Tonbridge, England, United Kingdom
I have been working as an I.T. professional for 15 years, in both software and hardware, which has given me a very strong grounding in technical and commercial knowledge. My current role as the VP of Systems Infrastructure at SMBC Nikko is to deliver the banks IT transformation projects.
Consulting within a Datacentre Transformation Programme. The aim of which being to consolidate the estate and transform applications into the strategic private/public cloud platforms. Projects include: • Multiple UK and European datacentre closures. • Significant enterprise SAN storage data migrations in excess of 15PB from legacy EMC storage and Cisco UCS infrastructure to new Active\Active HCI platform. Responsibilities & Achievements: • Establishing principles for datacentre closures and migration strategies. • Data analysis and consolidation to enrich architecture repositories. • Application discovery working closely with key stakeholders and application owners • Drawing up transformation/migration plans and coordinating through to succession. Converged / Hyper-converged Infrastructure SME • Migrated 1000+ core payment and banking VM's from legacy Hyper-V systems to new Dell HCI VMware VxRack infrastructure. • Installation, configuration and management of Dell EMC VxBlock, VxRail, VxRack, Unity, VNX Systems including RCM upgrade process management • Integrated Dell EMC VxRail systems running vSphere 6.5 • Dell EMC Recoverpoint and Zerto replication for Virtual Machines (RP4VM) migration from VMware • Disaster recovery implementations for remote branch offices (ROBO) • Working alongside Business Continuity teams to improve disaster recovery automation • Delivery of internal training for operations teams to improve incident resolution
MTI is a trusted expert in the provision of Cloud infrastructure solutions to more than 1600 customers across EMEA, successfully supporting 2000+ installations. From global enterprise companies through to local specialist businesses, MTI delivers storage, computing, virtualisation, networking, datacenter solutions, managed services and Cloud Infrastructures across all continents from its European base in UK, Germany and France. Specialties Design and architecture of Server, SAN, NAS, Virtualisation, Backup & Archiving solutions for Cloud Infrastructures. Current Industry Accreditation's ======================= Cisco Certified Data Centre Design Specialist Cisco Certified Data Centre Implementation Specialist Cisco Certified UCS Implementation Specialist Cisco Certified UCS Design Specialist VEEAM certified Engineer v8,9 HP Certified Professional – Implementing HP Storageworks EVA Solutions HP Certified Professional – Implementing HP SANs HP Certified Professional – Designing and Implementing HP Storageworks EVAx400 HP Certified Professional – HP Bladesystem and Networking HP Technical Certified – Enterprise Solutions HP Accredited Presales Professional – HP Enterprise Solutions HP Accredited Platform Specialist – HP ProLiant Servers HP Accredited Presales Consultant – HP ProLiant Servers Solutions HP Accredited Presales Consultant – HP StorageWorks Solutions HP Accredited DataCenter Solution Specialist Cisco UCS and Nexus Implementation Engineer VMware Certified Professional (VCP 3, 4, 5 & 6) VMware NSX certified V6 EMC Isilon TA EMC VNX TA Zerto Accredited Administrator Splunk SE 1 Certified 6x Splunk PowerUser 6x Netapp NCDA Certified Netapp NCIE Certified Microsoft MCSE 2008 & 2012 Dell Accredited Presales Engineer, Modular storage and PowerEdge servers
As well as building on new HP technologies, my main focus areas are around VMware, Cisco UCS, NetApp, EMC, and Microsoft technologies. I have been involved in designing and implementing VMware based solutions from VMware ESX versions 2–5 on many storage platforms but my recent deployments have all been built on EMC and NetApp arrays connected to Cisco UCS B2xx server blades. These are normally connected to SAN’s via either Brocade or Cisco SAN switches and I have great experience in both technologies.
I'm currently working as a contractor for Cisco Systems and other major accounts focusing on storage and server consolidation projects. My main role is the development of Cisco UCS and Nexus platforms that include close integration with VMware 4/5. My main duties include the design and provision of compute and storage infrastructure and the configuration of VMware.
As a principal consultant my role was divided into two prominent areas: Pre-Sales – where I am heavily involved with producing proposals and responding to ITTs – these documents usually consist of high-level design as well as detailed solution architect designs focusing on specific technologies (e.g. hardware configurations, detailed assessments, etc). Delivery – where I am required to visit a clients’ site to implement and configure the solution that they have bought (either my solution design or a colleagues). My work is mainly focused on enterprise solutions (covering HP ISS, BCS and Storage), NetApp, Symantec Microsoft and VMware. My primary skills lie in consolidation and virtualisation technology – particularly BladeSystems, VMware and storage HP Enterprise Solutions (ISS, BCS, Storage) NetApp FAS arrays, Snapmanager iSCSI, NFS and fibre