Hi everyone 😄

I am 36 years old, father of two kids and thanks to a lot of dedication and a bit of luck, I managed to transition into an IT career from a different field (though I've always been passionate about tech). Since I’m always eager to learn and love using my spare time for further education, I wanted to ask if you could recommend some good online learning resources. Ideally, I’m looking for platforms that offer straightforward, "business-like" lab environments, which I will obviously need to build up first.

Unfortunately, due to the layout of my apartment, I have very little physical space for real server hardware. I’m also not sure if I can actually build and replicate certain scales using virtualization (like in business). On top of that, I really want to support my colleague, who mainly handles our software deployment system, and understand all these processes much better. To be honest, I might be suffering from a massive case of imposter syndrome....despite getting very positive feedback from my managers, I constantly feel like I don't know enough and need to learn more, simply because this field is so vast. Unfortunately, both my colleague and I are always extremely busy, leaving very little time during work to properly learn the fundamentals.

Scripting is one of the main things I want to tackle, which is why I’ve also started learning C#. (I wanted to internalize the core concepts of programming before diving into PowerShell).

A bit about my daily work routine: I work at a large corporation in a team that primarily focuses on endpoints, hardware, software deployment, etc.

In my free time, I am currently starting to learn C# through a little hobby project (I want to build a small-scale 2D action-adventure game, similar to Zelda). The goal here is to both build programming skills and improve my logical thinking. I'm fully aware that there isn’t much time left in the evenings once the kids are asleep, but I don’t need to work on my hobby project every single day.

My long-term goal is to eventually move into a System Administrator role, with solid skills in Software deployment, PowerShell, server virtualization, firewalls, networking, and so on. I know there is an overwhelming amount to learn and that it's impossible to know everything. But having at least the basics down in all of these areas is something I’m aiming for. I’d love to dive much deeper into Active Directory and similar topics.

If there are high-quality online resources that even offer certificates, please drop them below (certs are not a must-have though, a practical lab environment is way more important to me)

Thank you so much for your time!

EDIT: One more very important thing! Please, no heavy video-based tutorials. I would actually prefer interactive and text-based platforms. I’m looking for something highly hands-on that lets me dive straight into doing and experimenting. "Learning by doing" with just a little bit of hand holding but in a very limited, healthy dose.