Steve Parker : Curriculum Vitae

Steve Parker
Unix Specialist

Profile

As a Technical Consultant, I am an authority on high-end UNIX systems design and configuration. With deep and wide knowledge of operating systems, servers, storage and clusters, as well as LAN, SAN, and fibre technology, I have the knowledge and understanding to propose, design and configure high-end systems within multi-million pound projects.
As solutions do not end with a design, I also have excellent troubleshooting skills, to complement planning in order to avoid problems occurring in the first place.

Key Technologies

Clusters - design, configuration, administration, repair
High-End Servers (SunFire 6800 - 25k) - design, configuration
Solaris (and general Unix/Linux) - design, configuration, tuning, hardening
Veritas Volume Manager - design, configuration
Storage - NAS, DAS, SAN
Programming - Bourne Shell, C, PHP, SQL

Recent Successes

A customer looking to nominate a preferred supplier ordered two E20k servers for which I provided the design. Due to their satisfaction with this design, the customer nominated Sun as their preferred supplier for high-end UNIX systems and immediately purchased a further eight E25k servers.
Received a commendation for "an excellent piece of individual commitment that you have given the project"

Employment History

2007 - Present: Technical Consultant, iNTEQ Professional Services

Technical Consultant providing Enterprise services across a range of technologies.

2005 - 2007: Technical Architect, EDS

Designing implementations (Solaris, HP-UX, Linux) for a large international Bank, taking this design through to obtaining quotes, arranging purchase and organising the delivery, installation and configuration of the servers across multiple environments, within EDS and Client datacentres. Providing cost models for the deployment and ongoing support of the implementation.

Similar work for a large UK government department, focusing on high-end Sun servers, but also dealing with the systems administrators, and with the SAN and network design in detail, coordinating across multiple internal departments to provide a single point-of-contact for the project to arrange the implementation. This also involves working closely with multiple suppliers to design a coherent solution as well as taking a close involvement in the change management process across all environments.

1999 - 2005: Technical Consultant, Sun Microsystems Ltd (via NetOps Ltd, a Sun Strategic Partner)
Working on behalf of Sun Client Services, designing solutions as well as onsite installing and configuring application-ready platforms.
Clients are typically banks, telco's and public sector - from local councils to governmental departments.
Typical work includes design and installation of:

Operating System Upgrades
SunCluster design and installation, HA-API (aka GDS) Scripting
Veritas Volume Manager, Solstice DiskSuite, Raid Manager
Veritas File System
Kernel Tuning
Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FCAL) devices and hubs
Systems Migration
SAN, NAS, DAS
Full range of Sun Servers, including Netra, Enterprise, E10000, SunFire and StarCat (F12k,15k,20k,25k).
Sun Storage, including SSA's, A1000, D1000, A5x00 and A3x00; T3, T3B, SExxx0 SAN Arrays including Hitachi HDS 9960/9970/9980 arrays.
L1800, L700 Tape Libraries

I enjoy this work as it requires very high levels of professionalism, commitment and attention to detail (which implies knowing detail across the board, as well as where to find it). Whilst standardisation is important, no two customers, and no two jobs, are the same - each has their own unique circumstances and requirements; matching customer requirements with best practices to deliver a design which combines the best of both and is accepted by all parties I find particularly satisfying.
This process can also lead to refinement of internal best practices, so I will also initiate or get involved in discussions about improvements to standards and processes when necessary.
I have also rekindled my C programming skills, designing, writing and packaging SysView, as well as writing various CGI scripts in C, shell and PHP.
Other internal work includes being responsible for all security aspects of the various domains we manage, including determining security policies and procedures, installing and administrating firewall, webserver, mail server, DNS, etc.
During this time I have also developed the Shell Scripting Tutorial at http://steve-parker.org/sh/sh.shtml, highly ranked by Google and other search engines, as well as SpeedTouchConf.

1998 - 1999: Systems Specialist, Datel Computing Ltd
AIX and SCO Systems Specialist responsible for providing consultancy, installation, and ongoing maintenance and support of systems running on RS/6000, NetFinity, Acer, Compaq and other servers. Sole company expert in SCO UNIX.
Personally responsible for all aspects of the server hardware, operating system, network and networked devices at most of the customer sites I was involved in.

1997 - 1998: Unix Installations Engineer, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme (via Stonemead Associates)
Unix and networking for Mercedes, also helping Tesco checkout installation as this was a major project for SNI at the time. Taking the role of a Senior Engineer, I replaced the whole network - Unix clients and servers, PCs, printers, and (Unix/X11 client) Electronic Parts Catalogue systems for a Mercedes dealership. This involves co-ordinating a team of a dozen engineers to complete the dealership-wide upgrade within one working day without disrupting the business.

Spring 1997: Support Engineer, GEC Alsthom Signalling Ltd
Running Solaris 2.5.1 Unix servers, Windows NT 4 as a Lotus Notes 4.5 Server, and a Novell NetWare 3.12 server. Technical support and management of a network of around 80 PCs running Windows 3.1, 3.11, 95 and NT Workstation plus eight SPARCstations running Solaris 2.5. Administration and maintenance of Internet gateway, ISDN connection, Intranet Web site (using Apache 1.1 and Solaris 2.6 Web servers).

1996 - 1997: PC Support Technician, Refuge Assurance PLC
As part of a team of 6, providing on-site helpdesk support for 600 PC users running networked Windows 3.1 on 13 Novell NetWare 3.11 and 3.12 servers sharing a total of 200 printers.
Administration of a SCO UnixWare server and programming of utilities for the data-entry system which it ran. Installing and configuring PCs. Administration and installation of the NetWare servers. Responsible for virus control and backup / restore facilities.

1994 - 1995: Validation Engineer, ICL (Sandwich Year as part of Degree)
Various flavours of unix (SCO, DRS/NX, UnixWare) and Windows NT 3.5, 3.51 validation and certification, involving systems administration, hardware and software, and my specialisation in Networking - including TCP/IP, OSI, X21, V24/X25, Token Ring, UUCP, Internet Services (DNS, NNTP, etc).
Working closely with the kernel and userspace developers of DRS/NX, I was able to get involved with the development team right down to kernel level. This gave me a great insight into Unix internals.
Whilst at ICL I wrote a shell script to configure systems for stress-testing. The script would take the number of users required, find the specification of the machine it was running on, configure swap space, kernel parameters, rebuild the operating system kernel, and have the machine ready within minutes. It had previously taken around half a day to properly configure such a system for testing.

Education / Qualifications

BSc. 2(i) (Honours) Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire (1996)
A-Levels in Computer Science, Pure & Applied Mathematics, General Studies (1992)
9 GCSE's including "A" in Maths & French, "B" in English Lit. and Language (1989)

Industry Training

Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 10 OS (Part I & II)
Sun Certified Systems Installer for Sun™ Cluster 3.x.
HDS 9970/9980 V/Lightning
Sun Certified Data Management Engineer - VxVM + SDS
Sun Fire 15k Admin For Sun PS
Applied SunCluster 3.0 Technologies
SunCluster 3.0 API
SunCluster 3.0
SunFire 3800-15000 Server Range
Solstice DiskSuite (Solaris LVM) 4.2.1 Update
Volume Manager 3.2 Update
Sun SKIP, EFS, FPS Firewall
Sun E10000 (aka Starfire, E10k)
SunCluster 2.2

Other Technologies

Linux: I have been using GNU/Linux on my personal workstations since 1997 (kernels 2.0 - 2.6)
Other UNIX: AIX, DRS/NX, SCO OpenServer and UnixWare, HPUX, SINIX, *BSD Unix.
Configuration of BIND, Sendmail, Exim, Apache (SSL, PHP, CGI, etc)
Programming: Played the major role in porting Nwebmail from Linux to Solaris. (C language), author of SysView (www.sysview.net), SpeedTouchConf.sourceforge.net
Unix Community: Author of the Bourne Shell Tutorial at http://steve-parker.org/sh/sh.shtml