s said:
Thanks Herb,
I am feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information. The amount of
concepts in the book O Reilly Active Directory 2nd edition, sites of
MS, DNS materials you gave are all very helpful but how do actual
system admins manage to get things done without feeling swamped by
information?
I will tell you the answer if you will first STOP and promise
yourself that you will read the next paragraphs several times
until you fully realize that it is literally the answer to your
question and not some trivial or casual response. (When
an expert tells you "how" they actually know or do something
the answer is usually very simple, so simple it sounds almost
unimportant.)
Think about doctors, both interns and senior residents or
very experienced teachers: They both learn the same
INFORMATION in medical school, but the main difference
is that the difference is that the true expert knows which
information to pay focus upon in each context.
So the true answer is that you learn the key points really,
really well (e.g., med school, being an intern) and EVERY
time you run into a difficult problem not immediately
obvious from what you know you STOP, and run through
both your knowledge base (those facts) AND your trouble
shooting or diagnostic procedures (which are also data
you can learn) until you find the problem or satisfy yourself
there is no quick answer -- this last though must NOT be
done until you actually carry out the procedure a few times
over.
Then, if there is still no answer you look it up, you hit
help (or look in the textbook), you ask someone for help
but doing so by giving absolutely precise SYMPTOMS,
no fudging, no approximation (for medical interns this
is vital signs and stuff but for IT people this is exactly
what you were doing, exactly the WORDING or NUMBERS
on the error message), and no assumptions.
Troubleshooting and diagnostics are a very teachable skill,
closely related to accelerated learning in general.
Two of the the most important steps are BEING EXPLICIT
(no hand waving, no assumptions) and DIVIDE and
CONQUER (simplify, simplify, simplify).
Even being explicit (which either sounds easy, it's not
always, or sounds like a platitude, it's not that either)
can be taught explicitly. (And I guarantee that if you
learn this explicitly you will think it does sound trivial
<grin> but it is not.)
BUT the most important skill to troubleshooting is that
you must believe you are smart enough to succeed, to
figure it out, to win -- and you must be stubborn enough
to keep going but not by doing the same thing over and
over.
Instead, you keep trying other methods (remember asking
others etc.) until you find an approach that simplifies the
problem (notice that if the problem is this hard you then
you are no longer looking directly for the solution but
rather an approach to finding it most of the time.)
All of this can be learned and done using explicit steps
(and an expert uses those same steps consciously when
the problem is hard.)
I find it difficult to remember everything and am worried
that I may be forgetting a small but important detail which may be
required.
Why worry? You will forget important details sometimes.
You will never remember "everything" so you just do your
best to remember those things that are truly important. In
fact if lives are in danger you build checklists etc. (e.g., even
the most experienced pilots use a formal checklist to prepare
an airplane for flight).
You remember what you can, you focus on the key points,
you look up the rest whenever you don't remember it.
Or you ask someone. Above all: You never allow yourself
to "stay stuck" but insist on either trying something new or
being even more explicit about challening your assumptions.
Would reading any MSCE books help?
Over time.
This is the reason that learning to Speed Read is one of the
most important skills to learn. And one that is not typically
taught in our standard education programs.
If you ask specific questions I can do so more easily.
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