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Steve Parker - Technical Consultant
Certified UNIX/Linux Specialist

Profile

As a Technical Consultant, I am authoritative 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.

I bring high levels of professionalism, commitment and attention to detail to every project. I match customer requirements with industry best practices to deliver a design and implementation which provides the best of both.

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

Unix/Linux - design, configuration, tuning, hardening. Particularly Solaris (Sun Certified Solaris Administrator, Sun Certified Data Management Engineer, Sun Certified SunCluster installer), RedHat Linux (RedHat Certified Engineer (RHCE))
Clusters - design, configuration, administration, repair
High-End Servers (SunFire 6800, F25k, M3000-M9000) - design, configuration
Volume Management (Veritas, SVM, ZFS) - design, configuration
Storage - NAS, DAS, SAN
Programming - Bourne Shell, C, PHP, SQL

Recent Successes

Am taking the lead role in designing and deploying a Linux strategy and infrastructure for a large UK supermarket
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

June 2009 - Present: Linux Design Consultant, Sainsbury's (Contract)

Consultant designing and implementing a Linux KickStart infrastructure, defining standards, procedures and best practices for design, deployment, resilience, storage and backup strategy.

September 2007 - June 2009: Technical Consultant, iNTEQ Professional Services

For Sun Professional Services, Sun Resellers and other partners, providing Enterprise services specialising in Clusters, High-End Servers (E25K, M3000, M4000, M5000 to M9000) and Volume servers (CMT/Niagara T2000, T5000), X4000 series.

Designing and implementing Solaris and Linux systems, Servers and Storage. Also writing technical documentation on ESX, RedHat, MySQL and other technologies for Sun.

September 2005 - September 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 (E25K and SunCluster), 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. 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.

I was also responsible for capacity planning, to ensure that we deployed sufficient capacity for current and planned future workloads. This involved analysing volumetrics and workflow of the application.

June 1999 - Sep 2005: Technical Consultant, Sun Microsystems (via Netops, Sun Strategic Partner)

Designing solutions as well as onsite installation and configuration of application-ready platforms for all markets including Banks, Telcos, Retail, Utility and Public Sector - from local councils to governmental departments.

Design, installation, testing of:

SunCluster design and installation, HA-API (aka GDS) Scripting
Full range of Sun Servers, including Netra, Enterprise, E10k, SunFire (4x00, 6x00) and StarCat (F12k,15k,20k,25k) and storage including SSAs, A1000, D1000, A5x00 and A3x00; T3, T3B, SExxx0 SAN Arrays including Hitachi HDS 9960/9970/9980 arrays, L1800, L700 Tape Libraries Veritas Volume Manager, Solstice DiskSuite, Raid Manager, Veritas Filesystem

Responsible for all aspects of Netops' and customer internet presence, including determining security policies and procedures, installing and administrating firewall, webserver, mail server, DNS.

September 1998 - May 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 and other servers. Sole company expert in SCO UNIX. Personally responsible for all aspects of the server hardware, operating system, network and networked devices.

May 1997 - September 1998: Unix Installations Engineer, Siemens Nixdorf

Unix and networking for Mercedes, Tesco, Dixons. 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 12 engineers to complete the dealership-wide upgrade within one working day without disrupting the business.

February - May 1997: Support Engineer, GEC Alsthom Signalling Ltd

Administration of Solaris 2.5.1, Windows NT 4 and Novell NetWare. Technical support and management of PCs plus Solaris SPARCstations. Administration and maintenance of Internet gateway, ISDN connection, Intranet including Perl CGI scripting, NIS+.

September 1996 - May 1997: PC Support Technician, Refuge Assurance PLC

As part of a team of 6, on-site helpdesk support for 600 PC users running networked Windows / NetWare. SCO UnixWare and programming of utilities for its data-entry system. Administration and installation of the NetWare servers. Responsible for virus control and backup / restore facilities.

June 1994 - June 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 which turned a half-day task into a two-minute task.

Education / Qualifications

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

Red Hat Certified Engineer 805010462746660
Sun Certified Systems Installer for Sun™ Cluster 3.x
Sun Certified Data Management Engineer - VxVM + SDS
Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 10 OS (Part I & II)

Industry Training

SunCluster 2.2, 3.0, 3.2
HDS 9970/9980 V/Lightning
Sun Fire 15k Admin For Sun Professional Services
Applied SunCluster 3.0 Technologies
SunCluster 3.0 API
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)

Other Technologies

Linux: Active 1996 - Present. Creator of http://speedtouchconf.sourceforge.net/ and other projects. See also below.
AIX, DRS/NX, SCO OpenServer and UnixWare, HPUX, SINIX, *BSD Unix.
Programming: Author of SysView (was http://sysview.net/), Played the major role in porting Nwebmail to Solaris.
Unix / Linux Community: Author of the Bourne Shell Scripting Tutorial which is online at at http://steve-parker.org/sh/sh.shtml as well as many other articles on that site - normally ranked in the top 3 by most major search engines. I also write http://nixshell.wordpress.com/, a more occasional, but widely followed *nix blog..