Personal Profile
An accomplished senior consultant
and infrastructure architect with over 16 years’ experience in infrastructure
design and analysis, the majority being within the Financial Services
sector. Experienced in all phases of the
infrastructure design and governance process with particular strengths in
Divestments, Datacentre migrations and the automation of Datacentre operations.
Specialist skills in Enterprise infrastructures, with a particular emphasis on
Digital Infrastructure Transformation, Cloud (Azure and AWS), DevOps, End User
Computing, Mission Critical Systems and Datacentre Automation.
Passionate about new technology
and using technology to solve problems, extending into volunteering for local
social enterprises and being involved in the SocialCoding4Good initiative;
utilising skills in web and mobile application development, helping to create innovative
technology solutions. Development skills include Agile methodology, Behaviour
Driven Development using Cucumber and languages include Ruby, C#.NET, PowerShell
and javascript.
Employment History
Senior Consultant – Digital & Technology
Consulting Practice
Exception
March 2013 – Present
Key Tasks
•
Lead consultant for Digital Infrastructure
Transformation within the practice, incorporating DevOps and Evergreen IT
•
Responsible for the production of sales
collateral relating to Digital Infrastructure Transformation
•
Pre-sales work with sales team on both new and
existing accounts
•
Contribution to bid proposals in terms of
estimation and documentation
•
Provide technical leadership on client
engagements
•
Production of High Level and Detailed Design
Artefacts and Architecture documentation.
Major Achievements
Notable engagements with Exception have been working on the
Williams & Glyn Delivery team for RBS and then within the Business Systems architecture
team at Aberdeen Asset Management.
Engaged onsite with RBS, within the Williams & Glyn
Delivery team as part of the End User workstream, the role initially involved
working closely with the business teams to manage and help define the
requirements for a range of platforms, including Messaging, ATM and both
internal and public websites. Latterly the role moved to provide design
assurance for the infrastructure build being completed by third party
providers, including IBM, Adobe and Rackspace.
Within the Business Systems team at Aberdeen Asset
Management, the role was to design the infrastructure for the new data
integration layer, which has been developed on the Markit EDM platform. With a
‘cloud first’ strategy, this role involved working closely with the development
team, the operational infrastructure teams and Microsoft to create an
infrastructure that could be hosted on premise, yet migrate seamlessly to Azure.
With a mature agile lifecycle within the development team, the approach for the
new infrastructure platform was to provide for a DevOps capability to allow a
much quicker time to market and reduce the existing four week release schedule
to a two week schedule.
Infrastructure Architect
Scottish Widows Investment Partnership
August 2011 – March 2013
Key Tasks
•
Translate business requirements into high level
infrastructure designs and support the Solution Architect by contributing to
the production of project solution design documentation
•
Responsible for the production of project high
level solution design documentation and managing the governance process where
the scope of a project focuses entirely on the infrastructure domain
•
Provide technical oversight across the project
lifecycle to ensure that infrastructure solutions are implemented as designed
Major Achievements
One of the first projects I
worked on within SWIP was to migrate around 100 Windows virtual machines from
the legacy Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 environment to a new VMware vSphere
4.1 environment. As this project was entirely within the infrastructure domain,
I was responsible for producing the high level project design for the new
VMware environment and managing the governance process. Due to the lack of
relevant technical experience, I was asked to implement the solution and to run
the migration piece of the project. I fully automated both the build of the
VMware environment and the migration of the virtual machines. The new environment
was implemented successfully and within budget and the machines were migrated
successfully within the aggressive timescales.
SWIP had a project to replace the
legacy IBM Datastage toolset with a new Enterprise Data Management environment
using Cadis. Within this project, I created the detailed infrastructure design
and provided technical oversight during the implementation phase of the
project. There were a number of challenges, including having to change the
hosting platform during the implementation. The infrastructure was successfully
implemented within the timescales of the project.
Technical Design Lead
Aegon Global Technology
August 2010 – August 2011
Key Tasks
•
Team lead for the Datacenter migration
automation stream
•
Responsible for the design of the automation
process to automate the configuration of migrated servers
•
Responsible for the design of the Antivirus
Environment for the Windows estate hosted in the new datacenter
Major Achievements
When AEGON built a new datacenter
in Edinburgh, there was a requirement to implement a new Antivirus environment
for the windows server estate. I was responsible for producing the high level
design of this environment using Symantec Endpoint Protection. This design
included disaster recovery provision within the DR Datacenter in London. The
new environment was implemented successfully within the project timescales.
AEGON had a requirement to
migrate over 600 servers, both Windows and Linux, from two datacenters in
Germany into the new datacenter on disparate hardware. I led a team of Windows
and Linux engineers, responsible for automating the configuration of the
servers once they had been migrated into the new datacenter to enable them to
run on the new hardware and be managed by the new infrastructure in Edinburgh.
The manual migration process consisted of around 250 steps. Automating this
process allowed the migration programme to migrate a greater number of servers
in a shorter period of time. This in turn led to a much greater confidence
within the business for the success of the migration programme.
Infrastructure Design
Aegon UK
October 2007 – August 2010
Key Tasks
•
Design of Email Archiving System
•
Design of Microsoft Hyper-V environment for
Test/Development
•
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager
Design
•
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
Design
•
HP Insight Manager Design
•
Design of Active Directory migration to Server
2008
Major Achievements
AEGON had a requirement for
implementing Email Archiving and made the decision to implement EMC
EmailXtender, DiskXtender and Centera. I worked closely with EMC to produce the
end to end design for the Email Archiving Platform. The solution was
implemented successfully within the regulatory timescales.
When AEGON migrated from Lotus Notes
to Exchange 2007, the support of the email environment was managed by support
teams in the US. This led to a requirement for much closer working between the
UK and US teams. I designed the UK arm of an Office Communications Server
environment to tie in with the existing US environment. This was initially
targeted at the support teams, but once the business became aware of the
possibilities, it was quickly adopted by many other business units.
With an upcoming requirement to
pilot a number of new technologies, I was tasked with designing a
virtualisation platform to host a development environment. I produced a design
for a clustered Hyper-V 2008 environment utilising an iSCSI SAN. The
environment was implemented and went on to be used successfully to pilot a
number of technologies which were then implemented in production.
Application Remediation Design
Scottish Widows
July 2007 – October 2007
Key Tasks
•
Document existing Applications on the Windows
NT4 estate
•
Design Migration of applications to Windows Server
2003
•
Document changes to migrated applications
Major Achievements
When Scottish Widows were in the
process of upgrading their server estate from NT4 to Server 2003, they had a
large number of both legacy and off the shelf applications which needed to be
migrated to the new server estate. There was little to no documentation for
many of these applications. I was part of a team documenting these applications
prior to migration and producing the design to allow them to either be migrated
successfully or decommissioned. Once the applications were migrated, I was
responsible for updating the documentation to reflect the new environment.
Infrastructure Engineer
Aegon UK
January 2006 – July 2007
Key Tasks
•
3rd Level support of large Windows Server Estate
•
Management and Support of Active Directory,
Group Policy and DNS
•
Management and support of Tivoli Software
Distribution Framework on Solaris 9
•
Standardisation of Server estate
•
Design and build of DR capability for Microsoft
Exchange 2003 and Lotus Notes interoperability
•
Design and implementation of VBS scripts to
automate daily manual checks and monitor the server estate
Infrastructure Engineer
Danske Bank
November 2005 – January 2006
Key Tasks
•
Migrate Northern Bank applications onto Danske
Bank infrastructure
•
Document the applications to reflect the new
environment
Infrastructure Design Consultant
O’Hare & McGovern
March 2005 – November 2005
Key Tasks
•
Design upgrade to Windows Server Infrastructure
•
Design Email Platform using Microsoft Exchange
2003
•
Design Network Security using Cisco PIX
Firewalls and ISA 2004
•
Design Server Room to meet power and
environmental recommendations
•
Design WAN to allow remote connectivity from
branch offices
•
Negotiate ICT support contracts
IT Support Team Leader
John Paul Construction
January 2001 – October 2004
Technical Support Consultant
Gateway Computers
October 1999 – January 2001
Education & Qualifications
Queens University, Belfast Sept 1994 – May 1997
BEng Aeronautical
Engineering Course Discontinued
St Colman’s College, Newry Sept 1987 – June 1994
A-Level 1
x C Geography
2 x D
Mathematics, Physics
GCSE 1
x A Mathematics
5
x B Additional Mathematics, Physics,
Geography, English, French
2
x C Biology, Chemistry
Hobbies & Interests
I am a volunteer crew member on
my local lifeboat in Dunbar, am a keen sailor and qualified as an offshore
yachtmaster. I am also a keen surfer and
runner and love to spend time with my three young children. My experience with the RNLI as lifeboat crew,
along with racing and skippering yachts, has given me a strong grounding in
managing a team and the ability to make difficult decisions in high pressure
situations.
Key Skills
Active Directory
Support of global AD infrastructure
including cross domain/cross forest trusts
Support of Integrated DNS
OU Design
Group Policy design and support
PKI infrastructure installation and
support
Domain Migration
Virtualisation
VMware vSphere 4.1
Installation
Configuration
Support
VMware Virtual Center 4.1
Configuration
Administration
VMware View
Administration
Microsoft Hyper-V
Installation
Configuration
Support
Platespin
P2V migrations
Platespin protect 10 for DR provision
Server Operating Systems
Windows NT –
2K8R2
Build and Support
Automated Build
Failover Clustering Technologies
Network Load Balanced Clusters
OS Tuning
OS Monitoring
Solaris 9
Installation
Basic/Intermediate configuration
General administration
Linux
Installation
Basic/Intermediate configuration
Shell Scripting
Web
Apache
Installation
Configuration
Support
IIS
Installation
Configuration
Support
Messaging
Exchange Server 5.5 –
2K3
Installation
Configuration
Support
Interoperability with Lotus Domino
Exchange Server 2K7
Administration
Office Communications Server 2K7
Installation
Configuration
Support
EMC EmailXtender Archiving
Installation
Configuration
Support
Administration
DHCP
Design and support of Microsoft DHCP
infrastructure including resilience
Databases
MySql
Microsoft SQL Server 2K –
2K8
Installation
Configuration
Support
TSQL
Automation
Powershell
VB Scripting
VB.NET
C#.NET
TSQL
NSH
BMC BladeLogic
IBM Tivoli Framework
Hardware
Dell Blade Systems
IBM Blade Systems
HP Servers
Dell Servers
Server Rack Design and Build
Monitoring
Microsoft System Center Operations
Manager
BMC ProActiveNet
HP Systems Insight Manager
Antivirus
Symantec Endpoint Protection
Design
Installation
Configuration
Support
Sophos
Support
McAfee
Support
Backup
Tivoli Storage Manager
Commvault
Veritas
