I’m a reasonably successful system administrator – having worked my way up from help desk/admin in a 1 deep IT department to my current position where I’m the Sr. Engineer having designed a distributed architecture using a few SANs, replication, and geographically dispersed clusters.
Although I have some unix background I’ve been able to come this way, for the most part, just focused on Windows NT/2000/2003 and associated products (Exchange, SQL, SMS, Citrix, and so on). My quandry is this:
There isn’t really much room left for growth with my current company – I feel my current position is at about the top of the chain they have available. On top of that – more likely than not when the time comes to move (in a few years) I will be sent to a smaller data center – as there’s nothing bigger available.
I have an opportunity to take a job, at a modest pay cut, as a SAN specialist. They would give me some top-rate training on the SAN systems and fibre channel switches, but I wouldn’t use my Windows architecture/sysad experience much to begin with. On the other hand – I’d be guaranteed, due to the nature of my specialty,to work in fairly good sized data centers, and maybe have my foot in the door to a pre/post sales architect position later with the vendor.
I don’t know anything about system architect career paths and don’t have a mentor available – is it worth it to focus on SANs to gain a truly in-depth knowledge and forgo system administration for a few years, or should I continue to specialize in all the Windows product lines and try to pick up some SAN engineering on the side?
