Skills needed to work in datacenters?

I hope this is the right place to ask: I've been interested in computers and web hosting for many years. I can manage my own VPS servers but I like real hands on work, like building computers and connecting things. What are some things I should know or study or learn to do that would help me get a job working for a datacenter in the future? Does stuff like that require a college degree? What certifications should I try to get? I just think a career in building servers and networking and general datacenter operations would be fun!

It really depends on what you're trying to do and where you're trying to work.  Large datacenters have a variety of jobs including network engineers, L1/L2/L3 support,  database administrators,  programmers/developers for backend systems,  then marketing and sales.   One datacenter may have completely different requirements than another.   A datacenter could be private or public.  Private datacenters are going to be more focused on a certain specialty (hardware/software suite) while public datacenters are going to be more general.

For technical support, L1/L2 probably don't require anything special as long as you know the lingo, can demonstrate the skill set, and show experience.  L3 and systems administrators would most likely require certifications or a number of years of experience but not necessarily a college degree.   Certifications required would depend on the company, especially dependent on what software they use.  Most certifications can be obtained directly from the software company (Microsoft, Redhat, Oracle, SAP, etc) or from a school.  Many community colleges will have options for obtaining certifications.

I think your best bet is to reach out to a few datacenters near you, or where you could see yourself, to see what type of certifications or experience they recommend.  A community college may be a good place to look too, usually very affordable and they may have work (or internship) programs with a company that can give you experience.

Have a look at some real jobs and see what they're asking for. I just picked this page at random from Google: http://www.indeed.com/q-Datacenter-Linux-Administrator-jobs.html

You will know that every field require one type of qualification, as per my knowledge you must be network enginer or done Hardware courses advance one and having Expericience which will suitable for getting Job in Data centers

The base skill you need is to be able to lift a 4U server (~100lbs) by yourself. Anything else can be taught.

Seriously, I've gotten a lot of data center job offers over the past few years and when I decline the jobs (entry level pay would be a huge pay cut for me) they usually ask me if I know anybody interested and when I ask them what they are looking for the majority of them tell me they just want somebody who can rack servers and they can teach them everything else later.

Most "server monkey" jobs are considered entry level and don't require a whole lot of education or experience. That being said, being a "server monkey" myself, I work in a corporate data center and in addition to supporting the server hardware I'm also a Windows admin so that kind of thing requires some education and experience in addition to being able to lift up servers over your head (or being able to operate a server lift if you need to rack a 200lbs blade chassis).

It all boils down to how much money you want to make.

If you don't mind making $16-$20/hour then you can get by with a high school diploma or GED if you can rack and stack servers at a public data center.

If you want to make closer to 6 figures as a server monkey though, then you'll need some advanced skills/knowledge and a few years experience on your resume (my advice is grab one of the entry level jobs or get an internship for a year or 2 then go grab a job doing the same work for a lot more money in a private data center).

I wonder where are you from. In the Eu is pretty hard to work in a data center without previous experience, but maybe in the US the things are different. Try working in a computer repair shop if you don't find any data-centers in your city. They do the stuff that you mentioned OP.

Like with all jobs:

1. Actual interest in the field, not just another clown looking for a job cause they read IT was the new boom e-con-o-me.

2. Relative experience - this can be an actual job previously, or it can be an internship (more folks should do these / apprenticeships).

3. Good grasp of a bucket full of stuff related to DC space - software stacks, routing, etc.   All the mechanicals in DC are off limits / dealt with by electricians and HVAC folks with certs and bonding.  Your domain is the NOC monitoring, intaking gear, pick and packing, hardware builds, gear swaps, BIOS familiarity, racking all sorts of stuff,  familiarity with tracking, monitoring and other systems (usually need on job training for their systems).

4. Should have a good clean background, and good real references since you have access to so much stuff that just anyone can't be trusted around.

5. Reasonable fitness.  50 pound lifting is about limit OSHA tolerates normally.  So folks superman lifting 100 pounds are doing so recklessly in my opinion.  That's a two person lift or three person more realistically or proper mechanical lifts.   Too many out of shape folks in DCs.

6. Ability to juggle multiple tasks and task shift as needed without getting frazzled and grumpy.

Certifications are good and dandy.  Tech schools / trade schools / community colleges / online courses for that.  But certs like most education can be really overrated unless it's a course that the facility folks are familiar with and operate in spirit of.

Must be able to tolerate cold blowing air all year round and willing to wear ear mufflers..

Downtime, overnights, etc. too often are keep busy learning so you don't get pruned times.

After more thought I guess I wouldn't mind being a 'sever monkey' in a DC if it meant I could learn skills required to move up and have more responsibility later than just racking and connecting servers. Does anyone here work in a datacenter?

Wambo said:

After more thought I guess I wouldn't mind being a 'sever monkey' in a DC if it meant I could learn skills required to move up and have more responsibility later than just racking and connecting servers. Does anyone here work in a datacenter?

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I reiterate most of what has been said in this thread, I would have to say that one of the biggest tools you can have under your belt would be pre-existing knowledge of the environment and tools you'll be working with. Thinking and troubleshooting on the fly is a critical requirement when working inside a datacenter, and depending on which datacenter you decide to work in, you may be tasked with other basics aside from just ("Racking & Cabling"). If you work for a colocation provider (for example), where some if not most customers rely on basic entry-level technicians to handle their equipment and perform tasks remotely, then you are going to need to have knowledge of how to perform these tasks expeditiously and correctly. 

Your best option (as others have said) would be to reach out to datacenters near you and see what their requirements are, and pick one that best fits your existing knowledge in the field and then you can expand and grow your knowledge from there. 

Good luck!

Please add this:

Ability to work under pressure despite of skills you might have

Even though I haven't tried to be one, but I have a friend who is hired by Telkom (national telecommunication company at its data centre) and I know he was struggled when there were disasters (fire)

Working in a DC for about 2.5 yrs. Did pretty much everything: building and racking servers, dealing with customers, working with switches and routers (BGP), coding on internal systems (PHP, python), inventing new products, etc.


As a few have already said, I like to see more folks really being interested rather than wanting a job in IT since they enjoy playing computer games...

Amfy said:

Working in a DC for about 2.5 yrs. Did pretty much everything: building and racking servers, dealing with customers, working with switches and routers (BGP), coding on internal systems (PHP, python), inventing new products, etc.


As a few have already said, I like to see more folks really being interested rather than wanting a job in IT since they enjoy playing computer games...

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I don't play computer games. I'm somewhat young and should think about my future (so they tell me) and it seems like a career or field that I would be interested in. I just realized that there are actually no datacenters near me according to http://www.datacentermap.com/ but I want to move when I can anyway. Where is the datacenter you work at located? I've never even been inside one, only seen videos on youtube. Maybe I should try to schedule a tour sometime if I am near one.

Where do you live? There are probably private data centers near you and you don't even know it. Most private data centers take steps so they aren't recognized as data centers without close examination. Heck, the DC I work at doesn't even show up on Google Maps unless you use the Street View.

KuJoe said:

Where do you live? There are probably private data centers near you and you don't even know it. Most private data centers take steps so they aren't recognized as data centers without close examination. Heck, the DC I work at doesn't even show up on Google Maps unless you use the Street View.

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Some datacenters are even disguised as houses! Wait a minute...

Steven F said:

Some datacenters are even disguised as houses! Wait a minute...

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I don't think those data centers are hiring. I'm mainly talking about the data centers that do billions of dollars in transactions a year and where minutes of downtime results in millions of dollars in losses.

CCNA/CCNP

RHCE

Also you might be sorely disappointed a lot of these jobs don't require you to go to the data center.   There's also power and mechanical, structured cabling, as routes towards working in a data center.

Also remember you're talking about a small piece of the system.  There's trading floors, banks, corporate networks, military, and a vast host of other companies outside the web hosting industry that you could have network jobs with and never see a data center.