IT Support, Networking and Infrastructure

Every organisation that owns a laptop also owns an operations problem. Someone has to buy and prepare the machines, keep their operating systems patched, run the file server and the directory that says who may sign in, keep the network carrying traffic, and pick up the phone when any of it stops. SFIA, the skills framework many employers use to write job descriptions, gathers this labour in its delivery and operation category: putting systems in and taking them out, administering operating systems and system software, supporting networks, running infrastructure, and the service-management skills that govern how incidents, problems and changes are handled. It is less glamorous than development and less discussed than security. It employs a great many people all the same, because the machines never stop needing attention.

Thirteen topics, five jobs

The topics follow the way the work splits once a team is large enough to specialise. In a ten-person firm one person does all of it; in a larger organisation each row below is somebody's job title. The exam column comes from the published blueprints, and an exam appears against a topic only where the topic is one of its named domains.

Exam ladders and where to start

The exams form four short ladders rather than one long one. Tech+ sits before all of them and asks only that you can say what computers and networks do, while A+, two papers with hardware and networking in the first and operating systems and procedure in the second, is still the credential support adverts name most. Networking climbs from the vendor-neutral Network+ to the CCNA and on to CCNP Enterprise wherever Cisco equipment is installed. Linux offers three routes to much the same ground: Linux+, LPI's two-paper LPIC-1 followed by LPIC-2, and Red Hat's RHCSA, which is sat on live machines instead of answered from options. Service management has ITIL Foundation for the vocabulary and ServiceNow's CSA for the platform many large desks run on. Before paying for any of these, Cisco's free Python Essentials 1 and Networking Basics courses let a newcomer find out whether the subject holds them.

The right first rung is decided by the job you hold today rather than the one you want in five years:

• Career changers begin with IT fundamentals and the service desk. A+ is the paper that gets a CV past the first filter, and Google's IT Support certificate, paid for by the month, walks a beginner through the same ground and points at A+ as its companion exam.
• Service desk staff ready to move pick the branch their employer actually runs: networking where the switches are theirs to manage, Windows Server and Active Directory in a Microsoft office, Linux where the servers have no screen.
• Would-be network engineers spend longer on networking fundamentals than feels necessary, because every later CCNA question assumes it, and then move to routing and switching.
• Administrators heading for the cloud start with virtualisation and scripting, which is what cloud platforms rent out and automate, then cross into cloud fundamentals with Cloud+ or Microsoft's AZ-104 as the first paper on the other side.

Why this is neither the cloud nor security

Two neighbouring fields grew out of this one, and the boundaries are drawn on purpose. The cloud rents out servers, networks and storage through an API, and SFIA's infrastructure skill covers physical, virtual and cloud estates alike; yet running a hypervisor in your own rack and designing around a provider's managed services fail in different ways and are hired for separately. The virtualisation topic here therefore ends where cloud fundamentals begins. Security grows out of administration too, and firewalls and identity sit on both sides of the line. Here they are things an administrator has to keep running; how to defend them lives under network security and identity and access. Renting a server for a website is a third question again, a buying decision covered under hosting.

The topic pages link out to the glossary for every term they lean on, from DHCP to incident management, and those entries argue a point of view as well as defining the word. Exam facts this hub omits, including length, pass mark and retirement, sit on the certification pages with the day each was verified, and the IT certifications pillar makes the case for how vendor credentials fit a working life.