Systems Engineer

Neil Kassal

nkassal at gmail dot com - 480-***-****

http://linkedin.com/in/neilkassal

Work Objective and Executive Summary

I strive to become the trusted advisor to my co-workers and prospects, while providing enterprise-class sales or technical support to my AEs and employer. Give me just one technical advantage and I can bring my passion to the table, leaving happy, well-supported projects and customers in my wake.

Target Positions

Technical Consultant, Sales Engineer, Storage Engineer, Systems Engineer, Systems Administrator, Consulting Systems Engineer, Storage Administrator, VMware Administrator, Linux Administrator

Fusion-io Sales History

135% FY14 attainment, 210% FY13 attainment, 78% FY12 attainment

Experience

11/2014-Present Nimble Storage Phoenix, AZ

Senior Sales Engineer

Providing pre-sales technical expertise and support to Account Executives and customers in the Desert Southwest, delivering Enterprise-class Adaptive Flash storage platform solutions from Nimble Storage. Participate in local and regional seminars, as well as Nimble Storage Operations and Installation Professional training. Deploy, install and integrate Nimble Storage solutions in customer environments. Covering Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern Nevada.

08/2011-11/2014 Fusion-io (a SanDisk Company) Phoenix, AZ

Staff Sales Engineer for Southwest and Mountain (AZ, NM, NV and CO/UT/WY/MT/ID)

Providing pre-sales technical expertise and support to account executives in the Desert Southwest and Mountain States to deliver enterprise-class, revolutionary solid-state storage solutions from Fusion-io. Attained Club for FY14 (at 135%.) Attained War Coat status for FY14 Q2. Attained Club for FY13 (at 210%.) Taught caching module at New Hire Training in 2014 and competitive positioning module in 2012. Earned Fusion-io Sales Certification as well as VTSP5 certification.

05/2011-08/2011 Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) Tempe, AZ

Technical Consultant (resident at Honeywell)

Implemented Hitachi Replication Manager (HRpM), Hitachi Device Manager (HDvM), Hitachi Tuning Manager (HTnM), Hitachi Storage Capacity Report (HSCR) and Hitachi Command Director software and documented the process for handover to the main IT service provider, IBM, at the Honeywell client site. Tested and performed production upgrades to v7.1 of the various HDS packages.

08/2008 – 03/2011 PayPal, an eBay company Scottsdale, AZ

Senior Storage Engineer for Site Operations

Responsible for payment-impacting production scalable high-performance Fibre Channel director-based Storage Area Networks across multiple datacenters and numerous physical switch fabrics. Ran the morning change review meetings coordinating Oracle ACS (formerly Sun PS) contractors with PayPal Storage. Regularly created spreadsheets detailing capacity forecasting to plan host storage additions. Attended meetings sent from Project Managers to act as a delegate from the Storage Team. Frequently provisioned and configured Hitachi Data Systems USP and USP-V Enterprise storage systems for interconnection to Brocade 48000 and DCX switches and both Solaris and AIX hosts. Engaged in daily provisioning of both legacy LDEVs and Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning (HDP) based LDEVs. Maintained Hitachi AMS1000 and AMS2500-based legacy storage arrays. Frequently used Veritas Volume Manager to create host filesystems of both software-striped and concat variety, and used it to migrate hosts from one storage array to another without impacting production applications. Decommissioned hosts and arrays from storage switches, coordinating with data center site service professionals. Managed service restoration tickets with Remedy for common hardware replacement tasks and emergency capacity adds. Filed change management tickets for handling new host add, capacity growth, and performance management-related tasks. Provided LDEVs to Oracle Database Administrators for use as Oracle ASM disks with Oracle 11g. Documented Storage group howtos, policies, procedures, and system audits initially in a DokuWiki system, and then later in a FOSWiki-based knowledge management system.

09/2007 - 08/2008 Wyndham Hotel Group Phoenix, AZ

Senior UNIX and SAN Administrator

Administered IBM xSeries servers running RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4, IBM pSeries servers running AIX 5.1, Compaq Alphaservers running Tru64 4.0, and Sun Enterprise SPARC-based servers running Solaris 2.6, 8, 9, and 10. Maintained Fibre Channel-based SANs to interconnect EMC CLARiiON CX700 storage and Symmetrix DMX3000 storage to x86-based Windows and Linux machines, POWER-based IBM servers, and SPARC-based Sun servers through multiple Brocade Silkworm 3800 and 24000 switches. Supported Legato Networker with fiber-attached EMC CLARiiON ATA near-line storage and a Quantum P4000 tape library attached to a backup SAN fabric. Responded to calls from the Phoenix Data Center for system outages and urgent requests. Used Big Brother to monitor server status across the enterprise, and HEAT to perform trouble-ticket service requests for Hotel Group clients. Provided system support for Informix, DB2, and two generations of Oracle (9i RAC and 10g) in standalone and cluster-based configurations by working closely with Informix, DB2, and Oracle database administrators. Documented howtos, policies, procedures, and system audits in a TWiki-based knowledge management system.

10/2005 - 09/2007 US Airways Technologies Tempe, AZ

Team Lead, UNIX and Storage Area Network (SAN) Administrator

Installed, upgraded, and supported HP DL360, DL380, DL385, and DL585 x86-based servers running RedHat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3 and 4 as well as Sun Enterprise and Fujitsu PrimePower 200, 250, 400, 450, 650, 800, and 850 SPARC-based servers running Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Supported Veritas Netbackup with fiber-attached Apple Xserve RAID near-line storage and an ADIC Scalar i2000 tape library attached to a backup SAN fabric. Was responsible for Internet-accessible systems connected through Cisco context sensitive switches in sanctioned DMZs. Responded to pages from the Technology Assistance Center (TAC) for system outages and urgent requests. Used Nagios to monitor server status across the enterprise, and MAGIC to perform trouble-ticket service requests for division clients. Audited systems using both LogWatch and AIDE as change notification tools. Supported a FICON-attached EMC Symmetrix DMX1000S-M2 system attached two IBM zSeries mainframes. Deployed a Bustech-based, SAN-attached MAS unit for mainframe-attached virtual tape library (VTL) storage. Operated Fibre Channel-based SANs to interconnect EMC CLARiiON CX400, CX500, and CX700 storage and Symmetrix DMX1000S and DMX800M2 storage to x86-based Windows and Linux machines and SPARC-based Sun and Fujitsu servers through multiple Brocade Silkworm 3200, 4100, 12000, 24000, and 48000 switches. Provided system support for three generations of Oracle (8, 9i RAC, and 10g) in standalone and cluster-based configurations by working closely with Oracle database administrators. Supported the Workbrain application, MAPPER, as well as Oracle Portal and Oracle Financials at the system level for other departments. Supported EAGLE at a storage-based level for the Windows administration team. Documented howtos, policies, procedures, and system audits in a TWiki-based knowledge management system.

8/2005 - 10/2005 Wells Fargo (CDI Corporation Contractor) Tempe, AZ

UNIX Systems Engineer for OSS Division

Performed server system build-outs, patches, upgrades and sustained engineering support for AIX 5.1 and 5.2 and Solaris 8 and 9 based systems running on IBM pSeries and Sun Enterprise hardware. Deployed IBM BladeCenter systems running RedHat Enterprise Linux and Oracle 9i RAC. Worked with Project Management team and implementation coordinators to ensure successful rollout of applications.

9/2004 - 8/2005 Vcommerce Corporation Scottsdale, AZ

UNIX Administrator for IT Division

Operated Veritas Backup Exec 10 with fibre-attached near-line storage and a Dell PowerVault 136T LTO2 tape library. Maintained a large set of heterogenous x86-based hardware running Fedora Core, RedHat Linux and Enterprise Linux along with Tomcat and Apache on an Internet-accessible network complete with Cisco load balancers/SSL accelerators, Dell and Cisco switches. Serviced Nagios to monitor server status across the enterprise to ensure HA of service. Supported Fibre Channel-based SANs to interconnect EMC Clariion storage to x86-based Linux machines and SPARC-based Sun servers through Brocade switches. Engineered kickstart procedures to enable rapid deployment of developer machines. Deployed PostgreSQL 7.4.5 on Sun V40z 4-way SMP servers running RHEL AS3. Administered Oracle 8.0.5, 8.1.7.4 and 10.1.0.3 on both Sun Enterprise 4000s, 280Rs running Solaris 9, and x86-based hardware running RedHat Enterprise Linux 2.1 and 3. Supported Interactive Intelligence phone system (SQL backend, application server, administration system, user client, and to-the-cube wiring.) Managed N-Star card-access, fingerprint, and alarm system to ensure building and NOC security.

11/2002 - 9/2004 KhiMetrics Inc. Scottsdale, AZ

Senior AIX and Oracle Administrator for IT Division

Administered Oracle 9.2.0.5 and 8.1.7.4 on IBM RS/6000 AIX SMP servers and DLPARs. Deployed Oracle 9i RAC on two four-node IBM BladeCenter clusters running RedHat Advanced Server 2.1. Operated Veritas NetBackup v5 with IBM 3583 LTO-2 fibre-attached tape libraries. Performed DB2 7.2 and 8.1 installations and maintained a large set of heterogeneous IBM eServer pSeries hardware (including F50s, p610, p650s, p660s, a p670, p680 and a p690.) Installed and supported RedHat Linux machines running Tomcat, Oracle, and IBM's WebSphere MQSeries on an Internet-accessible network complete with Netgear, Dell and Cisco switches, and WatchGuard Firebox firewalls. Created an OpenSSI/OpenMOSIX-based cluster of scientific servers for process-level load balancing. Deployed Nagios and BigSister to monitor server status across the enterprise, both client and server-side, to ensure high availability of IT services. Supported Fibre Channel-based SANs to interconnect IBM ESS (Shark) Model 800 and FastT (LSI) 200, 700, and 900 storage systems to both Linux clusters and IBM pSeries machines through McData Sphereon 4500 switches. Maintained legacy SSA disk subsystem attached to pSeries hardware. Set up PHPNuke, cvsweb, Bugzilla and GForge for project management and source code control. Installed PHPList for sales and marketing client relationship management. Used Nessus and nmap to audit security on production and development systems. Engineered disk imaging and kickstart procedures for IBM 8678 and 8832 HS20s to enable rapid deployment of both Windows XP, 2000 Server and Professional, as well as RedHat Linux and Enterprise Linux, for use as front-end, mid-tier, and database servers. Tuned and monitored Oracle instances to enhance interactive and batch performance of the KhiMetrics software suite in both development and production environments. Restored, migrated and replicated databases for system users, developers and database architects. Developed and deployed my own custom perl-based Oracle backup scripts to maintain near-line backups on both Linux and AIX systems. Administered VMware instances running test and development versions of the KhiMetrics suite.

Education

Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 5/99

B.S. In Computer Engineering with Co-Op Certificate GPA: 3.0 / 4.0

Skills

•Strong organizational, customer-service, and verbal and written communication skills.

•Detailed collecting of technical requirements from a wide set of customers, based on my Application Service Provider, system, and storage experiences in a diverse set of industries.

•Experience in Root Cause Analysis problem resolution with both storage and system vendors.

•Policy and procedure documentation history, with a focus on process and problem analysis.

• Operating system setup and management for Sun SPARC/Solaris, x86/x86-64 RedHat, CentOS, and Fedora Core Linux systems, and IBM POWER-based AIX systems.

• Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL DB creation, maintenance, backup and restoration.

• Physical system planning, maintenance and setup for all computing hardware.

• Colocation facilities planning, network and system installation and maintenance.

• Backup management and disaster recovery planning for heterogeneous systems.

• System monitoring and performance metrics gathering for heterogeneous systems.

• Office move planning and coordination, including special power, cooling and networking concerns as well as card-access, fingerprint, and alarm system management.

• Leadership experience among UNIX and Storage administrators including project, task, and vacation time management as well as change management meeting administration experience.

•Identification of critical group roles and responsibilities, assigning and documenting them.

•Storage planning, deployment and administration, physical maintenance, and logical management (using both command line tools and GUI-based software such as EMC Control Center, Hitachi Device Manager, and Hitach Storage Navigator and Navigator Modular.)

•Multipathing software setup and management including EMC PowerPath, Veritas DMP, and Sun MPxIO. Experience troubleshooting imbalances in multipathing with SANscreen.

• LUN masking, fibre switch zoning and target binding for Emulex, Qlogic, Sun-rebranded Qlogic and JNI HBA-enabled hosts. Deployment into a Virtual Instruments environment.

US Citizen. Can lift 50+ pounds without assistance. References upon request.

Contact this candidate