It Engineer Infrastructure

Darren Lauser

Email: ******@******.***

Phone: +1-479-***-****

Citizenship: Born USA citizen, naturalized citizen of Ireland

Language: English, fluent, USA native

Location: Arkoma, Oklahoma 74901 USA

Time Zone: USA Central

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenlauser/ Advanced Certifications: https://www.credly.com/users/darren-lauser

Last updated: 2024/July/04

Summary:

Principal IT Engineer -- Organizational Health, Leadership, Growth Mindset, Human Rapport, Linux, VMware, IT Infrastructure, AWS, Python, etc.

Superpower: Peace in the midst of highly stressful situations

Weakness: Looking at the Six Types of Working Genius, my greatest frustration is Galvanizing, but my Genius types are Wonder and Invention.

Because of this depth of experience, and due to my years of leadership studies and practice, I successfully take on challenging projects.

Work Experience:

Independent Contractor Principal IT Engineer

December 2021 - Present

Principal IT Engineer and Consulting Architect for Linux, VMware, and infrastructure technologies, with a focus on teamwork

VMware Senior Staff Engineer

May 2009 - November 2021

VMware Tech Support in various product teams – P5 – most recent role as Global Tech Lead for DRaaS in VMC on AWS team

ACS Staff Engineer

September 2008 - April 2009

IT Infrastructure Operations Engineering

HP Senior Staff Engineer

February 1993 - August 2008

IT DevOps – P5 – lead solution engineer for HP IT operations – Linux and mission-critical servers Page 1 of 7

Darren Lauser

Professional Skills:

Leadership 20+ years

Linux 20+ years

High Availability 20+ years

Technical Support 20+ years

Systems Administration 20+ years

Kepner Tregoe Analytic Troubleshooting 18 years

Public Speaking 17 years

Training Development 17 years

Training Delivery 17 years

Presentation Skills 17 years

DNS 17 years

Process Engineering 15 years

System Analysis 15 years

Storage Arrays 14 years

VMware vSphere 13 years

VMware ESXi 13 years

VMware vCenter 13 years

Solution Engineering 11 years

Bash 11 years

NFS 11 years

Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 11 years

Solution Architect 10 years

Systems Engineer 10 years

DevOps 10 years

Fiber Channel 10 years

Networking 10 years

System Architect 9 years

iSCSI 8 years

Performance Tuning 8 years

vSAN 8 years

NSX 7 years

DHCP 6 years

Healthy Organizations 6 years

Disaster Recovery Planning 5 years

Server Hardening and Security 5 years

HTML 4 years

DRaaS 4 years

PERL 4 years

Data Center Design 4 years

Page 2 of 7

Darren Lauser

IT Service Management, ITIL 4 years

AWS 3 years

VMC on AWS 3 years

Microsoft 3 years

SQL 2 years

Python 2 years

SaltStack 2 years

Also: Kubernetes, Docker/containerd, Apache, email security (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), Javascript, C/C++, Zoom, Slack, Confluence, Jira, Computer Science, Data Center, Deployment, AWS EC2, AWS S3, AWS Route 53, AWS Autoscaling, AWS CloudFormation, AWS VPC, AWS Security Groups, AWS IAM, PERL, Relational Database, Scripting, Ubuntu, Unix, VPN

Education:

Clark College

Engineering, Computer Science, General Science

1984 – 1986

Toastmasters

Pathways Level 3 – Leadership and Public Speaking

2019 – 2021

Awards:

Received 2017 VMware Engineer of Excellence Award (this was the highest possible award for my role).

Voted Toastmaster of the Year for Cork VMware program in 2021.

Quite a few awards for my contributions to the VMware Knowledge Brief system. Training:

Toastmasters: Completed level 3 Pathways. Compared to the legacy award program, this is roughly equivalent to the Competent Communicator award. Served as President of the program, and other officer terms.

First Aid certified. Member of First Aid Team both at HP and VMware. Volunteered for first aid team at St. John Ambulance in Cork, Ireland.

Mental Health First Aid certified. Charter member of 2019 team in VMware Cork.

Self-education in many leadership and business books, e.g., Patrick Lencioni, John Maxwell, John Wooden, Jim Collins, Mickey Connelly, etc.

Page 3 of 7

Darren Lauser

I have learned enough about project management, and people management, that I could be a very good manager. However, management does not align with the strengths of my personality type, so, instead of being a manager, I use such expertise to gain full synergy in collaborating with managers. I also ensure to manage myself well, so others can rely on me. I focus on leadership.

Dale Carnegie Immersion – https://www.dalecarnegie.com/en/courses/479

Original Genius training – https://missiongroup.org/

Dynamic Leadership training – https://www.conversant.com/ Professional Experience Examples:

Disaster Recovery Assessment

Crafted reports and delivered our findings based on our assessment for a multinational business to gauge the readiness of each location to recover from various disaster scenarios. Gathered information regarding the existing plans and documentation from each of the business locations. Analyzed and compared with industry best practices, putting ourselves in the shoes of an insurance auditor who does not want to pay claims for business interruptions caused by IT downtime. Python and SaltStack Development

Created automation for a SaaS 3D rendering business using Python to access five API platforms. Developed salt states to manage the rendering fleet. AWS Development

Developed automated deployment for KeyShot Network Rendering clusters within AWS using Python boto3, autoscaling group, and EC2 Image Builder. This allows a render farm to be deployed, as needed, so it does not incur CPU/GPU costs when not in use. The builds include CPU Worker, GPU Worker, Manager for each cluster, and a license server.

Python and SaltStack Development

Developed, documented, and deployed a Python app, and some other tools, that are now automating the cluster node assignments for a cloud provider. Saved them on hardware and electricity costs, and improved the service uptime. Deployed salt to integrate with the app and to facilitate large-scale administration. Completed this project in complete collaboration with the existing administration to Page 4 of 7

Darren Lauser

ensure the app was suitable for the purpose and environment, and so they are fully understanding how it operates.

Salt Deployment and Development

For a large customer, with several thousand VMs, provided leadership and development to prepare and deploy SaltStack, including SecOps, as a replacement for Chef Automation. This project included, for example, investigate customer needs, analysis of legacy code base, open salt deployment, and development of salt code that was not covered by the SecOps product. Deployed salt in Ubuntu 22 environment and configured beacons. Developed script to restart salt minions in a more clean and reliable way by improving systemd integration. VMC on AWS Architect Consulting

For a large customer, with several thousand VMs, provided leadership and guidance to prepare multiple on-premises sites for migration to VMC on AWS. Investigated customer needs, advised on disaster recovery design considerations, network topology, compatibility assessment, and cost comparison. Addressed both concepts and details that will help avoid common pitfalls and optimize the fit of the solution to the needs. Documented and fully discussed every recommendation and point of awareness for the IT Operations Team.

Engineering Team Development

Mentored system engineering team to ramp and get certified on vSphere, NSX-T, and VMC on AWS. DRaaS Project Engineering

Global Tech Lead for DRaaS with VSR – VMC on AWS. Initiated and lead collaboration including the global VMC on AWS team, the DRaaS product engineering team, and members of the core SRM Tech Support team. Gathered and shared the best practices for DRaaS troubleshooting. This was one of the biggest opportunities for improvement in our global team and has resulted in a 90% reduction in the rate of premature escalations to the DRaaS SRE team. This positive outcome has been maintained. Created the main document for this effort is a KB: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/78941 Created peripheral KBs, Confluence pages, product documentation enhancements, training packages, tool and lab resource improvements, and even drove product enhancements. Page 5 of 7

Darren Lauser

VMware Technical Support Lead for Core Team

P4 Staff Engineer for core Tech Support, with experience in storage (including Global Tech Lead for VSA), networking, SRM, vSAN, NSX, and vSphere. The toughest cases came to me. Unless absolutely needed, I did not take over, but took this powerful opportunity to mentor my colleagues in moving the case forward. VMware appliances are based on Linux. So, regardless of what services were being provided by the appliance, my Linux expertise was often engaged. Engineering Engagement Improvements

Our escalations director was noticing an opportunity for improvement in how our TSEs engage with the product engineering teams, so she asked me to deliver a Problem Report (PR) Handling TOI to the Cork site. Gathered best practices from quite a wide team of experts, and also got feedback from them on the resulting TOI content. Delivered this 90-minute TOI to the team over a 12-month period, and it was also recorded and shared with the global team. Maybe there is no correlation, but the director said the product engineering teams were becoming much more pleased with the quality of engagement from Tech Support.

Lead for Zoom Adoption

VMware was an early adopter of Zoom, and I was the principal conduit between the users and the Zoom product management team for improving the user experience. Escalation Engineer Mentoring Program

Initiated, developed, and deployed an Escalation Engineer Mentoring Program, as this was widely agreed to be sorely needed. Again, with a great deal of collaboration to develop and approve the content. It carries on to this day.

The Previous Decade of IT

Previous to VMware, 10 years of IT DevOps experience – P5 – lead solution engineer for HP IT operations – Linux and mission-critical servers.

Bash Expertise

Page 6 of 7

Darren Lauser

UNIX scripting power user since 1996, long since translated to Linux scripting. Bash scripting is both an aptitude and an enjoyment for me. At HP, I built scripts for server builds, for IP pool monitoring, boot disk mirroring, and several others. At VMware, I built scripts for troubleshooting analysis of log bundles. Even at home, I used bash scripts for some projects. Page 7 of 7

Contact this candidate