James Laing Email & Phone Number

Manchester

Working closely with development teams of the Spectrum Virtualize family of storage products including FlashSystem and Storwize this role focuses on testing the vast feature set of the product range. Key responsibilities from the Manchester Lab include:* Design, configure and document complex storage solutions for test phase.* Test, troubleshoot and document any defects in the latest software build.* Maintain several flavours of operating systems and SAN switches.* Understand upcoming hardware and software features and document test procedures for the team to identify any anomalies.* Produce and process defect analysis to identify potential improvements.

Huddersfield, England, United Kingdom

Manchester, United Kingdom

Project to consolidate and migrate 6000+ hosts from 48 legacy disk arrays to 20 strategic arrays globally migrating around 24PB. Responsible for defining the project migration framework and support structure for the vendor and to manage bespoke plans for hosts which lay exception to the standard framework.

London, United Kingdom

Migrate and consolidate 54 SAN switch chassis and over 11k ports to latest generation hardware on schedule within budget. Deploy new hardware globally and plan and manage migration of hosts to new infrastructure with no downtime or interruption to services.

London, United Kingdom

Project: Storage Transformation Programme to save £500k per year in support costs by decommissioning 2.5PB on 22 IBM XiV Gen2 disk arrays and migrate to IBM’s latest generation software defined tiered storage solution; IBM SmartCloud with hardware accelerated real-time compression on FlashSystem disk array technologies and SVC EasyTier to move data between inexpensive and performance ready disk.Responsible for planning, managing and monitoring the implementation, including impact assessment, resource management (host, storage, technical and testing teams), delivery cost control, change delivery and co-ordination, conflict resolution and contingency planning.• Ran several design workshops to best utilise the most efficient tiering methodologies and overcome technical challenges• Data migration methodologies involved host-based and block level migration across Windows, AIX and Linux operating systems• Implemented IBM SmartCloud: SVC, XiV, FS840, V7000, EasyTier & TPC/VSC Analytics• Produced supporting documentation for L1-L3 to deploy and maintain the solution and worked closely with IBM L3 and developers as the technical point of contact to identify root cause, challenge workarounds and resolve highlighted defects in SVC, V7000, VSC Analytics and subsystem device drivers.• Engaged with business stakeholders with high risk customer facing services and performed performance analysis and monitoring sessions to ensure service received same or better performance following migration• Real-time compression realised 60% savings across mixed data types• Liaised with business users, Service Level Management and Change Approval Boards to provide justification and priority of storage transformation changes.

Knutsford, Cheshire

Project: Part of the Storage Refresh Programme to migrate from HDS disk arrays to new strategic storage platforms and provide technical support to Change Coordinators, liaise with Host Teams and manage challenging aspects of disk migration from Hitachi arrays.• Migrating from HDS 9960, 9980V & USP/USP-V and IBM DS8000• Migrating to IBM SVC, IBM XIV & EMC VMAX• Host-based and block level migration methodologiesEnd-to-end planning, resource alignment, disk provisioning and change coordination of migration events to strategic platforms using best suited migration method to minimize service impact. Working closely with the business to ensure requirements are met.Ownership and coordination of legacy hosts which fall outside of manufacturer supportability and addressing technically complex hosts to migrate such as IBM AIX GPFS.Disaster Recovery Data Centre Migrations with data replication solutions while sustaining a DR solution at all times using IBM SVC. Perform HDS performance investigations.

Bradford, United Kingdom

Provision disk requests to various flavours of OS and configure backup environments for new clients. • HP 3PAR / XP24000 • CommVault Simpana & HP Data ProtectorDocument new procedures and support team during major Storage transformation project.

Knutsford, Cheshire

Global Storage Engineering & Projects• Subject Matter Expert for HDS disk arrays. USP-V, USP, AMS & Device Manager• Coordinate data migrations• IBM XIV Global Mirror data replication• Analyse and coordinate storage requests for major projects large scale system uplift• Advise data migration where appropriate and initialise and coordinate• Compliance work to secure device connectivityGlobal Storage Operations & Support• Assist Global Operations support to reduce reactive incident count• Disk array microcode upgrades• Maintain various strategic and legacy storage devices and software products

Knutsford, Cheshire

Hitachi Data Systems on site representative at working within Global Storage Platforms at Barclay Bank plc to offer support and expertise for HDS equipment.

Storage infrastructure management • Routine maintenance planning • Disk array commissioning • Performance analysis and tuning • SAN and array administration • Configuration documentation • Root cause analysisExperience • Data centre migration • SAN design and implementation • Data Protector backup streamline • BOOT from SAN

Main storage responsibilities were with switch zoning, new disk provisions and extensions to existing systems, while ensuring the backup environment remained stable. • HP EVA5000, MSL, ProLiant and HP Data Protector • Brocade SAN switchesAlso managed a servers and workstations in a Windows 2000 domain and implemented an automated OS install mechanism saving the team from manual client build installations.Supporting HP server and storage IT infrastructure, backups to MSL tape and maintenance upgrades.

Desktop support involved implementation of automated client builds and package installs with Active Directory integration.