Tech Mentor Fall 2007 in Las Vegas was a fun experience. A conference built for Windows Administrators, it was a nice change of pace from some of the developer centric shows. We covered so many new technologies, from virtualization to group policy to Powershell, that it made my head spin. Even the general keynote on Windows Server 2008 by Mark Minasi covered so many topics that are new to this OS, you likely couldn’t keep up when taking notes. What was confirmed for me is that a Windows Administrator has to be a jack of all trades. Sometimes the simplicity of Windows lulls employers into a false sense of security that a Windows infrastructure is easy to manage and that you can get cheap labor to cover yourself. Windows professionals know that properly administering Windows is just as difficult as the same environment on another platform. On top of that, some other “OS” experts don’t have to be familiar with as many technologies as their Windows brethren. Little do these people know that when you do Windows support, you can expect any Microsoft product to be thrown your way. You may have to become an expert on ISA as well as Exchange. You don’t see the Cisco security expert managing messaging servers on top of firewalls very often. You may have to manage your DNS environment as well as be good on SMS. When does your UNIX DNS guru have to touch desktop application upgrades?
Don’t fool yourself or let others be fooled into thinking that technology based upon Windows is easy. It is certainly not. With Windows 2008 Server coming and major rollouts of Windows Vista in the near future for most companies, you need to be more engaged in new technology than ever before while still maintaining the job you do now. Employers should not take for granted the deep level knowledge their Windows administrators have and those administering Windows should never rest on their laurels. You are only going to have to dive deeper in 2008.