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Ask Slashdot: Getting Exchange and SQL Experience?
First time accepted submitter william.meaney1 writes "I'm the sole network admin at a 25 person company. I was lucky enough to get the opportunity less than a year after getting a technical degree in IT. I've had some huge opportunities here (for a first time network admin). After my schooling, I went ahead and I'm now CompTIA A+, Network+, and CCNA certified. Now, being hired out of school, I was grateful for the job, and the boss hired me for peanuts (Less than $30,000/year) I've been living at home, using that money for loan payments, car payments, and certification expenses. I've started looking for other work, and I feel more than qualified for most of the requirements I'm seeing. The big hurdle I'm coming across that EVERYONE seems to want is experience with SQL databases, and Microsoft Exchange. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for getting usable experience on a low budget. I have some SQL experience, I deployed a source control program here that uses a SQL express backend, but what else do you need to know for database maintenance?"
Install some critical app (without permission if necessary) on your current corp. network that uses SQL server -- Presto, instant experience.
Nothing beats hands-on experience, so get some on the cheap. Get an MSDN Technet subscription; for $199 a year, you'll get free personal/learning licenses of SQL Server, Exchange, and just about every other big Microsoft program. Play with them. Set them up. Try to break them, then fix them.
Offtopic, but I'd drop the A+ certification from your resume. When we get applicants with A+ listed, then we assume that they don't know enough to know that it means nothing and we bin them.
I see this as a three step process:
(1) Use the other resources mentioned above to teach yourself SQL server and Exchange.
(2) Find a nonprofit agency in your area who needs help with their computing environment. Offer to help them on a volunteer (ie, unpaid) basis. Be sure this help includes working with SQL Server and Exchange. Be picky about this. Do not get involved with an agency where the work will not help you build your practical skill set. Also be sure that there is someone at the nonprofit agency who is willing to act as a reference for you at some point in the future. You don't have to explicitly ask this upfront, just be sure that the senior most person you can find knows enough about who you are to say nice things about you.
(3) Use this real life experience to help you land the next job on your way up the ladder.
(4) Optional: Continue working with the nonprofit agency if it makes you happy.
BTW... you can do steps 1 & 2 in parallel, ie start looking for a nonprofit while you are learning SQL Server and Exchange. Both steps might take a little time.
Start at the beginning. Too many SQL users (including developers!) haven't a clue how to properly use it. As a DBA, you'll be called upon to provide that, among other things. So start with the theory and practice of SQL. Especially since it actually is founded upon fairly solid theory, meaning that if you know the theory the practice suddenly becomes a lot smoother. The rest will follow from that.
See db-class.org for a MOOC intro. If you've worked your way through that you'll know where to start looking for learning about the DBA-type things you'll need to do: Schemata, indices, query tuning, and then the subtler tuning like moving tables and indices around on disk or solid state or in-memory or what-have-you. And the basic knowledge will be useful any time a user asks for your DBA-hatted help.
As to exchange, it's crap, and you'll be better off knowing less about its internals. It's hairy and quirky and apt to eat your mail. In fact, it's not even a proper mail server: It's a suitable server for outlook, just as outlook is not a proper email client, but a suitable client to exchange. The combination means a lot of interop trouble that could've easily been avoided.
Since you'll be called upon to make it play ("nicely" is not in the books) with the rest of the world, again, start from principles. Learn how to set up an MTA, know how SMTP and IMAP work. Send yourself an email by telnet. Know what the various headers do. That MTA set up with matching IMAP server, don't have to be exchange at first, in fact it's better not to. Once you know how the rest of the world does it, you can learn how exchange fscks it all up, and how to keep the thing on a leash.
For bonus points, learn how to provide everything that exchange purports to provide ("collaboration" and calendaring and "syncing" and so on, as well as half-assed not-entirely-unlike-email type "messaging") using open-source software. Get that down smoothly (there are several ways and alternatives available these days) and you have another selling point: Providing a better experience with less cost.
That was what you're looking for, right? Points to sell yourself with?