Derek Benson Email & Phone Number

Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

Stabilized and upgraded Windows Active Directory domain from 2003, with one DC to Windows Active Directory 2008, with two active DCs, WSUS and certificate services provided by a third AD services server for Vertex Software Corporation. Also configured and implemented a remote domain for future hosting of Vertex and client assets at OnRAMP datacenters.Performed research, analysis and consultation for Vertex and customer network setups. Provided recommendations, alternatives and creative solutions for client and company specific issues that arose during the hosting of customer sites and applications.Performed detailed troubleshooting at the network, server and application levels for various internal and 3rd party tools for developers and clients. Including, but not limited to, Hyper- V, VMware, .NET 2.0/4.0, Wordpress, MySQL, MS SQL Server 2003, 2012 R2 and internalCMS application.Rebuilt Cisco 2811 router configuration to support multiple site to site VPN tunnels, reduce redundant rules and exclusions, reduced overall NAT usage by 80%, provided more stability and continuous connectivity where there had been years of reported issues.Designed, built and deployed Windows Failover Cluster setup and Always on Availability setup for SQL Server 2012. Performed data migration and initial setup of both high availability configurations while collaborating with clients and developers assigned to the clients for the desired design outcome.Performed all hardware and software maintenance related tasks for office, server and datacenter environments controlled by Vertex Software Corporation. Including hardware and parts ordering.Upgraded and migrated mail from older Send mail configuration to Postfix with Postgrey, Amavis and ClamAV.Performed migration from onsite to Amazon AWS hosted environments for clients, including EC2, RDS, Loadbalacers, S3, SES, Certificate Management, and one off solutions depending on the client’s desired environment and practical needs.

Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

Overall position objective is to provide outstanding customer service and technical consultation to a wide variety of small and medium Texas business in the Central Texas region while managing and growing junior level consultants into refined, capable technical engineers.Provided onsite, remote and phone support to 100+ small business for all their technical needs. Typically consisting of break/fix and technical liaison for various 3rd party vendors. Performed installation, deployment and administration of Windows Active Directory infrastructure for client environments. This included addressing any PCI/HIPAA compliance issues with security or data management and optimizing environment based upon individual client needs when able.Managed 2 junior consultants and actively assisted and provided opportunities for growing their technical skills and knowledge. Implemented creative methods to increase interest in learning new material.Managed internal infrastructure consisting of multiple Exchange 2010 server used in conjunction with Barracuda Spam Firewall and a RHEL based smarthost/relay mail server.Using this infrastructure we provided Hosted Exchange and Spam Management services.

Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

Initial scope of the role was to provide building specific support for workstations, VoIP phones, and mobile devices and perform Tier 1 / Tier 2 level support of Windows Office environment. By providing excellent technical assistance and excellent customer service, I was able to convert from a Volt contractor to full time AMD employee within 5 months. Provided Tier 2 / Tier 3 support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL 3, 4, 5), physical and virtual servers, and workstations for a building of 800 users. Additionally handled user account management for 5000 global users, managed CUPS server and spearheaded inflow printer management installation for North America. Assisted with documentation of theEnvironment by implementing a wiki based knowledgebase and worked to improve processes centric to the Engineering/Linux environment. Provided Executive Support for Chief level executives, vice presidents and their staff for approximately 80 users. Developed and implemented the processes for handling Executive level issues, increased customer service features and managed the rest of the building’s 300 users.

Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

Provided technical support and troubleshooting assistance for WHM/cPanel deployments on Centos 5.5 Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl, using Exim4 as the MTA, for approximately 350,000 active users on 5,000 dedicated servers. Including for dedicated server, Virtual Private Server and Shared Server customers. Provided installation and deployment assistance for multiple Content Manage Systems such as Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. Additionally, we assisted with installation of pre-configured packaged scripts like Moodle, Lime Survey, PHPList, MediaWiki, phpBB, vBulletin and bbpress. Investigated issuesRegarding slow page loads, web browser support issues, display/render problems and general website accessibility issues. Provide email support ranging from assisting with email account creates, to setting up and configuring SpamAssassin, DomainKeys and SPF Records. Additionally, when required, would make modifications to Exim or Dovecot/Courier configuration to adjust the functionality to the customer’s needs. Investigated and attempted to prevent security compromises in relation to system, database and website access. Gather initial information such as code snippets, email headers, script locations and access logs for escalation to Security Department. Assisted with keeping customers dedicated and Virtual Private Servers updated properly, inspecting yum and cpup logs to ensure systems were running the latest stable sources available. Provided programming/scripting troubleshooting for PHP, CSS, SQL, HTML, XML, Perl, Ruby and several others. Using such programs as Firefox’s Firebug, Googles PageSpeed and the output from error logs to provide customers with fixes or explanations of the issue and providing solutions to correct those problemsDepending on the complexity.

Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

Provided support and troubleshoot Cisco Unified Contact Center, Call Manager andCustomer Voice Portal software for 30 clients, work with Cisco Technical Assistance Center to investigate and resolve issues. Proactively and reactively monitored clients via a customSNMP web application. Started as Service Desk Agent, monitoring inbound communication such as emails and web submit tickets, as well as taking inbound client calls, contacting 3rd party vendors and performing client environment audits. Train Service Desk Agents to become Operations Engineers through on the job training. Collaborate with SupportEngineers to resolve more complex issues that could not be resolved at the Tier 1 level.

Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

Provided Desktop support to 4 different clients, maintaining approximately 500 systems including Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista, Max OSX, Solaris 2.2 and SunOS 4.4.1. Maintained desktop workstations and printers as part of preventive maintenance. Provided Server support to 3 different clients, remotely and in-house, on CentOS, Solaris, Window Server2003, NT4 Server. Travelled to client locations to diagnose priority issues. Built and installed physical and virtual servers as part of a site upgrade. Maintained server room and cabling closets for 2 clients. Assisted with rewiring a production environment for IC testing company. Assisted with migration of a client from Qmail to Exchange 2003. Setup, tested andMaintained all backups for 2 clients.

Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

Provided telephone and email support or 35 different clients, collectively totaling 400,000 end users per shift, ranging from in-room Internet connectivity at various hotels to complete network and server support for Federal and city government offices in various parts of the country.One of four agents selected to travel to Unisys’ Satellite location in Rochester, NY (chosen from approximately 300 employees), in order to provide training and expertise during the set up and launch of new call center support groups for Lafarge and the New York City Transit Authority. Performed software troubleshooting on various Operating Systems such as Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, HP-UX, Solaris; various commercial applications such as MS Office, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Sygate Firewall, and Symantec Anti-virus; and various proprietary applications as well. Provided Single Point of Contact (SPOC) for clients in relation to 3rd party vendors, employees and Tier 2 and Tier 3 support. Created, analyzed, ordered parts and routed service request issues from Service Desk to onsite technicians. This required coordinating parts location with the technician and location of the request in order to ensure delivery of critical parts prior to the technician’s arrival.