Allen E. Email and Phone Number

Started as Senior DevOps Engineer, promoted within a year to Enterprise Architect.Designed and wrote net new Ansible for multiple teams and created Ansible Automation Platform templates for multiple teams. Subject Matter Expert for Ansible. Designed, wrote and optimized backup and recovery for Ansible Automation Platform.Led multiple proof of concepts on new technology with database, security QA teams and vendors. Communicated status and evaluation directly to C-level executives. Created new POC evaluation process and collaborated with Enterprise Architecture team to refine.Leveraged TOGAF framework to refine architectural processes.Chaired Automation Design Authority Group. Created Automation Design Strategy.Led architecture of new database as a service infrastructure platform on OpenShift.Subject matter expert on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Design of Ansible Tower deployments in a variety of complex data center environments.Design of automation and Ansible strategies for IT management, proactive security, patching, systems and enterprise application deployments. Collaborated on the creation of multiple programs in the consulting service portfolio.Led the creation of the Automation Adoption Program for strategiccustomers. Led architecture and delivery of program in multiple strategic accounts in private and public sectors.Led pre-sales Discovery and Scoping sessions for multiple strategic customers.Communicated results to customer executives.Managed and mentored engineering consultants on the Automation PracticeTeam and during customer facing engagements.Authored multiple blogs on Ansible, Automation and DevSecOps.Collaborated on creation of Ansible Tower HA/DR strategy for AutomationPractice.Red Hat liaison to Dallas Ansible User Group.

Agent for cultural change at RAC focused on improved communication, breaking down barriers and silos between IT teams and improving processes with the goal of enabling RAC’s IT to respond quickly to changing business needs.Built and led DevOps Center of Excellence team.Lead in developing Rent-A-Center Cloud governance for AWS.Maintained and wrote articles for internal technical blog.Subject Matter expert for multiple teams in the areas of RHEL and Linux, Netbackup, Ansible and Tower.Led development of Rent-A-Center internal deployment framework for AWS automation leveraging Ansible and Cloud Formation.Developed and coordination internal Center of Excellence education outreach for Rent-A-Center with a primary focus on DevOps and Cloud.Design AWS deployments for new applications and migration of existing on-premise applications to AWS. Develop Cloud Formation for automated deployment of AWS resources including IAM, ECS, EC2, KMS, ELB/ELBv2, VPC.Developed Linux server build standards and introduced automation using tools such as Ansible, VMware templates, Kickstart to ensure consistent and fast deployment that incorporated desired system configuration and hardening that eliminated multiple manual processes and empowering operations staff to deploy new systems in minutes versus days.Designed and implemented Ansible Tower deployment.Developed complete automation for SIMS (Point of Sale application) utilizing VMware vRA, Ansible, scripting. This automation enabled Release Management to leverage Jenkins to build and deploy SIMS servers on demand.

Providing consulting expertise for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Solaris, Veritas Storage Foundation, Veritas Cluster Server and Symantec NetBackup.During Rent-A-Center engagement, provided NetBackup health assessment, remediation and re-architecture. As a result, backup job success rates improved from mid-to-high 80’s to over 98% while reducing SAN and Network resource consumption.

Provide technical expertise for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Solaris, Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas Cluster Server.Update VMware and Amazon AMI templates for RHEL with best practices and security hardening.Ongoing support of AA’s virtualized Solaris environment, logical domains, Solaris Containers (Zones) on the T4 server platform.

Senior Consulting Engineer providing professional services, engineering, implementation and architecture in heterogeneous physical and virtual environments to clients in multiple industry, academic and government sectors.Assist pre-sales engineering staff. Analysis of customers’ existing systems and design of hardware, software and services solutions.Design and implementation of Linux, Solaris and VCS clusters for Oracle, SAP and other business applications.Architecture and implementation of NetBackup for Unix and Windows, including OST and native deduplication.Architect Solaris to Linux migrations and implementation of RedHat Satellite. Integration of Linux/Solaris and Active Directory authentication.Design and integration of OpenSCAP security auditing tools with Redhat Satellite and design of custom reporting to meet customer security auditing guidelines.Implementation of Solaris Zones, Logical Domains and ZFS. Design and implement OpenLDAP to replace aging NIS and local files authentication in mixed Unix/Linux environments.Design and implement Zabbix performance and fault monitoring solutions for Linux and Solaris environments.

System Administrator, contract to hire. Administration of platforms ranging from Netra T1 to E25K in an environment with approximately 400 servers, Veritas Cluster and Volume Manager, Oracle, SAN with Qlogic and McData switches and EMC/Hitachi back end. EMC ECC Control Center.Migration of multiple projects and multi-terabyte Oracle databases, ranging from > 1TB to 14TB from Carrollton to Allen data center.Backup and recovery of systems and databases using Veritas NetBackup.

System Administrator on Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD and NetBSD systems. Veritas Cluster Server and NetApp F760 filers. Manage NFS and Samba shares.Designed new Unix architecture to upgrade four-year-old implementation of application. Worked closely with engineering and networking staff to meet projected transaction requirements. Maintained systems with zero unplanned downtime.Migrated data center from Mountain View, CA to Frisco Texas.Migrated DNS from Linux systems running djbdns to Solaris systems running same. Migrated Corporate e-mail from OpenBSD and Linux systems running qmail/vpopmail/exmlm to Solaris.Developed automated standard server builds for Solaris and Windows.Developed Linux-based load balancers to replace aging F5 BigIp’s.Implemented fault and performance monitoring using Big Brother, SE Toolkit and Orca.Built and migrated Windows NT Active Directory servers to Win2k.Designed and implemented new backup infrastructure using Overland Data Reo, Neo and Veritas NetBackup.

System Administrator on Sunfire 15K/12K platforms, Sun Solaris 2.6 - 2.9 Systems on multiple projects including billing, data warehousing, Lotus Domino Server and Clearcase on development, test and production platforms.Administration of Veritas Cluster Server, Planning and implementation of new clusters. Support and modification of existing clusters. On-call support of systems running Sun Cluster.Management of internal web site including administration of web server, development of HTML content, documentation of Data Center practices and information for end users.SAN Administration. Alias and zone configuration on Brocade switches and assignment of hyper volumes using EMC Symmetrix tools. Development of corporate-wide standards for OS installation, including layout and security. Implementation of these standards using a fully automated custom Jumpstart. Reduced standard install time from one or more days to approximately one hour, including patches, security configuration and installation of third-party packages.Compiling software, creation of packages and development of scripts used as part of standard installation. Scripts include automation of recovery following failure of root disk mirrored with Disk Suite, Veritas volume and filesystem creation.Resource person for junior system administrators and 24x7 staff. Development of internal teaching program for 24x7 monitoring group. Course topics including basic Unix and networking theory, Solaris specific training, and internal monitoring software. Management of systems monitoring using Big Brother. Evaluation of software for monitoring systems and system performance. Creation of uptime and usage reports for management. Creation of custom scripts to enhance monitoring.Worked closely with corporate security to develop security standards, evaluate security risks and conduct ongoing security audits using internal scripts and CIS scanning engine.

Part time instructor for Networking and Unix System Administration Adult Continuing Education courses.

Planning and implementation of OS installations and upgrades in an environment of 70+ machines. User administration in NIS+ and non-NIS environments.On-call and help-line support for evening and weekend hours of Sun team, including E-10000 and non-E-10000 groups.Development and implementation of BMC Patrol standards for monitoring of the Sun platform across Southwestern Bell Telephone and Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems.System Administrator on HP-UX 9.04 and DC/OSx 87.3 platforms for data warehouse front end.Virtual disk configuration, file system maintenance, user accounts, printers, monitoring and troubleshooting of OS and network issues, system security, Y2K compliance, shell scripting, planning and implementation of system moves, upgrades and migrations.MPS (Message Processing Service) Analyst at Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems. Responsible for monitoring and troubleshooting operation of data collector and processing of billing data through MPS Tuxedo processes, retrieval of data from mainframe and preparation for processing in MPS.Developed several C and Korn shell scripts to streamline repetitive procedures, developed SQL scripts to assist in retrieving information from Oracle databases for troubleshooting.