SUMMARY:

• Being instrumental in contributing a wealth of a cutting edge ideas and expertise to any and all fluid proactive team environments which in turn would truly embrace and appreciate continuous growth, peer motivation - encouragement, trusted values, high project SLA-SLO dedication, and the continuous contribution of new technical conceptual implementation ideas that would truly augment an organization’s exponential growth burst thereby further enhancing all facets of my ever expanding out of the box skill sets.
• Highly versed in VMware based and Amazon Web Services architectural migration implementations, scoping, vSphere and AWS Cloud deployment strategies, and evangelizing the importance of using and relying on VMware and Amazon Web Services products, providing support documentation, operations management, change management practices and ITIL v3 methodologies, personnel resource scheduling and management, with special emphasis on datacenter consolidation efforts, Cloud migration practices, high availability scenarios and configurations, AWS Cloud, and VMware training - mentoring, systems engineering, expert troubleshooting and diagnostics of physical servers and virtualized infrastructures on site and in the cloud (SaaS/PaaS)
• Global datacenter infrastructure scoping and consolidation expertise in Windows 2000, 03, 08, Suse and Redhat Linux and implementing, configuring, and supporting Windows 2000/2003/2008 AD, VMware ESX 3.5, vSphere 4.0\5.0 and vCenter including HA\DRS\SDRS. Highly proficient in performing physical to virtual (P2V) and virtual to physical (V2P) migrations using dissimilar hardware which include virtualizations of Oracle, SQL, Active Directory, Linux, IIS, and Citrix servers.
• Keen understanding of internet services such as IP, DHCP, WINS, DNS, SSH, and VPN as well as varied IBM and HP blade server hardware. Experienced performing bare metal restores of dead servers (physical or vms) to similar/dissimilar.
• Understanding of change control configuration management processes (ITIL) using Remedy 7.5 and ClarifyCRM e 12i.
• High understanding of disked based replication and disk de-duplication in disaster recovery (DR) exercise scenarios.
• Performance of client level support practices according to the best of six sigma, FDA and ITIL v3 regulatory standards.
• Detailed planning skills during project activities and initiatives which include resourcing and meeting deadlines.
• Ability to keenly understand key promising technologies in regards to providing a return on investment for any corporations benefit as well as working independently or as a member of a team managing multiple projects or resources and discerning workload priorities when necessary.
• Expert in the ability to motivate and encourage staff/co-workers to perform successfully under highly stressful situations and deadline pressures and being an open minded ingenious technical thinker with the ability to provide innovative imaginative, "outside the box" enterprise technical solutioning on demand.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES:

Confidential, Sterling, Virginia

Cloud Implementations and Engineering Management Planning

Responsibilities:

• Providing a detailed Amazon Web Services and/or VMware based Cloud technology roadmap of support expertise to Government clients such as Department of State HR, Department of Justice NSD, and NGA-NJVC IC as a technical cloud devops/virtualization Engineering liaison for various technology platforms and offerings such as Amazon Web Services (IaaS-PaaS), VMware ESXi 5.5/6.0 ESXi Infrastructure, XenDesktop VDI, Avamar Backup and Site Replication with attached Data Domain Storage nodes
• Expertise understanding how to have interoperability and network connectivity between physical and virtual servers on site communicating with virtual servers and instances within AWS
• Creating AWS accounts and configuring components within the newly created account according to myriad mission requirements and various custom configuration requirements discussed before implementation
• Experience interacting with Amazon infrastructure via the AWS CLI and Powershell as well as configuring VPC resource connectivity via subnets, NACLS, and security groups
• Performance of VMware virtual and physical server based migrations into an existing AWS cloud infrastructure.
• Applying Amazon services features to perform migrations in the cleared space, provisioning, monitoring, scale and distribute compute infrastructure for various entities infrastructure that was previously running on physical servers or VMware based infrastructures
• Experience designing, building, and maintaining AWS resources for high-availability and production level systems and services
• Daily monitoring, management, troubleshooting and problem issue resolution to secured systems and services hosted on the secured C2S & UnClassed cloud resources
• Working with various programs units, developers, security, and varied IT disciplines to design and migrate applications and services from a secured physical or virtual platform into an AWS Cloud (C2S/UC) secure enclave environments using continuous integration via Gitlab and Puppet.
• Staying up to date with existing and new cloud services, providing guidance to technical teams as available cloud capabilities continue to evolve and progress

Confidential, Oakton and McLean, Virginia

VMware Architect SME Cloud

Responsibilities:

• Providing and continuing to implement a separate new very large highly scaleable VDI user environment road map that a certain government contracting organization, Citrix, and VMware are using to continuously attract and or court other corporate-government entities into deploying with success and confidence as well a winning many new contractual business engagement partnerships.
• Implementation of enterprise wide EMC Avamar Virtual Edition backup solution with Datadomain units. Providing runbook backup SLAs for multitenant VMware backup schemes in conjunction with agency backup requirements.
• Planning and constantly executing the upgrade of all vSphere ESXi 4.1 environments and clusters to vSphere 5 and later on upgrading to 5.1 update (a), 5.5U2 without affecting the current daily operating functions of VDI or the server infrastructure operations.
• Constantly (through weekly group meetings) accessing, revamping, and streamlining configuration standards (SAN, Networking, and Security) to meet the exponential growth of vSphere hosts used to run the current VDI desktop environments and finally embracing the thin provisioning method (with the exception of oracle and microsoft exchange databases) now that vSphere 5 improved on virtual disk management method finally with space reclamation (which did not exist previously in the vSphere 4.x VMFS file system).
• Streamlining (and sometimes upgrading when applicable) older processes needed to maintain high availability and data integrity/consistency across various existing networking and fiber channel topologies.
• Meeting with all levels of management to explain in laymen’s terms the ROI/TCO as well as relaying (Evangelizing) the importance of keeping abreast of promising new technologies and best practices in regards to staying ahead of the virtualization technology curve.
• Architecture, planning, and finally implementation of a vCloud virtual desktop DaaS/PaaS (Desktop as a service-Platform as a service) proof of concept environment to support multiple secured external enclaves.
• Progressively beginning the upgrade path to Xenserver in tandem with introducing the new GPU passthrough capabilities (Xenserver) to the current VDI environment in a testing phase.
• Training and mentoring existing onsite and offsite technical support engineering and government staff as well as keeping them in the know (knowledge transfers) regarding all infrastructure changes, modifications, and enhancements done to support all the components of our virtualized network enclaves.
• When needed, engaging in high level technical support remediation activities (planned or unplanned) outages and understanding and documenting the vertical enterprise level proof of concept, production engineering docs and “how and the why when unscheduled outages happen literature” so that repeat downtime incidents almost never again occur.

Confidential, Irvington, Virginia

VMware SME PRINCIPAL Architect

Responsibilities:

• Functions of associated responsibilities include documentation, support, and best practices in regards to multiple virtualized instances of application servers such as: Oracle RAC server upgrade project to 11G R2 from Oracle 9i partially virtualized in conjunction with adding virtual instances of other servers such as SAP Informatica 9.01, SAP Business Objects XI 3.1, eHRI, and MS Biztalk 2010/SQL 2008 R2, Active Directory, and MS Exchange running Windows 2008 R2 to the new vSphere 4.1 infrastructure.
• Working with SAN teams to insure that EMC V-max SAN equipment is able to support physical and virtualized Oracle RAC, MS Exchange workloads during heavy I/O peaks using automated storage tiering with SSD drives and in some instances using VMware fault tolerance depending on client expectations and technology feasibility requirements.
• Implemented local 15K raid array solutions for remote sites in regards to high I/O capabilities where dark fibre wasn’t a consideration due to budget cost concerns and over head in regards to read only AD servers, MS Exchange and Oracle VMs and High Performance Computer Clusters running at the remote facilities.
• Working with and training on-site and remote Engineers on VMware converter P2V migrations when necessary using VMware based best practices and troubleshooting procedures which included performing server backups with EMC Avamar Virtual Edition.
• Creating proof of concept, development, test, and finally production virtualized environments to do application server testing and re-configuration when necessary before moving final optimized environment over to fully active production and development environments in the final cutover phase of the project and retiring the current ESX 3.5 servers and replacing it with vSphere 4.1 in conjunction with implementing and initiating the (internal private cloud in a box) vCloud director proof of concept initiative as the final phase of completion.
• Working with team members and application owners, Oracle SMEs/DBAs, internetworking, SAN Storage, and security groups to eliminate system bottlenecks, assure conformity to security model standards in the planning and execution of the proof of concept environments.
• Relaying best practice procedures on VMware related implementations and install configurations of the virtual infrastructure in tandem with the ongoing Oracle upgrade project and standing up a cloud infrastructure in our remote datacenter facility.
• Meeting with various IT team subdivisions to discuss scheduled local and remote based infrastructure changes and reprioritizing or the re-shifting of sub tasks within the current project scope.
• Working with members of application owner management, Oracle Arhitects, internetworking SMEs, SAN Architects, and Security groups to eliminate when possible system bottlenecks and conflicts assuring conformity to the most current security model standards in the planning and execution of the new virtual topology and performing testing of the remote cloud site operations.
• Other duties include engaging perspective government and commercial corporate organizations into VMware based presales activities which include infrastructure support contracts, datacenter consolidations, and Architectural vSphere implementations.

Confidential, Norwalk, Connecticut

VMware vSphere Cloud Solutioning SME LEAD

Responsibilities:

• In depth VMware SME service delivery and process management lifecycle expertise used to facilitate the architectural planning, scoping, and implementation execution of a new deployment of vSphere-vCenter to the exisiting ITIL v3 global datacenters with emphasis on decommissioning and replacing existing legacy VMware hardware environments that consists of ESX versions 2.5, 3.0, 3.02, 3.5 and Virtual Center 2.0/2.5 and replacing ALL legacy ESX hosts with vSphere 4 managed by vCenter instances for a global Siemens client located in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Germany as well as providing high level technical advice for other various Siemens clients.
• Acting as a liaison between varied I.T. group’s technical subject matter expert teams and solutioning teams to ensure that the current virtualization and cloud infrastructure project initiative meets extensibility, complexity reduction goals, and returns on investment.
• Virtual cloud infrastructure duties included adding newly acquired Siemens clients companies VMware environments to the existing Tugboat Cloud infrastructure to reduce clients’ system management support overhead and uniformity using private and public cloud topologies which include IaaS, and PaaS as well as virtualizing applications with VMware Thinap (SaaS). This was done by using a new instance of vCenter for each new business client along with existing SAN storage for each individual environment.
• Holding meetings with present and future customers to further integrate their existing VMware VM environments into the Tugboat Cloud managed infrastructure including presales initiated activities, and presentation demos to facilitate closing cloud service contract deals with perspective clients interested in either creating or adding existing or regular highly available virtual machine systems (proof of concept, development, test, pre-production, and production) into the tugboat cloud environment.
• Providing support direction in regards to the existing legacy virtual environments in conjunction with guiding the current vSphere upgrade initiative using HP e3000 and c7000 blade enclosures/HP DL380 G6 and re-formatting Block level fibre channel storage from 1MB/2MB to 8MB block size.
• Highly experienced with Windows Window Os administration and clustering support, VMware related capacity planning, and scoping of physical servers that could-would be converted to virtualized instances such as Exchange 2007/2010 mailbox servers, Windows based Oracle Database servers and Active Directory servers.
• Rolling out of test virtual desktop deployment environment (VDI) of 100 XP desktop clients using VMware view 4 and ThinApp 4 in conjunction with using Avamar Virtual edition for performing (proxy) imaged based VM backups.
• Mentoring and providing knowledge transfer training and guidance to senior and junior systems engineers locally and remotely on best practices during vSphere4 host installs and support considerations along with the VM guest P2V, V2V migrations from the old legacy ESX external storage volumes to the new vSphere 4 farm storage environments.
• Motivating, encouraging, training-engaging all staff regarding day to day support of the new virtual infrastructure.
• Managing, planning, and scheduling off hours p2v migration moves with system engineers in the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Germany as part of the virtualization initiative that’s currently in place as well as creating and continually updating step by step documentation on refinement procedures, and troubleshooting techniques regarding VMware’s best practices when performing physical to virtual (P2V/V2P) server moves using the VMware converter or Platespin on Windows and Linux based servers. Managing and planning of forklift and (P2P) physical to physical server moves from remote satellite U.S. sites to the main tier1 Datacenters in Chicago and Mobile Alabama as another part of the Datacenter consolidations project.
• Meeting with business technology unit application owners to review applications/app servers that are or that are not candidates for virtualization now that the new vSphere environment supports 64bit CPU processing.
• Adherence to technology corporate planning policies and practices in all activities and when appropriate make recommendations for improvements to increase efficiencies of the newly implemented vSphere topology.

Confidential, Radnor, Pennsylvania

Remote VMware Implementation Architect PM

Responsibilities:

• Spear headed various project implementation deployment responsibilities including but not limited to upgrading and architecting ESX 3.5/VC. 2.5 upgrade from the existing ESX 2.0/3.X/Virtual Center 2X virtual infrastructure, and adding Active Directory 2008 to the existing Windows 2000/2003 server datacenter environments and evaluating requirements for virtualization, local and optimized SAN disk storage allocation, redundant pathing, High Availability and DRS/sDRS.
• Meeting with upper and regular level management personnel to give updates on SLAs, and target dates and ideas regarding vSphere4 migrations, Active Directory 2008 upgrade considerations as well as using newly purchased HP C7000 blade center enclosure hardware.
• Working with applications owners to effectively plan, virtualization activities, and troubleshoot/support 225 Windows and 75 Suse Linux Enterprise that will be virtualized by the end of September 2009.
• Creating new virtual and physical Windows 2008 servers to replace legacy Windows 2000 and 2003 IIS/Apache Web application servers, SQL and Citrix presentation application servers.
• Creating living documentation on best practices when performing physical to virtual and virtual to physical (P2V/V2P) server consolidations using the VMware converter and Vsphere step by step installation instructions.
• Working with various internal and external IT groups to allocate resources to perform P2V conversion scheduling and managing a team of consultants to perform the actual P2V moves as well as being a technical point of contact during and after the move phase is completed.
• Performing rollbacks of new virtual machines with proven cause due to poor performance to dissimilar physical hardware.
• Using Platespin Forge as a disaster recovery exercise solution to insure minimal downtime with the newly created virtual and physical servers added to the existing DR environment.

Confidential, Raritan, New Jersey

Datacenter Virtualization Consolidations Architect

Responsibilities:

• Expert level in depth planning, documentation and management of virtualized Windows 2000, 2003, 2008 and VMware ESX 3.5 and Virtual Center 2.5 environments.
• Management duties performed with strict adherence to ITIL v3 service management procedures, Sarbanes Oxley compliance processes and change management controls in a validated, FDA regulated, and globally managed datacenter environment and technical documentation of all installs, updates, and troubleshooting methods and procedures with an emphasis on best practices.
• Lead charge in the effective upgrading of Global VMware 2.X environment to 3.02 and 3.5 ESX farms connected via SAN, or locally connected storage as part of the J& J Datacenter consolidations initiative.Setting up High Availability Datacenter vSphere clusters using HP blade center enclosures with DRS capabilities.
• Vsphere 4 and vCenter 4 implementation with labmanger in the development test lab environment.
• Managed resources responsible for global datacenter consolidation of local and remote physical hardware to virtual machines that required the conversion of IBM hardware with Suse Linux Enterprise, and various HP hardware with Windows NT4.0, 2000, 2003, and 2008 servers into virtual servers using the following conversion tools: VMware converter, PlateSpin Powerconvert, NTbackup, and Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery.
• Meeting with various levels of upper management and application owners locally and remotely to effectively plan (hour to hour meetings to scope and plan various types of global DCC physical to virtual, virtual to physical, physical to physical (P2P), and forklift moves), and discuss best practices when deploying physical to virtual/virtual to virtual and physical Windows and RedHat server moves from local and remote locations into the Raritan NJ Datacenter along with engaging remote and onsite engineers to perform scheduled moves and troubleshooting when necessary.
• Virtualization of Citrix, DNS, IIS, Oracle, SQL, Redhat/Suse Linux, file, print, employee benefit & payroll servers globally.
• Global SWAT team resolution and troubleshooting VMware point of contact, and solutions support during critical outages and emergencies.
• Performance of Disaster Recovery preparation readiness exercises using disk deduplication of hot VM migrations in the same cluster across 2 sites.
• Level 3 support project lead interface for varied internal and external J&J off site operating companies in regards to server virtualization and physical server support, Windows Os, Active Directory, Windows Group Policy, High Availability Windows Clustered servers, Mom, Scom, veritas netbackup, global DNS and WINS troubleshooting.
• Meeting with various levels of corporate management to refine, scope, reset targeted deadlines as needed, and to discuss the status of current and future infrastructure projects.
• Change control, configuration management and Helpdesk ticket tracking maintained using Remedy/Picasso/ITSM DBs.

Confidential, New York, New York

Lead VMware Implementation Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Provided planning and proof of concept regarding support solutions for all hospital, and college campus labs, and faculty offices using Dell and IBM bladecenter server systems in the production and development datacenters.
• Introduced and managed newly configured VMware ESX 3.5 and Virtualcenter 2.5 into the datacenter and campus lab environments along with providing training in use of the new virtualization infrastructure attached to ISCSI NetAppfilers and Linux based NFs tools repositories.
• Instructed support personnel on performing bare metal restore recovery, physical to virtual and virtual to physical migrations using Symantec Backup Exec Recovery System Recovery, VMware converter, and other utilities as well as providing solid howto documentation in laymens terms.
• Implemented Symantec Livestate System Recovery servers to perform full and incremental server based image backups of select critical physical and virtual machine Windows 2000, 2003, and beta 2008 server images as a DR solution policy. This also and more importantly allowed for placing said disk based images on dissimilar hardware as well which truly minimized critical server outages.
• Lending a hand when needed to provide high level support to the existing Windows, Linux and Solaris support teams.
• Managing 7 desktop and 5 server engineers on various project related tasks or high priority incidents.
• Working with all IT solutions teams, groups, and vendors to better manage technical support resolution issues as well as refining coordination of myriad project tasks deadlines which most times involve interdependencies between various internal and external IT support liaisons to successfully complete project scopes.
• Well versed in making IT team members feel motivated to succeed and respond positively to day to day infrastructure demands as well as having an open door policy-open mind when it came to fresh technical advice or new support ideas raised during weekly tech meetings.

Confidential, Ridgefield Park, New Jersey

Disaster Recovery Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Support of a disaster recovery site that housed varied corporate clients networked servers and equipment.
• Management support of varied corporate entities’ Windows NT 4.0, 2000, and 2003 servers and Active Directory domains.
• Deployment of Os images/rebuilds on various models of Dell, HP/Compaq and IBM server hardware using Symantec Livestate Recovery Advanced Server. Managing and supporting Windows server in a multi AD domain forest as well as dealing with site replication issues.
• Windows clustering configurations using SAN/NAS technology.
• Disaster recovery site replication and fault tolerance testing and support for various corporate clients DR exercise engagements.
• Vmware ESX 2.X server planning, deployment and support as well as troubleshooting new conversions of physical servers to virtual instances.
• System monitoring of entire enterprise using Nagios, and Compaq insight manager.
• Planning and creation of Active Directory and Vmware ESX rollouts, upgrades and on-site support for various MFX corporate clients’ Windows networking topologies.
• Working with various clients’ servers to assist with many technical issues that varied from company to company.
• Testing of server hardware before placing in production environments and providing 2nd and 3rd level technical support.
• Documentation of technical procedures and best disaster recovery practices and support in regards to multiple Windows environments.