Resume
Education
- École St. Joseph – Russell, Ontario, Canada
Highest grade achieved: grade 8 - St. Francis Xavier Catholic High School – Hammond, Ontario, Canada
Highest grade achieved: grade 12 - Algonquin College – Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Enterprise Network Specialist
1 year compressed program
Career Related Coursework
College Courses Completed:
- CCNA 1, 2, 3 and 4
- Computer Technology Basics – Hardware (A+ equivalent training)
- Operating Systems 1 (Windows 2000)
- Linux
- Internet Services (Linux)
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Administration
- Introduction to Database (SQL)
- Novell Netware Administration
Work Experience
Full Time:
Senior Unix Engineer / Tools Developer at NVIDIA
May 2021 – Present (2 years 5 months)
- Monitor, maintain, and develop automation + tooling for NVIDIA HPC server farms.
Site Reliability Engineer at Zenoss
May 2021 – May 2022 (1 year)
- Performed development and operational tasks related to the Zenoss Cloud SaaS product.
- Operational tasks included ensuring the stability of the Zenoss Cloud SaaS product through monitoring and resolution of issues as they arose, onboarded new customers, tuned and scaled existing customer instances.
- Development tasks included debugging code, resolving defects, developing automation and monitoring solutions as required.
Senior Support Engineer at Zenoss
August 2013 – May 2021 (7 years 10 months)
- Provided advanced support with various technologies used in the product such as: docker, redis, memcached, hbase, opentsdb, mysql / mariadb, rabbitmq, zope / zodb, elasticsearch / kibana.
- Debugged code (Python / Java / Javascript / Golang).
- Investigated and reported product defects.
- Repaired database corruption issues.
- Performed development tasks such as authoring ZenPacks or creating patches (primarily in Python).
- Investigated and resolved performance issues (generally on large production systems).
- Provided guidance to Level 1 Engineers with any issues that they were having difficulty resolving.
- Required knowledge of many mainstream IT technologies as we have packages to monitor them and are required to support / debug monitoring issues related to them.
MSP Tools Team Lead / Senior Systems Engineer at Nova Networks
January 2011 – August 2013 (2 years 8 months)
- I retained all responsibilities which I previously had as a Systems Engineer, but I was the lead for the NOC toolset.
- I was responsible for day to day maintenance and configuration of the NOC toolset. This included software such as our ticketing system (OTRS), our customer management database (CMDB), our monitoring tools (Zenoss and SolarWinds), our network config backup tool (ZipTie), and several custom pieces of integration code.
- I managed DNS, LDAP, and the NOC web proxy (which allows customers to connect to their servers).
- I was responsible for the development (coding), integration and deployment of new monitoring / reporting tools.
- I authored a ZenPack to monitor Windows Services via SNMP as we were having repeated issues monitoring several devices with WMI. This allowed us to use WMI monitoring in a much more targeted fashion which improved the reliability of our monitoring.
- I was involved in the design and implementation of an advanced network monitoring solution for one of our clients which involved Netflow, QoS and IPSLA. I developed / configured our monitoring / reporting components for these protocols.
- I developed a new automated customer notification system which integrated with our ticketing system as well as our new CMDB system (that is used to track customer device information such as data circuits, locations, contacts, service contracts, etc…)
- I performed a migration of a production MySQL database that was 17GB in size with over 70 million records in it. It was migrated from MySQL 5.0 directly to MySQL 5.5 on a new server with less than 10 minutes of production downtime. It was a query level migration, not binary, as the binary migration was not reliable between those versions.
MSP Tools Specialist / Systems Engineer at Nova Networks
January 2009 – January 2011 (2 years 1 month)
- Implemented and managed several Zenoss monitoring servers (26 at last count) in a NOC environment.
- Developed a good knowledge of VMWare ESX.
- Developed and maintained template ESX images to be used when setting up new Zenoss VMs.
- Performed commissioning of several clients in to the Zenoss monitoring system (one client having over 1000 devices, being a mix of Cisco routers, switches, and Windows servers).
- Compiled all publicly available Cisco Mibs in to Zenoss and released it publicly as a ZenPack.
- Created custom scripts to collect performance data from Windows servers via standard SNMP (no snmp-informant required). Packaged the scripts and templates as ZenPacks and released them publicly.
- Created several custom device templates, event mappings / transforms, and reports. Packaged them in to ZenPacks and deployed them across all servers.
- Created custom python scripts for various purposes including automated updating of hosts files from Zenoss, a command that standard users can execute to get UP / DOWN status of all devices from the commandline on each Zenoss server and python scripts that duplicate existing Zenoss reports (availability, interface, cpu and memory) for the purposes of report automation.
- Created a python daemon which watches for Zenoss events and automatically creates tickets in our ticketing system (OTRS), then automatically moves the events to history.
- Scripted and configured any other customizations that were requested by management.
- Maintained documentation pertaining to Zenoss in our Wiki system (including training documentation).
- Configured Zenoss core to use LDAP and to have assigned roles based on LDAP groups.
- Managed our LDAP system as required.
- Managed our DNS system as required.
- Was named “Zenoss Master” by Zenoss Inc. due to my knowledge of Zenoss as well as my dedication to the Zenoss community.
Senior Network Analyst at Nova Networks
August 2008 – December 2008 (5 months)
- I performed the same responsibilities as listed below for Nuvo Network Management.
- I took on much more of a leadership role.
- I was responsible for auditing tickets that were worked outside of my shift to ensure that proper procedures were being followed.
- I would contact analysts to provide advice or assistance when required.
Network Analyst at Nova Networks
May 2008 – July 2008 (2 months)
- I performed the same responsibilities as listed below for Nuvo Network Management.
LAN Administrator at Transport Canada
May 2007 – April 2008 (1 year)
- Personally supporting any type of computer related issue for over 240 clients.
- Ensuring that any issues are resolved in a timely fashion to meet strict SLA requirements.
- Communicating with clients via Phone, E-Mail, and in person.
- Managing permissions on network file shares.
- Managing Active Directory Group Policy Objects for application deployments, and permissions.
- Requesting the purchase of new computer hardware and BlackBerries.
- Managing the deployment of new hardware as part of yearly lifecycle process.
- Supporting any BlackBerry related technical issues.
- Assisting in relocation of computer equipment.
- Performing setups of computer equipment in boardrooms.
- Authoring scripts and macros to automate tasks when necessary.
- Performing hardware / software setup for new users.
- Ensuring that tickets for issues were logged in the ticketing system (Tivoli) and routed to other support groups as necessary.
Network Analyst at Nuvo Network Management
May 2006 – April 2007 (1 year)
- Monitoring customer networks / servers via HP OpenView and Nebula.
- Working tickets that were auto-generated in our ticketing system (Remedy).
- Dealing with outages in a timely fashion when detected to meet strict customer SLA agreements.
- Following customer’s strict notification / problem handling procedures as to meet contractual obligations.
- Contacting carriers to have data circuits tested and escalating with them as necessary.
- Contacting sites to assist in verifying equipment (generally Cisco routers / switches, but we supported a wide array of different types of networking equipment and servers).
- Logging in to devices once they have regained connectivity to determine the cause of connectivity loss.
- Monitoring client tape backups and logging in to the backup servers to resolve any issues when detected.
- Implementing changes as required (on Cisco routers / switches as well as on servers).
- Changes could include IOS upgrades on switches / routers, patching of servers, device reloads, device swaps, modification to configurations on routers and switches including route addition and interface configuration as well as many other types of changes.
- Configuring ports on Cisco switches running both IOS and CatOS on demand as requested by on-site techs.
- Performing tape changes in our communications room as scheduled.
Level 2 Help Desk Analyst at HP Enterprise Helpdesk
May 2005 – April 2006 (1 year)
Evening shift duties included:
- Accepting and working tickets submitted by clients via a website to our ticketing system (Remedy).
- Answering incoming calls, accepting related tickets regardless of help desk subject area and working the issue.
- Ensuring that tickets submitted to us for issues that the help desk did not directly support get routed to the correct support group.
- Respond to reported server and network outages in a timely fashion. Ensure that the correct support group is contacted regarding the outage to ensure timely resolution. Contact tactical incident manager as required.
Types of issues which I personally supported:
- Various password reset requests (including domain).
- Any supported software malfunction (over 500 business related applications were supported).
- Any Microsoft Windows operating system failure or configuration issues in which the customer can still boot in to Windows to allow the issue to be worked remotely.
- Initial troubleshooting for any network related issues including wireless.
- Initial troubleshooting of any printing related issue.
- Initial troubleshooting and diagnosis for any hardware related issue.
- Any VPN support for customers working from home who are unable to connect.
- Any E-Mail related issues (Outlook, Exchange, pop3).
- Any Blackberry related issues.
Full Time (co-op):
Computer Technician at Pope John Paul II Elementary School
December 2002 – June 2003 (7 months)
- Troubleshooting various computer issues for both the students and faculty.
- Repair and maintain printers.
- Prepare lesson plans and teach computer classes.
- Install software on computer systems as required.
General Experience
- 5 years of experience with FreeBSD.
- 15+ years of experience with Linux.
- 20+ consecutive years of experience with Unix operating systems.
Skillset Highlights
- Advanced experience with administering Linux and FreeBSD servers.
- Proficient with Bash shell scripting.
- Proficient with Python scripting.
- I have worked with other scripting languages to various degrees in the past as well such as PHP, Perl, and Ruby.
- Experience with configuration of Cisco routers and switches.
- Experience with configuration and management of web servers, dns servers, and mail servers on FreeBSD and Linux.
- Experience with Active Directory and LDAP administration.
- Experience with Trac and Subversion.
- Experience with Git and Jira.
- Experience with VMWare technologies including vSphere.
- Advanced experience with Zenoss (infrastructure monitoring software).
Languages
- English
- French
Personality
- I am a social individual who is accustomed to interacting with people on a daily basis.
- I am a team player who always strives to be as professional as possible.
- I am a fast learner who is always eager to take on new challenges.
References
Available upon request.