hello and welcome my friends to the CBT Nuggets course on drumroll please for systems administration our mission with this course is to transform someone with no experience or no idea of what systems administration is to someone who understands the responsibilities of a sysadmin has some basic concepts and a path to begin their journey down this amazing and profitable field my name is Garth Schulte thanks for joining us here at CBT Nuggets let's get rockin there's a really fun movie that you may have seen known as the matrix if you haven't seen it you should check it out because it's very technologically oriented and perfect for those of us in IT the basic premise of the movie is that the human race is living in a virtual reality known as the matrix controlled by the machine world or just batteries essentially an infinite supply of energy for the machine race the main character in the movie is a guy named Neil a hacker which by the end of the movie I like to think of as a super sysadmin the most popular scene in the movie is when a guy named Morpheus shows up and offers neo the chance to truly see what's going on he offers him a red pill and a blue pill and says if you take the blue pill your story ends and you'll wake up in your bed tomorrow believing whatever it is you want to believe or you can take the red pill stay in Wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes this is the crossroads where you and I are standing right now when it comes to systems administration so neo what'll it be you can take the blue pill right now wake up tomorrow as the standard user you are today and continue to operate your devices on the surface or you can take the red pill and we can go beneath the surface together to see how deep the systems administration rabbit hole goes I love that movie it never gets old and it always makes for a great analogy for those of us at the crossroads between user and sysadmin so what is systems administration if I had to define it from 10,000 feet up I would say that it is the configuration and management of the hardware software and operating systems also known as our infrastructure used to support users devices in the app locations they rely on to do their job so that's the what at a high level how about the why why should you become a sysadmin number one it's a great if not the best starting point in IT and that's because you're exposed to everything and everyone hardware software users and devices plus every team within an organization relies on us to ensure that our infrastructure is operating normally day in and day out it's also an in-demand role with fantastic pay we're talking about the original old-school Oh G role in IT it's been around the longest it'll continue to be around for a long time or until at least the Machine race rises up and takes over just kidding hopefully one of my favorite points to make and also an incredible perk of being a sysadmin is that learning on the job is the job this also plays really well into why it's a great starting point in IT because every single day you'll be problem solving troubleshooting playing with new technology all the while getting paid to do so it's also satisfying and rewarding you're helping people users teammates and even yourself as you configure build and manage processes and as you gain experience XP and level up you'll begin to automate those processes and that's where the fun really begins and last but not least here anyone can be the one it's a field with a low barrier to entry and I've seen folks go from zero to junior sysadmin in just six months time well you made it to the end of the first nugget which means I'm going to assume you took the blue pill congratulations our journey down the systems administration rabbit hole begins now I hope this has been informative for you and I'd like to thank you for viewing