a 3-pack:

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-UniFi-Enterprise-System/dp/B005EORRBW/

The PRO is $629 for 3:

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-Enterprise-System-UAP-PRO-3/dp/B00DJERLFG/

The original network was 3 AP's and an Edge router, built for 30 people. We hired ~60 people over a few months so we just keep tacking on AP's per 20 employees and it works awesome. The entire network could be done with PRO/AC but there's no reason to as it works flawlessly and we don't need any of the features that they offer (with just a regular AP we get roughly 1/4 mile of strength.... I'm having a tough time imagining just how far the 'LR' range goes).

I'm looking at this and this book at the moment.

Read these:
http://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Networks-5th-Andrew-Tanenbaum/dp/0132126958

http://www.amazon.com/The-Visible-Ops-Handbook-Implementing/dp/0975568612

klein I use this nearly everyday

https://www.amazon.com/Nyrius-Transmitter-Streaming-Projector-NPCS549/dp/B009E6R89C/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1540213515&sr=1-3&keywords=wireless+HDMI&dpID=41cCaC9e2ZL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

​

That is a link for wireless HDMI, I have use these with a HDMI Splitter for a few meeting spaces we have for a few years now.

We use a similar product by nyrius.

https://www.amazon.com/Nyrius-Transmitter-Streaming-Projector-NPCS549/dp/B009E6R89C

Works as intended as far as I can tell.

We've used one of these (first link) with the adapter (second link) to tackle this problem. It doesn't work for sound if you use the VGA. Our AV vendor is recommending one of these - http://www.wepresentwifi.com/wipg2000.html


WirelessHDMI

HDMI to VGA

I switched to Pluggable's and have fewer issues now, almost zero issues.


https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Universal-Docking-Station-Ethernet/dp/B00ECDM78E/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1502301580&sr=1-1&keywords=pluggable+usb+3.0+docking+station

That's not really a good intro book. It focuses too much on using PowerShell interactively and as a consumer of pre-existing code, rather than on how to actually program. The follow-up book, Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches, goes into more depth on using PowerShell as a programming language, but still not nearly as much as an actual "How to program" textbook would.

That being said, PowerShell in general is not a good beginners language for someone that's just starting to learn programming. There's a dearth of beginner-level resources, and it has numerous idiosyncrasies as a result of its split role as a shell and a programming language that don't map well to other languages and would simply be distracting to a novice.

Python is a much better language for someone just starting out. As an added bonus, it has a lot more applications than just Windows system administration, so learning Python gives you a tool that you can leverage throughout your technical career.

I'll third this. If you've got the budget, go for the Pro series 3-pack.

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-Enterprise-System-UAP-PRO-3/dp/B00DJERLFG/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1404403274&sr=1-2&keywords=unifi+ap+pro

If you don't have the budget, you can go with the lower-end units that don't support 802.3af/at (but they include their own PoE-type adapters).

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-UniFi-Enterprise-System/dp/B005EORRBW/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1404403177&sr=1-4&keywords=ubiquiti

Fuck that. Just read Visible Ops: http://www.amazon.com/The-Visible-Ops-Handbook-Implementing/dp/0975568612/
That will give you condensed version of everything you need to know about ITIL except one thing: A near universal truth about people who talk about ITIL is that they have horrible problems... horrible problems that they cannot fix on their own and think that ITIL is fucking magic that you can buy for your shit infrastructure.

The people doing it right are basically doing portions of ITIL yet have never heard of ITIL. One of the big goals of ITIL is to provide a common language for various people who "do it right" but it seems rare to find those instances. Don't ge me wrong... what ITIL proposes is good stuff. It's just the people who chase it seem to have no idea how to do it. Plus I wanted to save you the time and just point you at the cliffnotes version (Visible Ops).

You might look at a Nyrus Aires Prime, it's essentially a wireless HDMI cable. Personally I prefer to use a wired connection as the Nyrus can take a bit to negotiate resolutions and seems to drop its connection from time to time. The upside is it's only $200 where the entry level Clickshare is $1000. I haven't ever used a Clickshare myself so I don't know how they compare.

http://www.amazon.com/Nyrius-Transmitter-Streaming-Satellite-NPCS549/dp/B009E6R89C

I used it too. Passed in about a week. As others have said, it's mostly a vocabulary test. I would also recommend reading through http://www.amazon.com/The-Visible-Ops-Handbook-Implementing/dp/0975568612

I read this a year or so ago and it really helped in understanding WTF they're talking about.

I would also recommend you force yourself to disregard the word "service" through most of the lectures. For example, the 5 phases are:

1. Service Strategy
   
2. Service Design
   
3. Service Transition
   
4. Service Operation
   
5. Continuous Service Improvement
   
   When I first read through the official material, it's gets confusing because everything is Service. Remove the word Service from the list and it's much less confusing.

The Visible Ops Handbook, no one has mentioned ITIL yet and this is a great summary of what it is and how to implement it.