u/UserProv_Minotaur

I've been working under the IAM umbrella in User Provisioning, dealing with Access Control, Account Provisioning/Deprovisioning and Joiner/Mover/Leaver (internally called something different) processes, contributing to Security Audits, and general IT Support dealing with account issues/permissions, O365 and MFA enrollments, and just about everything under the sun with IAM. However, I feel like none of my skills translate out of our niche implementation and I'm finding that in interviews with places running Sailpoint, Okta, Ping, or anything besides Saviynt (and even anything beyond some basic troubleshooting there) I feel completely out of my depth trying to explain that while I might not have experience with their specific toolkit I should be able to pick it up given X skill transferring to it.

I'm trying to work through a self-guided AZ-900 and AZ-104 module, but don't have the money to actually afford the certs at the moment, and I'm not sure what else is out there.

Anyone have any recommendations for good *free* resources to build or polish IAM skillsets with? Preferably that don't require running janky homelabs or monkey around with "free" (if you cancel in time) Azure subscriptions.

I recently moved from IT Support into my first SysAdmin/Infrastructure role, working mainly with Citrix Cloud, Windows and vSphere. I'm the only engineer in Australia, with senior engineers overseas.

I'm finding the transition harder than expected. In IT Support, I usually knew where to start when troubleshooting. Now, when an infrastructure issue happens, I sometimes don't even know which component or log I should look at first.

Our environment is also heavily automated. For example, image updates can be triggered through an internal portal with a button click. It works well, but sometimes I feel like a robot just clicking buttons because I don't fully understand everything happening behind the scenes.

I'm trying to safely reverse-engineer the automation and learn the underlying Citrix/vSphere concepts. I'm also planning to build a lab where I can break things and troubleshoot them without worrying about production.

For those who moved from IT Support into SysAdmin/Infrastructure:

**How did you develop that troubleshooting instinct?**

Was it mainly labs, documentation, shadowing senior engineers, or simply getting exposed to more incidents over time?

And please throw any useful resources my way. YouTube channels, courses, labs, books, anything that helped you become a better SysAdmin.