Compton, England, United Kingdom
Specialties: VMware vSphere 6.x, VMware vCloud, SharePoint 2000-2016 & Online, Office 365, Intune, Azure, Puppet, Windows Server, Active Directory
Responsible for supporting sales in a pre-sales capacity, providing technical governance to projects in delivery, as well as taking a hands-on role in project delivery. Builds relationships with clients and advises on various solutions and services, agrees a solution/service and then builds out a proposal that meets the clients technical and commercial requirements. Projects successfully completed include: Intune Deployment Exchange Online Migration Office 365 Tenant-to-tenant migration Teams telephony migration SharePoint Online migration Azure deployment Windows Active Directory Migration
Principal Solutions Architect and manager of the DevOps Team. The position involves managing a team of DevOps and cloud solutions engineers, as well as acting as the design authority and point of escalation. I have continued involvement with duties performed as a Cloud Solutions Architect; this includes initial project discussions with new and existing customers, through to the design and implementation of agreed solutions, ending with the handover and documentation of implemented systems. Project highlights include: • Separated a new company from it’s parent organisation. Led a project to migrate the customer from a legacy environment based on Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and Google Apps for Business to a 100% cloud-hosted environment based on EE’s Freedom Cloud platform and Office 365, including Intune management and Teams telephony. • Migrated over 1,800 mailboxes for a trust school from a legacy on-premise Exchange 2007 environment to Exchange Online. Implementing a new AzureAD Connect topology to synchronise identities from this school and future schools which would be joined to the Office 365 tenant. Due to the age of the Exchange environment mailboxes were migrated using third party tools. PowerShell scripts were used to bulk-update Active Directory accounts in preparation for the migration and finalise the migration. • Migrate a customer’s infrastructure from a legacy on-premise, Windows Server 2003 domain to a new Windows Server 2019 domain hosted on a hybrid cloud infrastructure. New servers were provisioned in Freedom Cloud, applications re-installed and data migrated. PowerShell scripts were used to extract account information from the legacy domain and provision accounts in the new domain. Identity synchronisation to the Office 365 tenant was move from a DirSync server in the legacy domain to an AzureAD Connect server in the new domain.
In addition to managing and maintaining European Electronique’s Freedom public cloud platform, I am responsible for designing and implementing public and hybrid cloud solutions for customers. I am involved in the initial pre-sales contact with potential customers, designing cloud solutions to meet the customer’s requirements, as well as the implementation. Projects I have designed and implemented include: • Automating the migration of an entire datacentre environment containing 300 virtual machines for over 20 customers to a new datacentre. • Migrating customer servers and virtual machines from legacy on-site and 3rd party hosted platforms to Microsoft Azure and VMware vCloud. • Automating the migration of data from legacy on-site SharePoint and file server platforms to SharePoint Online and OneDrive utilising both Microsoft and third party migration tools and the SharePoint Client Side Object Model (CSOM). • Migrating customers to Exchange Online and Skype for Business Online. • Implementing configuration management platforms such as Puppet and PowerShell DSC. • Implementing a new cloud backup platform.
VCP-qualified leader of datacenter team supporting European Electronique's Freedom Cloud infrastructure. This delivers hosted infrastructure services to 20,000+ users, primarily in the education sector. The infrastructure is build on Dell and HP blade, server and network hardware. Cloud services are delivered via VMware vSphere and vCloud software suites. The role includes: • Support of infrastructure in two datacenter locations • Implementation, maintenance and support vSphere and vCloud software suites • Support and maintenance of an Active Directory 2012 infrastructure • Implementation, support and maintenance of Microsoft server systems including SCCM 2012, SharePoint 2013 and SQL 2012 • Implementation, support and maintenance of storage systems including Dell EqualLogic, HP 3PAR and Tegile SANs, as well as Dell DR4000-series de-duplication appliances. • Implementation, support and maintenance of enterprise backup software including Veeam Backup & Replication, Unitrends Enterprise Backup and Vembu Storegrid. • Support and maintenance of Cisco, HP and Dell Force 10 network hardware • Support and maintenance of Dell and HP blade and server hardware • Design and implementation of new services including Windows Server 2012 R2 Remote Desktop Services, Vmware Horizon View and Unitrends Enterprise Backup
Part of a small team responsible for the support of a 500+ server environment in the UK and international offices, as well as upgrade and infrastructure projects: • Support and maintenance of an Active Directory 2003 forest with 13 sub-domains • Support and maintenance of core systems including an Exchange 2007 environment with 2000+ mailboxes, VMware vSphere 5.x clusters, Metaframe 4.0 and XenApp 6.5 Citrix farms, SQL 2005 and 2008 database servers, SharePoint 2007/2010 farms and file servers hosting over 50TB of data hosted on EMC SANs. • Responsible for server end-of-life replacements, installing new hardware or virtualizing servers • ISO 20000 auditor and Release Manager • Led the design and implementation an SCCM 2007 infrastructure in the UK offices • Led the design and implementation of several SharePoint 2010 farms with 2000+ users • Led the design and implementation of a Citrix XenApp 6.5 farm. • Involved in the design and implementation of a VMware infrastructure which now runs over 80% of the server estate • Involved in the design and implementation of overseas branch office infrastructure installations and upgrades.
In addition to the responsibilities of my previous role: • I was the first point of contact for team members for any technical issues. • I was also involved in investigating the underlying causes of recurring problems and ways of pro-actively reducing the number of calls logged with the Service Desk. • I covered for the department manager during absences. • I was involved in several infrastructure projects, including travelling to the US for several weeks to help set up a Service Desk in our offices there. • I was also involved in the planning and implementation of a project to upgrade all of the PCs and laptops in the business from Windows 2000 to Windows XP.
1st and 2nd line support for 1500 remote and on-site users 1st line involved: • Logging customer issues via phone and e-mail on service management software and resolving them at first point of contact or escalating them to the appropriate team. • Account creation and administration (Active Directory, Exchange, SAP, RAS, Blackberry). • Active Directory administration (security groups, file and folder permissions, group policy). • Creating and maintaining documentation and procedures. 2nd Line involved: • Installation and support of Windows and Mac OSes, including system builds and imaging. • Installation and support of Dell, HP and Apple PC and laptop hardware. • Installation and support of other hardware (printers, Blackberry devices, scanners). • Trouble-shooting issues that could not be resolved by 1st line and ensuring that all issues logged on the service management software are kept up to date.