IT Skills Development

Top 10 Essential IT Skills:

Honestly IT profession has changed more in the last few years than ever before. Some of these changes have been advances in technology, while others have been spurred by government regulations.


Whatever the reason, IT is almost unrecognizable from what it was even five years ago. So how is an IT professional supposed to keep up with all these changes? It isn’t easy, but there are certain skills you should be focusing on to ensure you don’t get left behind. Here’s a look at the top 10 essential IT skills for today.
I hopes this will not make you bore , but gain some knowledge FOR SURE!

1. Windows PowerShell


A thorough understanding of Windows PowerShell is essential because it’s starting to show up in more and more Microsoft products. For example, in both Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010, the GUI-based management tool is built on top of Windows PowerShell. This means that any administrative action you can do from the GUI, you can also do from the command line or through a Windows PowerShell script.The simple fact that you can use Windows PowerShell to administer various Microsoft server products isn’t enough to qualify Windows PowerShell as an essential skill set. The real reason learning Windows PowerShell is essential is because the GUI-based management in many of the newer Microsoft server products is only sufficient for performing basic administrative functions. Anything beyond the basics, you’ll need to do from the command line. As such, it’s increasingly difficult to be an effective administrator unless you understand and know how to effectively use Windows PowerShell. Guys start learning Windows Powershell , by this way we will explore ourself to learn and love Lnux, Unix or any OS whose base is built on lots of command shells.
 
2. Server Virtualization


There’s practically no denying that almost every organization uses server virtualization to a certain degree. Therefore, understanding how server virtualization works is an essential skill for any network administrator.
There are quite a few different server virtualization products on the market. You don’t need to learn the ins and outs of every single one, but it’s important to achieve competency with at least two different server virtualization platforms. Learning at least two platforms will help you understand how server virtualization really works and get a good feel for the standard features and functions of the various virtualization products.
Server virtualization is a science in and of itself. There are IT professionals whose entire careers are based on server virtualization. While it’s unrealistic to expect a general network administrator to have a comprehensive understanding of server virtualization, it’s a good idea to understand resource allocation, how to virtualize a physical server, and how to manage and maintain your virtual servers.

3. Failover Clustering


Failover clustering has been around for years in one form or another. Even so, it has only recently evolved into an essential technology. While it obviously adds fault tolerance to network servers, there are a couple of additional factors that suggest failover clustering has become essential.

First, most major organizations impose Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on their IT departments. The only way IT can realistically expect to adhere to those SLAs is by putting redundant solutions in place and this is what i totally agree and believe.

Another reason failover clustering has become essential is the rampant use of server virtualization. In the old days, if a server were to fail, the outage probably wouldn’t amount to much more than a nuisance. These days, because most organizations use server virtualization technology, the failure of a single server could cause the failure of many virtual servers. As such, server failures are far more critical than ever before, so it’s important to take steps to prevent them.The decline in server hardware prices is one last reason failover clustering has become an essential skill. For a long time, clustering solutions were cost-prohibitive. Today, server hardware is relatively inexpensive, so there’s no reason not to cluster your servers.


4. SAN Management


Another critical IT skill is storage area network (SAN) management. It was debatable whether to include SAN storage on a list of essential IT skills. After all, SANs are expensive and learning about SAN storage may not be essential for administrators in smaller organizations who will most likely never have to even touch a SAN.While this is a valid point, it has started to become far less common for servers to use direct-attached storage. Instead, multiple servers often connect to a single storage pool. This is especially true for organizations that rely heavily on server virtualization.All of the virtualization hosts in my organization store the virtual hard drive files associated with virtual servers residing on those machines on a centralized storage array. Even though I don’t use a SAN, many of the storage management techniques I do use are similar to the techniques used in larger environments that make use of SANs.Another reason to include SAN storage on the list is because cloud-based storage was a major topic at Tech•Ed this year. Almost all of the cloud storage providers are operating SANs. If you subscribe to cloud-based storage, you may end up having to know some basic storage management techniques.

5. Compliance


Many IT professionals hate dealing with compliance issues. For many years, some could avoid having to deal with regulatory compliance by simply avoiding companies within certain industries. Today, that strategy no longer works.One reason the strategy doesn’t work anymore is because jobs have become so scarce. IT professionals who previously avoided working in heavily regulated industries may suddenly find themselves having to work in such an environment. If this happens, then it’s essential you have at least some background in IT compliance.{Compliance is either a state of being in accordance with established guidelines, specifications, or legislation or the process of becoming so}.Another reason why it’s become more difficult to avoid dealing with compliance issues is the predominance of more laws. Just a few days ago, for example, a huge financial reform bill was passed. It remains to be seen how all of the new regulatory requirements will impact IT professionals. Even if you don’t work in the financial services industry, however, there’s no denying that IT professionals are having to deal with more and more regulatory issues from one year to the next.

6. Recovery Techniques


Probably the strangest-sounding skill on this list is recovery techniques. However, there’s actually a good reason why recovery techniques are an essential IT skill. Disaster recovery used to be a lot simpler than it is now. A few years back for instance, disaster recovery might have involved inserting a tape, selecting the files that needed to be recovered, and clicking Go.

Today, things aren’t quite so simple. Almost every Microsoft server product has its own unique disaster recovery requirements. For example, you wouldn’t use the same techniques to back up and restore Exchange Server as you would use to back up and restore SharePoint. Server products such as Exchange, SharePoint and SQL Server all have very complex rules governing the way information must be backed up and restored in order to be successful. Furthermore, these criteria can change dramatically if the server that’s being backed up or restored is a part of a failover cluster or a distributed deployment.

Realistically, most IT professionals probably aren’t going to be intimately familiar with all of the intricate requirements associated with backing up and recovering various server products. Even so, it’s important to understand that such products have unique requirements. It’s equally important for IT pros to familiarize themselves with those requirements.

7. Traffic Management


For a long time, traffic management meant setting up firewalls to forward certain types of traffic to specific servers, while blocking other types of traffic. Those types of configurations are still important, but traffic management is going to take on a different meaning and become much more critical in the not-too-distant future.Eventually, most applications will likely run in the cloud. That means not many applications will be installed locally. As that scenario develops, organizations will find Internet bandwidth has become a scarce commodity. They’ll have little choice but to begin various bandwidth-throttling techniques. Realistically though, you can throttle different applications in different ways. After all, some applications are more critical or of a higher priority than others. The need for prioritizing cloud-based applications will require IT pros to learn all about traffic shaping.

8. IPv6


Another essential skill IT professionals will need to learn is IPv6. Microsoft tried to push IPv6 when Windows 2000 was released more than 10 years ago, but there’s a good reason why it didn’t turn into a mainstream technology a decade ago.

Back then, the dot-com boom was in full swing and people were attaching to the Internet in record numbers. This resulted in a critical shortage of IP addresses. Many believed this shortage could only be solved by transitioning to IPv6, but the problem was ultimately solved by Network Address Translation (NAT)-based firewalls.

NAT firewalls are still widely used today, but it seems NAT was a Band-Aid solution for a problem that will rear its ugly head once again in the near future. NAT works great as long as the computers behind the firewall don’t need access to the outside world. More often, however, people expect universal connectivity regardless of a computer’s location.

IPv6 solves the IP address shortage, and gives every computer a publicly accessible IP address. Furthermore, IPv6 includes security mechanisms that don’t exist in IPv4 without the aid of supplementary protocols such as IPSec. Its a wide topic to discuss, soon will blog seperate post on it.

9. Conferencing


Given the state of the economy, more organizations have begun foregoing travel in favor of online meetings. These online meetings take many different forms. It may be nothing more than a voice over IP (VoIP) conference call, or it may involve a video conference, or even a full-blown collaborative session. In any case, administrators are often surprised to learn that if they want to implement conferencing servers in-house, they have to learn about things that only telephony professionals previously cared about. Latest IT topic i.e.{Exchange Server and Office Communications Server} are into a full-blown collaborative conferencing solution.
10. Mobile Computing


The last essential skill is mobile computing. Even though mobile computing has been around in one form or another for at least 15 years, it has only been recently that people are really starting to take it seriously. Many mobile devices have come and gone. Ultimately, most have never really caught on with the masses. There are always factors holding back widespread adoption.Some of the devices were too expensive. Others were overly complicated. Some devices simply did not have the computing power or the applications required for them to be truly useful. Expensive data rate plans also have contributed to the demise of many a device.
But today, almost everyone has a smartphone of some sort. Modern smartphones are inexpensive, well-connected and capable of running a wide variety of applications. As such, mobile-device connectivity to corporate networks has become a major issue. It’s important for IT professionals to understand the security implications associated with mobile-device use, as well as the safeguards required when allowing employees to use mobile devices.{Recently most popular Smartphone Blackberry -RIM is under serious talks with  security agenices of different countries on encrypted data security.}


Source:Internet

Windows Server tools

1: System Center:Capacity PlannerIt might seem strange to start out by talking about a tool that Microsoft has discontinued. But I’ve found System Center Capacity Planner to be so helpful, I wanted to mention it anyway. In case you are not familiar with this tool, it’s designed to help make sure your proposed server deployment will be able to handle the anticipated workload.According to Microsoft, the System Center Capacity Planner is being replaced by the System Center Configuration Manager Designer (which I have not yet had a chance to use). The end of life announcement for System Center Capacity Planner indicates that it is no longer available, but at the time of this writing, you can still download it from TechNet, as well as from other third-party sites.

2: PowerShell:Microsoft’s Server products have evolved to the point that you can perform almost any administrative action from the command line by using PowerShell. Most of the newer Microsoft Server products include management tools that are actually built on top of PowerShell. This means that any management tasks that can be performed through the GUI can also be performed from the command line or performed through a PowerShell Script. You can download PowerShell 2.0 from Microsoft.


3: Best Practices Analyzer:The Best Practices Analyzer isn’t really a single tool, but rather a series of tools designed to analyze your server deployments and ensure that they adhere to Microsoft’s recommended best practices. Microsoft provides versions of the Best Practices analyzer for Exchange, SQL, Small Business Server, and other Microsoft server products.
4: Security Configuration Wizard:The Security Configuration Wizard  is designed to help you to reduce the attack surface of your servers. It analyzes the way in which your servers are configured and then recommends how you can change various aspects of the configuration to make them more secure. The Security Configuration Wizard is included with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but you can also download a Windows Server 2003 version.



5: ADSI Edit :Another of my favorite tools is ADSI Edit. ADSI Edit allows you to manually edit the Active Directory database. Whenever someone asks me about ADSI Edit, I usually compare it to the registry editor. The registry editor allows you to manually change various configuration parameters within a system, but if you use it incorrectly, you can destroy Windows. ADSI Edit is similar: It gives you free rein over Active Directory, but if you make a mistake, you can destroy it.I have found ADSI Edit most useful for working with Exchange Server deployments. It is sometimes impossible to remove Exchange public folders through conventional means. When this happens, you can use ADSI Edit to get rid of the folders that the Exchange Server management tools leave behind.


6: DCDIAG:Although domain controllers are usually fairly reliable, problems do occasionally occur — particularly with regard to Active Directory replication. The DCDIAG utility, which is included with Windows Server, lets you run a full series of diagnostic tests against malfunctioning domain controllers.


7: Microsoft File Server Migration Wizard:As time goes on, server hardware continues to improve. Some organizations are finding that they can decrease management costs by consolidating their aging file servers. The Microsoft File Server Migration Wizard, which is included in the File Server Migration Toolkit, helps organizations merge the contents of aging file servers into DFS root.



8: LDIF Directory Exchange:The LDIF Directory Exchange utility isn’t exactly a tool I use every day. But it has gotten me out of a couple of jams, so I wanted to include it on my list of favorite tools. LDIF Directory Exchange is a command-line tool for importing and exporting Active Directory objects. As with ADSI Edit, you have to be careful when using this tool because you can really mess up your Active Directory if you use it incorrectly. Even so, it’s worth its weight in gold because it allows you to do some amazing things. For example, you can export all the user accounts from a domain and then use the resulting text file to create those same user accounts in a different domain.The LDIF Directory Exchange utility is built into Windows Server. You can access it by entering LDIFDE in a command prompt window. Windows will display the command’s full syntax along with the various command-line switches you can use.



9: Server Core Configurator:So far, all the tools I’ve talked about are provided by Microsoft. However, there is one third-party tool I want to mention. Server Core Configurator is an open source tool written by Guy Teverovsky.Any time you perform a server core installation of Windows Server 2008, you must perform certain post installation tasks before the server is ready to use. Microsoft offers some PowerShell scripts, but performing the initial configuration process from a command line can be tedious. The Server Core Configurator simplifies the provisioning process by providing a simple GUI you can use for the initial configuration.


10: Microsoft Application Compatibility Manager:The Microsoft Application Compatibility Manager (Figure J) is part of the Application Compatibility Toolkit. It’s designed to ease the transition from one version of Windows to the next by compiling an inventory of the applications running on your desktops and determining whether each one is compatible with the new version of Windows.

Source:- Internet