Virtualization? Sure, it will help you learn about managing a Linux/Unix/WhateverIx box, but it won't help you in optimization.
Why do I say that? It won't teach you that SCSI rules over ATA for performance. It won't teach you that you can get better performance by separating your data from your transaction logs. It won't teach you about how easy it is (or hard) to recover from a hardware RAID failure vs. a software RAID failure (you can do the software in a VM, but not the hardware). It won't teach you the pain of recovering from dead hardware when you don't have identical hardware to replace it with (easier under Linux in some cases, much harder with Windows).
Then again, virtual machines are becoming the production machine of choice for many corporations. If you want to learn something useful, learn VMware ESX and XEN (and it's commercial iterations). So maybe you don't need to know anything about real hardware.
If you don't want to get tied down to a single vendor (in case they go belly up) or a single backup application (in case it fails miserably due to a bug), another option (other than betting on a P2P solution that may not be around in 12 months anyhow) is to back up your data to 2 vendors. Yes, it's roughly twice as expensive. But you can't say it's your life blood (your survival depends on it, right?) and then take the cheapest way out.
Not a perfect solution, but spending $50 a year to backup to one vendor, and doubling that to $100 to back up to two... doesn't seem so expensive.
I remember dragging and dropping the entire desktop (the folder that represented my desktop) from the install/boot drive to my second SCSI drive. I figured I'd break it all and have to reinstall, but it was worth the experiment.
OS/2 didn't break. Not only did my system still work right then during the move, but it worked fine after a reboot as well. Remember folks, this was before Windows 95, NT and all the spawn thereafter. Really nicely thought out system, without a marketing monster behind it to shove it down the throats of the consumer.
Shocked that you had to do entry level work coming out of college? You are the subject of the original post!
It's called Entry Level for a reason. It seems that the twenty-something generation doesn't get that concept and wants the same pay and perks as people with 15 years or more of experience. What a bunch of whiners.
When I got out of college in the 80's, entry level people worked in cubes. So did managers. So did everyone up to about a VP level. That wasn't an IT job, but guess what, I needed quiet and privacy too. Later in a software company, some levels of management had offices, but developers were still in cubes.
It wasn't until I worked at PeopleSoft in the mid 90's that I saw a company that put 90% of their people in offices. That's because they were very unique, had a ton of cash, and were trying to be different. That started to change in 1996 when they switched over to cubes for new flooplans going forward.
You have a real problem. You weren't listening when they told you why you go to college. Or if they said the wrong things, you had developed ZERO critical thinking capabilities, and swallowed the statements whole. I'm sorry, maybe growing up with Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate as a kid gave me the ability to question authority a little bit before I was 16....
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Virtualization? Sure, it will help you learn about managing a Linux/Unix/WhateverIx box, but it won't help you in optimization. Why do I say that? It won't teach you that SCSI rules over ATA for performance. It won't teach you that you can get better performance by separating your data from your transaction logs. It won't teach you about how easy it is (or hard) to recover from a hardware RAID failure vs. a software RAID failure (you can do the software in a VM, but not the hardware). It won't teach you the pain of recovering from dead hardware when you don't have identical hardware to replace it with (easier under Linux in some cases, much harder with Windows). Then again, virtual machines are becoming the production machine of choice for many corporations. If you want to learn something useful, learn VMware ESX and XEN (and it's commercial iterations). So maybe you don't need to know anything about real hardware.
If you don't want to get tied down to a single vendor (in case they go belly up) or a single backup application (in case it fails miserably due to a bug), another option (other than betting on a P2P solution that may not be around in 12 months anyhow) is to back up your data to 2 vendors. Yes, it's roughly twice as expensive. But you can't say it's your life blood (your survival depends on it, right?) and then take the cheapest way out. Not a perfect solution, but spending $50 a year to backup to one vendor, and doubling that to $100 to back up to two... doesn't seem so expensive.
I remember dragging and dropping the entire desktop (the folder that represented my desktop) from the install/boot drive to my second SCSI drive. I figured I'd break it all and have to reinstall, but it was worth the experiment. OS/2 didn't break. Not only did my system still work right then during the move, but it worked fine after a reboot as well. Remember folks, this was before Windows 95, NT and all the spawn thereafter. Really nicely thought out system, without a marketing monster behind it to shove it down the throats of the consumer.
When I got out of college in the 80's, entry level people worked in cubes. So did managers. So did everyone up to about a VP level. That wasn't an IT job, but guess what, I needed quiet and privacy too. Later in a software company, some levels of management had offices, but developers were still in cubes.
It wasn't until I worked at PeopleSoft in the mid 90's that I saw a company that put 90% of their people in offices. That's because they were very unique, had a ton of cash, and were trying to be different. That started to change in 1996 when they switched over to cubes for new flooplans going forward.
You have a real problem. You weren't listening when they told you why you go to college. Or if they said the wrong things, you had developed ZERO critical thinking capabilities, and swallowed the statements whole. I'm sorry, maybe growing up with Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate as a kid gave me the ability to question authority a little bit before I was 16....