Course: Network Admin to Site Reliability Engineer – Part 1: Network Admin

Site Reliability Engineers are often considered the link between software development and operations. In this course, you'll explore the principles of site reliability engineering as well as common concerns such as measuring and managing risk, and risk tolerance. You'll also learn how to ensure a satisfactory level of service by implementing Service Level Objectives, Service Level Agreements, and Service Level Indicators.

There are numerous tools available to Site Reliability Engineers to help with planning, managing, deploying, automating, and monitoring services and infrastructure. In this course, you'll explore these tools as well some the benefits of automation and the automation process. You'll also discover common pitfalls and failures, as well as how to manage of post-mortem incidents.

When it comes to production environments, administrators are typically responsible for the deployment, management, and the continuous updating of client and server systems. In this course, you'll learn about deploying and updating systems, and Windows 10 upgrade and migration considerations. You'll then explore upgrading the edition of Window 10, as well as the supported Windows 10 upgrade paths. Next, you'll learn about the options available for each of modern, dynamic, and traditional deployments. You'll then examine how to migrate files and settings, the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit, and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. Lastly, you'll explore Windows To Go, Windows Updates, Windows 10 servicing and support features, and the Windows Servicing Channels feature.

Cloud services are rapidly changing the nature of how technology services are implemented, and migrating toward a cloud-based model can provide many benefits to an organization. In this course, you'll explore the various cloud computing deployment models to understand the flexibility, speed, and infrastructure benefits of moving to a cloud solution. You'll also discover the benefits of cloud services models such as Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, Software as a Service, as well as Identity as a Service and Network as a Service.

Keeping your systems current is a primary concern of any organization, not only to ensure that your systems do not create vulnerabilities or expose weaknesses that could be exploited by attackers, but to ensure reliable and stable day-to-day operations. In this course, you'll explore the numerous Windows features available to administrators to simplify the management and maintenance of clients and server systems. You'll also learn about features such as Group Policy and Windows Server Update Services that allow administrators to centralize management and configuration of operating systems and users settings. Finally, you'll learn how to deploy and maximize these administrative features, as well as others that come standard with Windows.

Disasters can occur at any time and to any sized organization, so administrators should invest the time and resources to properly plan for business continuity and disaster recovery. In this course, you'll learn how to plan for business continuity, assess risk, and perform business impact assessments. You'll also learn about system resilience, sensitive data types, and data classifications. Lastly, you'll see a comparison of Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective, and examine what to include when preparing a disaster recovery training plan.

Critical information must be backed up and protected for a company's survival. In this course, you'll learn about onsite and offsite backup and the recovery solution. You'll examine the three main cloud providers - Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google. You'll then learn about considerations for local backup and bring your own device backups. Finally, you'll explore the cultural impact involved in moving to the cloud and how employee communication and inclusion could be vital to a successful migration.

For the vitality of any company, data protection solutions are essential. There are numerous types of built-in backup and recovery tools available in the Windows 10 operating system. In this course, you'll learn about features such as File History, System Image Backups, and OneDrive and how they can be used to keep data safe and secure. Next, you'll examine how to repair a Windows 10 PC using the Advanced Startup options, enable volume shadow copies, and create a recovery drive for access to the advanced start-up options. Finally, you'll learn about the various restore features such as System Restore, that can be used to restore a system to a previously known working version.

Distributed systems involves numerous computers that work together but appear as only a single computer to the operator. In this course, you'll learn about distributed systems can provide numerous benefits including performance, availability, and autonomy. You'll also explore distributed systems in greater detail, and learn strategies and best practices for monitoring them.

Principles and techniques are key in building a successful monitoring and alerting system. In this course, you'll explore the 'four golden signals' of monitoring while learning how to differentiate between symptoms and causes. You'll also learn about the guidelines for designing a monitoring system, questions to ask when creating rules for monitoring, and how to monitor for the long term.

Scenario planning helps site reliability engineers strategically prepare for uncertainties that may disrupt or negatively affect services. In this course, you'll explore scenario planning use cases and the strategies utilized to prepare for disasters. You'll examine the functions of Disaster Recovery Testing (DiRT) and Customer Reliability Engineering teams, which help manage the impact of a disaster or disruption. Next, you'll identify disaster recovery testing events and recognize how to plan and design tests for DiRT. You'll move on to describe the production incident lifecycle and how to minimize production incidents. You'll identify unmanaged responses, how to rectify untrained responses, and the activities used to train response teams. Finally, you'll examine how to test people and how they self-organize and interact using various role-playing and test scenarios.

Final Exam: Network Admin will test your knowledge and application of the topics presented throughout the Network Admin track of the Skillsoft Aspire Network Admin to Site Reliability Engineer Journey.