I have a BA in information systems but have very little technical experience in the field. How to I begin learning Unix to eventually become a Unix/Solaris/Red hat admin. What kind of training do I need, where to get it and how long will it take.
Please point me to the most lucrative path of the trade.

One piece of advice would be to make sure you are proficient in sed, awk and generally bash
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/index.html

Bigmac18,

For admin related stuff, you can get a base idea of all the needed from
http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/

Keep always using the linuxquestions.org 's latest posts moving on your screen.

All the best and warm welcome to unix Administration.

You'll need this
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

more here
http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/

you might want to just skim through this Linux/MS comparison; its useful to understand the different mindsets involved: http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Basically, hang out here and read as many qns & answers as possible, and try to come up with your own answers by research.

Thanks, it helped me too.

Link.

The way to become an administrator is to first become proficient as a user. If you have not already done so, install a system and get comfortable with using it.
I don't know what to do with this----do you mean: "Where can one make the most money?"

If that's the case, forget linux, become a football player with £70000 per week! That's where the real money is.

Get your hands on 3 or more cheap old computers (or newer ones if you can afford them) and set up a testing environment at home. One of these computers should be a Firewall/Router box, the second one a generic server (web, ftp, mail, samba, nfs, radius, etc) in the protected zone, the third one a honey pot box in a DMZ zone.

You can then test and play with all the possibilities of maintaining, updating and protecting all the services, check out the differences between the protected and DMZ zone, and also simulate some attacks against your own server locally, to see where your firewall or protection fails.

Reading tutorials is fine, but experiencing it for yourself is better.

In addition you should get yourself some certificate (maybe from RedHat), because it's cool if you get the experience, but Human Resources Departments will want to see written proof of your qualification (the HR people are those, who think that MSWord is an operating system).

linux

Silly HR people... MS Office is the operating system! j/k