Hmm. Well I'm at the end of my expertise on that lol. All I know is when I copy images in terminal on my Mac or Linux server I have to make sure it's not mounted
IT Certifications and Careers (Official Discussion Thread)
- Thread starter fendi_mane
- Start date
DF is BUSY
ididknotnothat.
hey, do any of you guys have experience with getcertified4less.com to buy a voucher(s) ?
is the A+ all multiple choice and performance/simulation based questions?
any drag-n-drop, fill in the blank, matching, short answer questions?
is the A+ all multiple choice and performance/simulation based questions?
any drag-n-drop, fill in the blank, matching, short answer questions?
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passed the 801 yesterday taking the 802 friday. Just a fair warning though the 801 has alot of network related questions on it
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both but the drag and drop questions are only in few.
What's everybody that is in the IT game's skills and specialties? Anybody deal with specific business verticals?
Data-Hawk
I have no strings on me.
.
Some tips since you are already in IT , but looking to transition to programming? Look for ways to automate things in the sysadmin/help desk area not just using vb script/power shell, but .NET or Java. I mean the simplest things you can think of and take it from there. Even if the program only saves you 5 secs. Those 5 seconds add up.
I got my big break doing 2 things( and was able to get out of the help desk ) :
1.) We have field users who rely big time on a certain 3rd party software, When they were having problems, they would have to call in. Give us their IP address and we would connect to their machines and look at the logs of the software. Mind you they are connecting through VPN and they were on Air Cards( signal always going up and down ) So it was a slow process, sometimes we couldn't even connect, they would become frustrated, have to read us the logs over the phone or email them to us. I though back to my Linux days and having to deal with logs all the time. I just simple wrote a VB.Net program that would capture the logs off their PC when they gave us the their IP address ( no need for us to connect to them now ) . 2nd After capturing the logs, my program would look for certain keywords and highlight them to make it easier for us to troubleshoot. something like ( word Fail would highlight in red , time/date in bold black , any success in green etc ). When the program connected it also performed standard troubleshooting for us ( reset certain settings , delete a couple of files ). Program knocked off anywhere between 5 - 20 minutes off a call. Even the vendor wanted to take a look at my program, I'm sure they could of programmed it themselves with no problems, but I thought of it before them...LOL
2.) I automated the configuration of setting up a field laptop ( Joining the laptop to Active directory, setup the user profiles , install all needed software ) Doing this manually would take a person almost an hour. I got it down 15 mins.
I automated a bunch of other things, but those stood out the most.
Another thing if you want to stand out from other programmers, Learn to properly design a User Interface. Learn Gimp or Photoshop. Most programmers just want to write code and don't want to deal with how the application actually looks.
Some tips since you are already in IT , but looking to transition to programming? Look for ways to automate things in the sysadmin/help desk area not just using vb script/power shell, but .NET or Java. I mean the simplest things you can think of and take it from there. Even if the program only saves you 5 secs. Those 5 seconds add up.
I got my big break doing 2 things( and was able to get out of the help desk ) :
1.) We have field users who rely big time on a certain 3rd party software, When they were having problems, they would have to call in. Give us their IP address and we would connect to their machines and look at the logs of the software. Mind you they are connecting through VPN and they were on Air Cards( signal always going up and down ) So it was a slow process, sometimes we couldn't even connect, they would become frustrated, have to read us the logs over the phone or email them to us. I though back to my Linux days and having to deal with logs all the time. I just simple wrote a VB.Net program that would capture the logs off their PC when they gave us the their IP address ( no need for us to connect to them now ) . 2nd After capturing the logs, my program would look for certain keywords and highlight them to make it easier for us to troubleshoot. something like ( word Fail would highlight in red , time/date in bold black , any success in green etc ). When the program connected it also performed standard troubleshooting for us ( reset certain settings , delete a couple of files ). Program knocked off anywhere between 5 - 20 minutes off a call. Even the vendor wanted to take a look at my program, I'm sure they could of programmed it themselves with no problems, but I thought of it before them...LOL
2.) I automated the configuration of setting up a field laptop ( Joining the laptop to Active directory, setup the user profiles , install all needed software ) Doing this manually would take a person almost an hour. I got it down 15 mins.
I automated a bunch of other things, but those stood out the most.
Another thing if you want to stand out from other programmers, Learn to properly design a User Interface. Learn Gimp or Photoshop. Most programmers just want to write code and don't want to deal with how the application actually looks.
DF is BUSY
ididknotnothat.
a lot of network related questions?
the 220-801 objectives list networking at ~27% of the exam, do you feel like there was more than that?
any specific topics per se?
Not just networking in the sense but knowing what kind of cable is a ethernet card
So I got my A+ certification about a month and I'm in the midst of applying for jobs now. At the same time I'm trying to figure out what cert I should go for next. I'm trying to decide between the Network+, CCNA, or Microsoft certs. I have seen a lot of you guys say the Network+ is useless. also seen som of you guys say getting a CCNA without any experience would be useless too.
Which way should I go?
Which way should I go?
All certs without experience can appear to have a diminished value. Also all the certs you mentioned are entry level. CompTia for example is a certification track mostly for novices or guys getting started. Most take CompTia (vendor neutral) for a foundation and then move onto vendor certs from Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, Juniper, etc to hone the specific skills necessary for their field or career (employers are more impressed by vendor certs). If you're looking for help desk / NOC positions than the certs you mentioned should be good. If you're trying to move up to a higher position such as an engineer than you're probably going to need more than that.
The tracks listed below are generalizations from what I've seen and not necessarily meant to be followed exactly. For example, you don't have to take Comptia or the Windows 7/8 at all.
Networking:
CompTia - A+/Net+/Sec+ (entry level help desk / PC tech) >>>> CCENT (entry level NOC) >>>>> CCNA (NOC Tech - higher tier) >>>>>>> CCNP (Jr. Network Engineer)
System:
CompTia - A+/Net+/Sec+ (entry level help desk / PC tech) >>>>> MCP (PC tech / help desk - but higher tier) >>>>> MCSA Windows 7/8 (experienced help desk, system tech, pc tech) >>>>>> MCITP/MCSA/MSCE Server/SQL (Jr. Systems engineer)
*MCITP was recently retired
As I've said before you can skip Comptia entirely and go straight for the vendor certs, but you might lack the foundation. Personally I've always viewed CompTia certs as confidence builders and not as job getters. A lot of people have them and ComTia really doesn't dive deep enough into the vendor way of doing things to be as helpful professionally.
Once you get to the CCNP or MCSA:Server/SQL level then companies will start to really think of you as engineer capable and not as just help desk or technicians. The only non-certified ways around this are to just have good work experience, great connections, graduate top of your class, or luck.
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I figured it out.
shyt was embarassing really. The thing was im walking this cat through it and we have a webex session going. to his computer. However he is doing this on the server with a monitor and keyboard connected so i cannot see that actual screen. I tell him to go into single user mode and he does (boot -s) which is correct. But then when he logs in he (for some reason) did a ctrl+K to send a break. So the whole time i''m sending him commands to type on the webex session he was entering the commands at the...wait for it.... OK prompt
yeah.. 
Either way I had to go onsite and see it for myself to realize what he was doing. There seems to be an issue with the controller now so we'll just have to build the shyt with the new disk
Lmao nothing worse than wasting timeI figured it out.
shyt was embarassing really. The thing was im walking this cat through it and we have a webex session going. to his computer. However he is doing this on the server with a monitor and keyboard connected so i cannot see that actual screen. I tell him to go into single user mode and he does (boot -s) which is correct. But then when he logs in he (for some reason) did a ctrl+K to send a break. So the whole time i''m sending him commands to type on the webex session he was entering the commands at the...wait for it.... OK prompt
Either way I had to go onsite and see it for myself to realize what he was doing. There seems to be an issue with the controller now so we'll just have to build the shyt with the new disk
I mean.... He's new and i was once that green so i cant fault him but still. I told him to do exactly what i told him to. Not sure why he felt he had to send a break.
Yeah can't fault him much. Rather deal with a newbie then a probie that whines to supervisors
Data-Hawk
I have no strings on me.
@kevm3 @el_oh_el @FreshFromATL @semtex
In case you guys didn't know, Microsoft just release Visual Studio Community edition (It's free ) which is the same thing as MS Visual Studio Pro
http://www.visualstudio.com/news/vs2013-community-vs
In case you guys didn't know, Microsoft just release Visual Studio Community edition (It's free ) which is the same thing as MS Visual Studio Pro
http://www.visualstudio.com/news/vs2013-community-vs