Gary Ford Email & Phone Number

Wakefield, England, United Kingdom

Technical delivery manager for a VMware+Citrix VDI migration project.

Wakefield, England, United Kingdom

Bradford, United Kingdom

Implemented and evaluated a wide range of technologies, including VMware vCloud Air, VMwareVsan, VMware vRealize Ops, VMware vCloud Director, and Xendesktop VDI.Proactively function as a technical lead and accomplish the VMware team’s SAN migration project from EVA to HP 3par. Implement VMware sight recovery manager to facilitate DR requirements, and ensure compliance with current RPO and RTO. Scrutinise and implement a windows patching strategy based on WSUS, as well as migrate the cloud platform from the legacy backup product to NetBackup. Evaluate new technologies, engage with vendors and other business areas to understand requirements, and design cases to deploy the internal infrastructure solutions. Design and implement cross site private cloud platform underpinned by vSphere version 6 technologies.• Architected, implemented, and migrated the vSphere estate to version 5.1, 5.5, and 6, moreover synchronised with a highly skilled storage team to migrate from HP EVA to HP 3par storage.• Carried out accurate cost analysis on increasing the capacity of the VMware hardware estate, which resulted in a complete refresh as opposed to scaling out the existing cluster. Achieved a significant licensing cost saving for both the Microsoft and vSphere estate, a reduction in the TCO and a reduced initial capital outlay.• Developed and executed a complaints system to handle customer complaints for society, and a mortgage introducers system used by third parties to sell society products.• Expertly evaluated the current SQL virtual estate, and utilised exceptional policies to save the 300k licensing costs.

Leeds, United Kingdom

My time at C&W was spent deploying virtualisation infrastructure and virtual machines for C&W's end hosting customers.

Reduced travelling costs and secured the business around 500k per year by designing an OCS 2007 R2 solution for the business.Created and delivered various high level designs based on best practices from VMware, Microsoft, NetApp and HP. Upgraded an ESX system from 3.5 to 4.1, architected a new private cloud solution and was instrumental in negotiations with suppliers for the procurement of new hardware. Solution replaced a legacy HP C7000 blade and Netapp FAS3020 system with an EMC VNX5500 and Cisco UCS Blade environment. Attained two higher level VMware certifications (VCAP DCA and VCAP DCD). • Identified and resolved VMware related issues, designed and implemented VMware data recovery as an interim backup solution for the virtual estate, and supported management and technical staff on new technologies (Flex 10, 10GbE).• Upgraded ESX 3.5 to ESXi 4.1, and deployed ESXi servers to replace the legacy hardware platforms.

Successfully virtualised 90% of customer’s environment using PlateSpin, to increase the platforms resilience and allow removal of the legacy infrastructure.Played a key role as an active member of the technical leads team, responsible for the department’s internal infrastructure and major customers. Improved the technical services and overall design architecture. Designed and built a management infrastructure using Windows 2008 R2 remote desktop services and vSphere 4 to replace the existing Citrix solution. The hardware platform consisted of HP x64 servers and an EMC CLARiiON SAN, which was a direct saving to the customer of an estimated £127,000 in five years and a highly resilient platform, built on the latest hardware.• Supported HP, EMC and NetApp Storage Area Networks, as well as designed and deployed a Windows 2003 domain using HP Hardware and VMware ESX 3.5.• Operated a variety of technologies, including Windows Server, VMware server, ESX 3/3.5/4, Solaris 9, Exchange server 2003/2007, Citrix Metaframe , Backup Exec, SQL, MimeSweeper, HP StorageWorks San, Microsoft SharePoint, MOM 2005, WSUS 3.0 and MacAfee EPO 4/4.5.

My year at British Telecom was spent working on a shift basis covering 24x7 operations for over 2200 server based systems. It was a very challenging role due to the vast range of solutions and technologies supported. The volume of work dealt with in a twelve hour shift was phenomenal and called for extreme diligence. I also acted as deputy team leader, the duties of which I have expanded on below.Ensured that faults were resolved within sla's, organised training schedules, attended management meetings, dealt with customer complaints, distributed workloads and managed change requests.Supported VMware ESX 2.5.2/3.5.3 on HP Blades, underlying OS included Windows 2000/2003 server.

During my two year period at HBOS I worked as part of a team responsible for the platform transformation of the entire the entire centralised and distributed estate. This was a challenging role and one that required 100% accuracy. I helped to streamline the migration using scripted processing.Emphatic member of a team responsible for the NT4 to Active Directory migration of 65000 users.Analyzed group wide data areas to allow for data migration to be achieved with complete transparency.Migrated users, global groups and data volumes using Quest Migration Suite for Active Directory.Responded to faults in a responsive and pro-active manner.Continually streamlined the migration process using scripted and batch file processing.Supported Windows 2000/3/Cluster Server, Exchange 2003/5.5, Active directory and Windows XP.

For the period 2000 - 2004 I held many challenging roles in the UK and Jersey for companies such as RBS, EDS, Halifax Bank and TD Waterhouse. I reported directly to management and advised on system improvements, in most cases designing and implementing the proposed solutions. In addition to this I provided 3rd level support to a multitude of tier 1 application sets.Server and Desktop Infrastructure

I joined the Armed forces in September 1992 and spent 3 years training to be a telecommunications Technician. After successfully completing the academic course I joined active deployment in Germany repairing communications equipment and supporting command centres. I then deployed to Bosnia and specialised in I.T supporting Windows and Novell infrastructures. I decided to leave the armed forces after a further deployment to Bosnia and completed both a Windows and Novell training course in two consecutive weeks, upon completion of the courses I sat and passed the associated exams.

B.T.E.C National Diploma, Engineering; Physics, English, Mathematics And Technology

B.T.E.C National Diploma, Engineering; Physics, English And Technology