Deskside Support guy trying to grow my skillset

Due to COVID-19, basically my plan A was suspended indefinitely likely to idiot foreigners not following the quarantine guidelines in S. Korea. I have worked and spent too much time and money to not continue pursuing what I would like to do. Everything else is about to be suspended in my life personally and to a degree professionally.

That is the color, now on to the context.

I now work in what I would call IT Services, I assist managing logistics from Dell to then appropriate orders for one large client that orders around 20,000 machines that I personally image and then deliver to them. Its basically an acceptable wage position that is ultimately brainless made difficult because of the mechanisms involved.

My previous experience is mostly Deskside Support with sprinkles of Remote support, everything else comes down to my inter-personal skills in concordance with several small to medium quantities of "refresh" as well as actually carrying out the projects while not being the actual project manager.

My goal is to grow and diversify my skillset so I can garner a Plan B, in the event that Plan A can never be realized.

I am enthusiastic, with mild levels of desperate. I implore to you, my community, to assist me in growing my Plan B to some form of realistic goal. So, with that, what the hell am I trying to do?

I am currently looking at the following certifications, please advise where possible and critique where necessary.


MD-100 and MD-101

• MD- 100 Windows 10

Deploy Windows; manage devices and data; configure connectivity; and maintain windows.

• MD-101: Managing Modern Desktops

Deploy, configure, secure, manage, and monitor devices and client applications in an enterprise environment. Candidates manage identity, access, policies, updates, and apps. Personal Note: This looks to be the SCCM and Active Directory focused ends of things? They have retired the SCCM certifications as of present.

• AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

Basically a fluff certification, but will ease me into cloud related genre's

• AZ-103: Microsoft Azure Administrator

Basically the real Azure certification from my understanding, of course there are higher end certs but this would fall under what would be "reasonable".

• Project Management Institute - Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)
• ITILv4 - Foundation Level
• Google - Associate Cloud Engineer
• Amazon Web Services - Cloud Practitioner

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux - Systems Administrator

I dont know if I can achieve this one, my level of understanding in Linux is quite low.


My Plan B is as follows, to get a job with one of these larger companies, or a large international company that would desire for me to work in S. Korea. That is already a slim chance of happening, but as of right now upon self evaluation, the chance is 0%.


Hardware I have currently:

I have a T7810 Precision -
6 core 12 thread / 1 CPU socket unused. I believe its 6th gen.
16GB DDR4
2x 500GB 7200rpm
2x 128GB SSD
( I have about 10 spare 128GB SSD's)

6x Optiplex 9020's
i5 proc
2-4GB RAM
128GB SSD
(1 machine has a R5 430 OEM)
I am looking through decommission items for more half size cards to diversify my work sample for potential SCCM work.

8 Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch fed from a TP-Link Archer C50 which is currently fed via 802n travel Router as a hotspot router. I also have an AX50 router but its not currently located in my room. Ideally I realize having a Cat5/6 cable from the home router to my room would be ideal, if this NEEDED I will pursue it.

Desktop in my sig
Laptops in my sig

Lenovo Thinkcentre M93P SFF
16GB 2133Mhz @ 1600Mhz (OG Ram was dead)
i5 4570T
128GB SSD


I assume the Precision tower, 9020's and M93P will all be able to use Windows 10 if using the Windows 7 key.

The M93P is currently configured to work with my Gaming desktop with OBS-NDI plugin for capture and streaming to twitch. I will be grabbing a couple more 2x monitor mount/stands to make more efficient use of my desk space.

The Precision and 9020's are currently clean slate, and I have been asking/looking for more items from decommission to install into my work sample, such as NICs, GPU's, Sound cards, what ever.

I realize this direction is a hail mary, I need a little help from people that are either in the business or just have an interest in this type of work. I have never been the one to build infrastructure, or dabble with cloud related computing. I am not particularly smart or intelligent but I can work as hard as I must once I have the direction I need to complete a goal.

There is 2 more rubs in this problem. I only know a little bit of Hangul (S. Korean dialect) and am not in the best of shape. I am currently making great progress on going to the gym and I have some self study guides on learning Korean.

Also, I currently have the books for AZ-900 and also Amazon Web Services - Cloud practitioner.

Please help me out guys and gals, or point me in the direction to who or what community can give me better direction. Thank You, asking for help is not something I like to do, and if you made it this far, I thank you in advance as its quite a large read to the normal posts around here I expect...

Regards,

Reciever

 

Some additional context:

CIW certifications: Web Design, v5 Database, JavaScript
( I dont consider myself to have learned anything from these, they were just for transfer credits )

Windows 7, Configuring
MCTS: Active Directory, Configuring (2008)
MTA: Server Admin Fundamentals, Security Fundamentals, OS Fundamentals, Networking Fundamentals
A+, Project+, Security+, Network +

Bachelors of Information Technology

 

Lots of good resources and advice on r/sysadmin; that might be a good place to look/ask. It may be helpful to decide what direction you want to focus on, e.g. on-premises stuff vs. Azure/cloud/AWS/etc.

Being comfortable with a command-line interface is helpful, as is some ability to script. If you're going to work with a lot of Windows devices, consider learning PowerShell (buy PowerShell in a month of lunches, or see if your favorite search engine can find a free PDF...).

 

https://certcollection.org/

If you like free there's a ton of A-Z resources available.

You have a mix of hardware which I suppose if you're going down the MSFT rabbit hole is fine but, you could just beef up one of the desktops with say an 8 TB drive and max out the ram + a very high thread count CPU to manage some VM's and just virtualize all of the "hardware" in VM ware, Virtual Box, or whatever your interested in. This saves space, cabling, bandwidth, power, and so on.

I started out thinking MSFT was the way to go geez a couple of decades ago now and got off that carousel and hit Networking instead since it was a more natural aptitude and paid better in the long run by almost double - (3-4x w/ experience) If you go networking just dive into Cisco and get up to CCNP level and doors fly open for higher end positions instead of being the imaging dude tucked away in a closet doing mindless repackaging of systems.

 

I dont really surf reddit that much as the few times that I do it seems to be a dumpster fire of misinformation, though that is generally when looking at laptop feedback so maybe its just an issue with the category...

The hardware is the hardware, you still have a bad habit of ignoring the details in place of your own opinion.

I would rather run SSD's as thats what I have. Maxed this platform can use 20c/40t total but that should be a need for that yet. 6c/12t should be fine for start until I know exactly what I am getting into.

I dont think there is much harm in the baseline of just the OS cert (Win10 and its management counterpart) but I hadnt really planned to go further than that unless I decided to pursue Server 2016 or later 2019 but there would need to be a compelling motive for that.

That being said its why I dont bother with CompTIA anymore, its fine for interviews but more or less worthless in the field. That and they lobby against right to repair.

I was looking at AWS and Azure since they arent going anywhere, when I was first starting out I wasnt too sure about it long term but it looks to have staying power in the industry. CCNA was a route I considered in the past but was put off by my old school passing people via brain dumps and having all the candidates flunk their interviews. I suppose there is enough distance between me and them now though for reconsideration, I'll look into that.

I am also going to the gym for about 1.25 hours a day and studying Korean as well, so I have to divide up my time efficiently. To that end I was thinking of switching jobs for something remote, that would give me back about 2 hours a day of commute and if it is remote I can always sneak in a little study time here and there.

 

May I ask why South Korea?
I lived and worked in Seoul for 20 years after retiring from my job in New York City.
I'm back in the states about 7 years since leaving The Land Of The Morning Calm
Seoul can be expensive to live in as compared to most of the other areas of the country.

 

Answered via PM