Data Center Solutions Architect

Keith Strange

Technical speaker at VMworld three times, participated in part of an expert panel on Securing Virtual environments for the government and SRM for Disaster Recovery and Migrations. Over 25+ years of IT experience, they primarily designed and built enterprise-level data centers. Participated in several cloud migration projects to multiple cloud providers, including Azure/AWS/GCP. Scripting Bash, Python, Ansible, EMC PowerPath, HDS HDLM, and Windows and Linux Native MPIO. Technology leader in architecture and design, making data driven and cost aware decisions. CAREER EXPERIENCE

2007-Present (Jobs performed as sub-contractor through Arkansas Solutions Group)

• 2018-2024

• Senior Solution Architecture in AWS/Azure/GCP for various projects

• US Navy AWS network and F5 engineer

• DHS IAAS solutions architect

• Azure Cloud engineer USDA CEC

• Storage SME for MassMutual

• United Airlines Migration Project (Chicago, IL).

• Tyler Tech NetApp CVO cloud project with AWS and GCP

• Building distributed systems & highly available services using cloud computing services (AWS, GCP, Azure)

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• 2012-2016

• USDA NFC Storage Engineer/Architect (New Orleans, LA)

• 2003-2012

• Navy Consolidated Data Center, SPAWAR NOLA (New Orleans and San Diego)

• HCA Virtualization Project (Nashville, Tennessee).

• Sayers40 – Senior Data Center Architect (Chicago, IL)

• MassMutual Storage SME architecture review

• DHS Data Center 1 IaaS Solution Architect

• Vion Data Center Architecture Review

• Navy NP2 AWS Network and F5 engineer

• Disaster Recovery design and implementation for DHS DC1

• Solutions Architect Cloud Computing Team DHS Data Center 1

• Cloud solutions Architect (AWS and Azure)

• AWS backup service - building dashboards across 100+ accounts to manage backup operations.

• VxRail deployment, update, and management.

• Migrate live USDA CEC website from AWS to the azure cloud.

• Azure troubleshooting and network design

• IaaS design and implementation

• Dell PowerMax migration work

• Netbackup upgrade and implementation of Ransomware protection

• SRDF Implementation Disaster recovery, designed, implemented and tested. Project Details

• NAVY NP2 Cloud network engineer

o Edit and deploy CFT.

o Ingress rules

o Security Groups

o Network Routes

o CloudWatch

o CloudFormation

o F5 administration

o AWS

o GCP

• ITRON Storage SME

o All storage functions on the following platforms

Dell Powerstore

NetApp AFF and CVO

Pure Storage

Data Domain

Xtreme IO

3PAR storage arrays

Unity arrays various model

Cisco MDS switches

• TylerTech

o Upgrade CVO NetApp AWS instances using BlueXP (9.7 to 9.12.1) o Upgrade CVO NetApp GCP instances using BlueXP (9.7 to 9.12.1) o Upgrade NETAPP Ontap Select clusters (9.7 to 9.12.1) o Upgrade NetApp Deploy appliances.

o Upgraded Metro Cluster for NetApp

o Setup replication from on-site NetApp select nodes to AWS and GCP nodes.

• DHS Data Center 1 cloud computing solutions architect (Current) o Designed and built a DR data center for DHS.

Built target architecture VxRail.

o VxRail deployment, update, and management.

o Deployed multiple VxRail clusters of different sizes.

6 nodes

8 nodes

10 nodes

o Setup logging to both syslog and vROPs for VxRail o Upgraded VxRail clusters from 6.7 (4.7) to 7.0 including VxRail Manager o Converted internal VxRail VC to external.

o Patched all clusters multiple times.

o Expanded multiple clusters by adding nodes.

o Migrated customers legacy VM workload to VxRail. o Setup SRM and vsphere replication to protect two production sites to a single DR site.

Configured replication and DR plan.

Tested failover to new DR DC

o Cloud platforms GCP and AWS

o Responsible for maintaining and upgrading of the cloud virtualization architecture. o Implemented SRM and vSphere replication to migrate DR data centers. o Upgraded VMware 6.7 to 7.0U3 for entire architecture. o Wrote Architecture Design documentation for VMware and VXrail environments. o Completed the migration form old 7 mode Netapp to the new CDOT architecture.

• United Airlines AWS DR/backup project

• More than 27,000 nightly AWS backups across a hundred-plus accounts.

• More than 45,000 nightly copy jobs for region-level protection

• Worked with a dashboard to summarize nightly backups for a quick view of the operational readiness.

• Cybersense and cyber recovery implementation

• Data Domain and PPDDM

• Veritas Netbackup version 8-10.3

• Netbackup Flex appliances

• Netbackup DNAS 10.3

• United Airlines project.

• Large scale data migration project in partnership with Sayers/HPE

• United was moving Data Centers, this move included over 5000+ servers and 5+PBs of storage.

• Migration types included.

• Azure

• AWS

• V2V (SRM and Zerto)

• P2V

• Lift and Shift

• Decommissioning of older equipment

• Open replicator (move data between different vendor arrays and the powermax)

• SRDF

• All storage Managed by OCI, multiple sites, multiple OCI instances.

• Installed OCI in 3 data centers.

• Worked with versions 7.2.6, 7.3.5 and 7.3.8.

• Build views.

• Added storage arrays in for scanning.

• Customized reports

• The storage was a combination of Hitachi, NETAPP, 3PAR and EMC.

• PowerMax 8000 Arrays

• PowerMax 2000 Arrays

• Netapp 9000 Cdot

• Netapp A700/A800 All flash arrays running Cdot.

• Pure FC storage arrays various

• 7 modes NFS/CIFS arrays

• Hitachi 24k and p9500 arrays

• 3PAR 8450

• 3PAR 20k

• Switch environment was Brocade (gen6 32Gbs) and Cisco fabrics (16Gb)

• Over 2000 switch port in each fabric

• Hosts included the following OSs.

• Solaris

• AIX

• HPUX

• Windows 2008 and up

• (2003-2022 Multiple Customers under Arkansas Solutions Group subcontracts)

• Azure deployment of web servers for multiple government organization

• Pure storage arrays migration to and from these arrays

• EMC VPLEX cluster build

• Did an assessment for United Labs with Xtreme IO arrays and Linux clusters.

• Data Migration using SRM on a 100% virtualized environment to migrate over 3,000 VMs.

• Delivered SRM configuration for several Federal Data Center sites, brought in as a SME (Subject Matter Expert) to fix existing issues with SRM and Recoverpoint configuration.

• Storage administration and design on all 3PAR platforms.

• Delivered SRM with vSphere replication for POC to Customer

• Make recommendations to improve Data center and Storage Architecture and improve performance and availability, tasks accomplished so far with no additional purchases. Created and implemented a DR/COOP plan for USDA NDC Plan was tested every year from 2014-2020.

• DMX and VNX arrays

• Netapp 8200 Cluster (6 node and 4 node)

• Pure Arrays

• EMC Recoverpoint replication

• Improved Application response time by mapping network flow across zones and determined network flow was unnecessarily complicated.

• Migrated over 4 PBs of data with no down time.

• Improved Data Center throughput 300% in 9 months

• Reduced Data Center latency by 85% in 9 months

• Reduced Data Center cost by removing unnecessary products.

• Automated all storage processes possible.

• Improved process flow and created standard offerings.

• Documented best practices and identified the ones that were not being followed and created plan to get them implemented.

• Helped to create a 1, 3, and 5-year plan to move the architecture into the cloud computing direction.

• Delivered Data Center Fabric design using Xsigo converged fabric Directors to consolidate the Data Center IO and save the customer 50% on the infrastructure and cabling cost. This customer also saw a cable reduction of over 65% in the virtualized data center. Xtreme I/O arrays in a SRM configuration were used to deliver virtualization storage.

• Planned, Designed, Installed, and configured a Shared SRM configuration with four (4) production data centers failing over to a single DR site. This shared configuration used a single set of hardware to fail multiple different production Data Centers in the event of a disaster. There were over 2000+ VMs protected and replicated in this configuration. The storage used for this project was a combination of EMC VMAX and IBM XIV storage.

• NETAPP OCI implementation and troubleshooting

• Installed NetApp Metro cluster for customer in Chicago, IL

• Migrated customer to SolidFire storage arrays for VDI architecture.

• Completed the design and implementation work, multiple projects with 3PAR.

• Completed Script installation of over 300 ESXi servers for customer DR site.

• Completed several SRM Designs and implementations for large Healthcare companies. Included storage replication configuration and customizing the failover Recovery Plans for each site. One of the sites included over 800+ VMs failed over in less than 3 hours using SRM.

• Completed a VMware architecture design to integrate SRM (Site Recovery Manager) with the medical application HPF. Also, rolled out Recover Point for HPF.

• Implemented Two Hitachi 9985 (USP-VM) Arrays and setup Universal Replicator to replicate over 10TBs of storage in the initial push between the two Navy Data Centers. Set up incremental replications for on-going data protection.

• Created STIG scripts for ESX 3.5 and Vsphere 4.0 and assisted in getting three NAVY Data Center accredited through the DISA DICAP.

• Wrote and tested the upgrade procedure from ESX 3.5 to Vsphere 4.0 for the two Navy Data Centers in New Orleans and San Diego.

• Designed and implemented four (4) separate Core to Edge fabrics with 14 Switches in each Fabric, a combination of Brocade and Mcdata switches were used.

• Upgraded 2 large NAVY storage environments from ECC 5.x to ECC 6.0 with VMware hosts.

• Assisted in the Architecture design and review of three other Navy sites for similar server consolidation projects.

• Consulting engineer for large Healthcare virtualization project in Nashville with the healthcare application Meditech. Over 1000 servers virtualized in 6 months, responsible for all the storage migration and virtualization for this project.

• Provided DR and backup design and implementation for Meditech Virtual project. 1997-2003 Acxiom Corporation Conway, Arkansas

Lead SAN Engineer/Architect

• Responsible for all new EMC Storage engineering projects in the Acxiom Products Division both the design and the hands-on implementation.

• During the 3 years as SAN Lead, I was personally involved in the implementation of over 12 EMC Symmetrix frames into various configurations at Acxiom.

• Designed and implemented 4 different SRDF mirrors between sites, all for oracle databases ranging in size from 2TBs to 9.5TBs.

• Designed and implemented an EMC upgrade project, purchased 8 of the new DMX Symmetrix implemented those frames in a new ECC 5.1.1 environment and then migrated over 92TBs of data from the older Symmetrix

(4.8) to the new DMX.

1985-1997 US Marine Corps Various Locations

Information Systems Officer (Computer engineer)

• I held various positions as needed by the Corps, working on Windows, Solaris, and Cisco. Education

Coleman College – Core bachelor’s degree in information systems – 1997 Certifications

1. Comptia Security+

2. Azure fundamentals AZ-900

3. AWS Certified Cloud practitioner

4. NUTANIX NPP 6.x

5. NUTANIX NSEN

6. VMware Certified Professional (VCP) VCP-2, VCP-3, VCP-4, VCP-5.5, VCP 6 and VCP6.5, VCP 7) 7. VTSP and VSP versions 3, 4, 5 and 6

8. VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP-DCD (6)) Data Center Design 9. HP ATP - Storage Solutions V1

10. HP ASE Server

11. NETAPP Accredited Technical Architect (Partner) 12. NETAPP Certified Data Administrator (ONTAP)

13. NETAPP Certified Implementation Engineer – SAN Specialist (ONTAP) 14. NETAPP Certified Storage Installation Engineer (ONTAP) 15. NETAPP Certified Storage Associate

16. EMC Storage Admin Specialty (Specialist)

17. EMC Technical Architect (Specialist)

18. Hitachi Data Systems Certified Professional (Enterprise)

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