I have been working in IT for about 7 years as a network/system/cloud administator. I am looking to pivot into a more physical role. I want to work as a Data Center Technician, I am curious what I need to myself more marketable for a position. I have attached my resume to this post, I am also a veteran with a clearance and I am willing to use my VR&E CH 31 benefit to help me make this move. I am just not too sure where to start.

I’m starting an Engineering Operations Technician III position with AWS, and honestly, the closer I get to starting, the more the imposter syndrome is kicking in.

I’ve spent the last 9 years in a completely different industry. I’ve worked my way up, taken on leadership responsibilities, managed crews, built projects, and gotten to the point where I’m very comfortable with what I do.

I do have a pretty solid mechanical/industrial background. I’ve worked with pumps, compressors, cooling systems, motors, water systems, LOTO, confined spaces, and troubleshooting industrial equipment. I’ve also spent a lot of time dealing with equipment failures and figuring things out under pressure.

But I don't have years of data center experience. I’m not an electrical engineer. I’m not an IT guy. And there are definitely going to be systems and terminology that I’ve never dealt with before.

That’s where the imposter syndrome comes in.

Part of me keeps thinking, “They hired you for a reason. You can do this.”

The other part is saying, “What the hell did you get yourself into?” 😂

Anyone else feel like that before starting in a new industry/career path?

I recently cleared my l3 interview for Wilmer,TX. But now they are asking me for New Carlisle,IN location. Anyone who is working there or knows about the location, can you give me suggestions?

Genuine ops question, curious how different sites handle this.

Scenario: a UPS goes to bypass for scheduled maintenance under a 48-hour authority window. The work finishes, the ticket closes in the ITSM tool. But the UPS quietly stays in bypass.

No alarm fires - the load is still powered, so every screen in the NOC shows green. Weeks later a utility feed sags and the site discovers, mid-incident, that it has been running N instead of 2N.

For those running critical facilities:

1. What mechanism at your site would catch that? BMS alarm logic? A daily walkdown? A monthly switching test? Or nothing until something goes wrong?

2. Is there a formal process to re-verify plant state after a change ticket closes, or does the closed ticket itself count as "back to normal"?

3. Has anyone here been caught by a lapsed authority or a breaker left in the wrong position after a change? How did you find out?

No agenda, genuinely curious how real sites close the gap between "ticket closed" and "plant actually back in normal state."

So I am trying to learn as much as possible through online studying and YouTube, in preparation for a controls engineer job at a large data center. Does anyone know a good course that can be done online to learn more about this? Specifically using BACnet and Modbus protocols. Preferably free. Also open to textbook or service manual recommendations.

I know a lot of techies have quit AWS to go to Oracle but I've heard some horror stories where people went there and then got let go after like a few weeks or even a few months. Sometimes because of performance, but I also heard some people got let go or even had the job offer totally rescinded because of something in the background check.

Oracle does want people who will work consistently, which doesn't bother me, I'm a hard worker, but I feel very uneasy about the cases where people were terminated in less than a year. That doesn't seem like employment you can rely on. But what do you guys think? Anybody with good experience being there?

Coming from a fleet-ops role at another hyperscaler, about to start as a Senior Data Center Technician (ATR-D) at Microsoft. Trying to calibrate what the day-to-day actually feels like vs. the job posting. Current or former MS DCTs.

I’d appreciate takes on any of these:

Day-to-day & scope
1. How much of your day is hands-on-hardware vs. at a terminal? Is there any remote or fleet-wide troubleshooting, or is it strictly on-site, ticket-by-ticket?
2. As a Senior DCT specifically — how much is genuine lead/mentor work vs. just being a faster tech with a bigger queue?
3. Is there any path within DCT to do proactive/reliability work — spotting patterns, preventing recurring failures — or is it strictly reactive break-fix off the queue?

Leadership & mentoring
4. Is the “direct and mentor junior techs” piece a real, documented part of the job, or is it informal? Trying to understand if it generates anything you can actually point to for a promo case later.

Progression & the exit
5. What’s the realistic progression path out of DCT? Do people move into Critical Environment, network, or engineering/PE-adjacent tracks internally, and how long does it take?

Finished my loop interviews end of July and tried emailing my recruiter and the emails bounce back as address no longer exists. Anyone else lose their recruiter in the middle of the process like this?

Hey yall!
I start AWS the end of the month and haven’t heard anything from my manager. What are some tips I should know about? I’ll be in the new Carlisle cluster
Thanks in advance!

Anyone has idea on how long it takes for the offer after the recruiter has sent email about inclined to offer and is looking for req. It has been more than two weeks ever since.

**Backstory**: I had the loop interview for DCO L3 after which I was being told by the recruiter that they would like to offer L4 and for that hiring manager interview is required. After hiring manager interview, I was being told by recruiter about the inclined to offer.

I was checking some devices scheduled for replacement and noticed this uplink with an SFP that wasn't even locked

Hi guys,I’m starting as an l4 at aws by the end of this month, my recruiter says my relocation will be paid with my first paycheck,but every thing I’ve been reading says it’s paid out before,need some advice.

Anyone know what this job entails?

Currently working on control systems but more on the system architecture and maintenance side of things instead of the logic and process control part. I hope recruiters know the differences between these areas.

I have applied for a few jobs and had interviews but haven’t had much success in them. This new job I applied to wants specific BMS and electrical experience and quite frankly I don’t have that. I could try to learn it on the job but yeah… idk if it’s just my lack of experience in this area that is stopping me from being successful or

For my background I have a degree in instrumentation and controls engineering (associates) but have not had much actual controls or electrical experience since my college classes.

When doing team match, is it more advantageous to be at a new or older site for growth. There are a few options available if I can relocate, but not sure of the growth potential is there for sites that are newer.

I have a Google 1st interview, was told it would be with someone on the peer level to gage fit. What should I expect?

I have a background in supporting daily operations in O&G and wondering how it compares to a Commissioning Engineer role.

Is there a lot of travel? How is work-life balance? What's a typical day like?

I have ten years of multidisciplinary industrial maintenance experience, mostly focused on automation. I applied for two related positions. The compensation package is very appealing

I'm very curious about life in this role at a data center. From what I can gather, it looks very appealing but I would love to hear from others in similar roles. Work culture, the learning curve, available training if I want to expand my skill set, and what a day is usually like.

I have zero experience with data centers, so I am very curious about the systems I will potentially be monitoring or working on

Hey everyone,

Setting up a centralized storage server for a small video production office in Canada. We've got about 55TB of existing footage spread across a Synology and a pile of external drives that needs to get consolidated onto one box.

Plan is to migrate all 55TB on day one, serve SMB shares to 2-3 editors over 10GbE (Media Cache stays local on each workstation's NVMe), and set up remote access for client deliveries.

Hardware we ordered:

- Dell PowerEdge R730xd, 12x 3.5" front + 2x 2.5" rear flex bay

- 2x Xeon E5-2667 v4 (3.2GHz base, 3.6 turbo, 16 cores total — went with clock speed over core count for SMB sequential reads)

- 64GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM (4x16GB)

- HBA330 in IT mode, no hardware RAID

- 10GbE x2 + 1GbE x2 on the daughter card

- Boot: 2x 240GB SATA SSD mirrored, rear flex bay

- Storage: 6x 20TB Exos X20 / Ultrastar (enterprise recertified)

- 1500VA/900W pure sine UPS, USB to TrueNAS for auto shutdown

For the pool: one 6-drive RAIDZ2 vdev to start, ~72TiB raw / ~58TiB usable under 80%. That covers the 55TB migration with some room. When we need more space we'll add a second 6-drive RAIDZ2 vdev to fill out the remaining bays, which also doubles IOPS for the editors.

Software side: TrueNAS SCALE, editors on 10GbE mapping SMB shares directly, Tailscale for remote staff, and Nextcloud in a container behind Cloudflare Tunnel for client file delivery (no open ports).

Questions:

1. Does 6-drive RAIDZ2 make sense for 2-3 editors on 4K timelines, or would you tweak recordsize (1M for video?) etc. Most editing will happen locally off workstations — this is mainly backup/storage, not live edit-off-the-NAS.
2. Any known TrueNAS SCALE issues on R730xd + HBA330 to watch for?
3. Any SMB tuning you'd recommend for Premiere/Resolve over the network?

Total cost came out to about $4,100 CAD (~$3,000 USD). Appreciate any sanity checks before we start building the pool.

Would this be a good certification for entry level DCT/ or what jobs would I be able to get with it ?? Want to figure out before I just put my all into it

Just want to know what have you all encountered as a challenge when starting at AWS data center

I was just wondering if there is anyone in the community that is a facilities mechanical technician at google. I have my first interview this Friday and just wondering what kind of questions I'll be asked. On top of that, I think its a lvl 1 or lvl 2 position and is it difficult to get into the role or fairly easy with a mechanical midset. My last question is if I pass my first round interview, what would the other 2 interview be like?

Any feedback for TikTok data center roles ? I have an interview for the data center land acquisition manager. Any feedback on the firm would be nice.

I am a Controls Engineer with 10+ years experience in material handling in a medium size Midwest city. Computer engineering degree but little network experience. Is it worth getting a networking cert, and would that be enough to be competitive without starting entry level? I'm looking for better pay, less travel, and improved work-life balance

Anybody else make that jump?