Windows Server Systems Administrator

Claude Blair

443-***-**** ******.*****@*****.***

Experience Summary

IT Professional with 20+ years in managing complex Windows and UNIX/Linux environments. Experienced in ensuring system health, security compliance, and timely service delivery by coordinating cross-functional teams. Demonstrated proficiency with AWS, VMware, and virtualization technologies in mission-critical settings.

Technical Summary

•Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows Server 2022, Microsoft Windows Server 2019, Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 Professional, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu

•Server Administration: IIS, MS SQL Server

•Cloud & Infrastructure: Amazon Web Services, VMWare

•Certifications & Documentation: Security+ Certificate, Documentation of Network Designs

Professional Experience

Department of Defense 2024 - 2025

Senior Systems Administrator/Engineer

•Provided general systems engineering support including requirements definition, thorough documentation, and integration oversight to ensure ongoing development efforts align with compliance standards.

•Administered and engineered server and virtualization environments using VMware 7.x and Amazon Web Services (AWS), ensuring system health and secure configurations.

•Operated and maintained AWS infrastructure in line with modern cloud systems design and performance monitoring.

•Managed Microsoft server operating systems up to Windows Server 2022 to support secure and compliant operations.

•Coordinated use of multiple ticketing systems to streamline task schedules and ensure timely service delivery.

•Utilized Jira Service Management to track and coordinate incident resolution.

•Employed Remedy ITSM for effective incident and service management.

Department of Defense 2022 - 2023

Senior Systems Administrator/Engineer

•Delivered systems engineering support including requirements definition, detailed documentation, and integration oversight to validate development efforts and support compliance.

•Administered an enterprise-wide virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) using the VMware Horizon platform to sustain secure and reliable desktop environments.

•Managed user access for administrative, instant, and persistent clone desktops to uphold secure configurations.

•Oversaw server and virtualization administration using VMware 6.x and 7.x, maintaining robust performance and security.

•Maintained and patched ESXi hosts on Cisco UCS and Dell hardware, ensuring adherence to industry standards and compliance requirements.

•Conducted system migrations driven by evolving customer requirements and industry standards.

•Engineered AWS infrastructure to support integrated environments while emphasizing secure operations.

•Applied Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) expertise to enhance enterprise IT support.

•Managed Microsoft server operating systems up to Windows Server 2022 to sustain secure system configurations.

•Utilized Jira Service Management for efficient task coordination and timely resolution.

•Employed Remedy ITSM to ensure effective incident management and service delivery.

Department of Defense 2019 - 2022

Senior Systems Administrator

• Tier III Server Team Lead

• Manages team of 7 systems administrators and engineers.

• Conducts monthly status reports for government customer.

• Interfaces with government customer daily in support and management of multiple IT projects.

• Oversees build out and configuration of multiple service centers in various regions all over the world.

• Strong experience with Sites and Services AD, DNS, and DHCP.

• Strong experience in VMWare ESXi v6.7/vCenter, Microsoft Servers, and RDSP Platform.

• Strong experience with Remedy ITSM

• Strong experience with SolarWinds Monitoring and Virtualization Manager (VMAN)

• Strong experience with System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)

• Provide Tier III Operational Support.

• Strong Experience with Group Policy.

• Strong experience with implementing configuration baselines and DISA STIGs.

• Strong experience with vulnerability mitigation and patching.

•Experienced in modifying COTS/GOTS applications to fit the customer's requirements.

•Strong understanding and troubleshooting of physical and virtual servers.

•Knowledge of Scripting, vSAN, NetApp, Backups, Tape Library and SQL.

•Assists storage engineers with administration and configuration of enterprise storage area network (SAN) devices and the NetApp OnTap storage operating system.

•Makes purchase recommendations on server equipment and site surveys involved with server installation.

Department of Justice 2018 - 2019

Senior Systems Engineer

•Demonstrates subject matter expertise in the areas of Windows based systems administration including Windows Server 2016, Windows 10, SCCM and SQL, network access control, VoIP, WAN, and wireless technologies.

•Installs and configures CyberArk Privileged Access Security tool.

•Works with Cyber Security to maintain required IT security posture.

•Provides and engineers solutions to improve the network's integrity and availability.

•Tier 4 level expert and a systems resource for all users, developing documentation as required and appropriate.

•Works closely with government customer and provides ad hoc advice and presentations as needed.

•Works within agency data centers in collaboration with customer and other contractors involved in various projects.

•Experience in the detailed planning, maintenance, and operations of systems and virtual environments.

•Maintains broad and deep experience in nearly all areas of IT Administration and Engineering.

•Communicates well, frequently, and clearly with the government customer in every step of the design, configuration, installation, testing, operational support, etc., for various projects.

Department of Navy 2017 - 2018

Principal Engineer

•Works with DoD and Federal Agencies conducting assessment of current infrastructure.

•Executes senior engineering tasks to include health checks, design, configuration, evaluation, and maintenance of VMware and Citrix-based infrastructure and virtualized applications.

•Evaluates virtualization technology to optimize worldwide user base of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and underlying converged virtualized infrastructure (Converged infrastructure, Citrix, and VMware, NetApps, Cisco Infrastructure, Cisco UCS, Citrix NetScaler, XenApp, XenDesktop, Microsoft, etc.)

•Provides customers with execution of Cloud, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, and Enterprise IT technologies, from diverse multi-vendors (VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, Linux, Oracle), to include architecture, implementation, security model strategies (implementation, provisioning, migration), service delivery, and training, to reduce total cost of ownership and improve return on investment and reliability of services.

•Develops recommendation solutions including network diagrams, assessment reports, design documents, and technology white papers for the customer.

•Works independently as well as within a team of engineers on architecture design, configuration, and deployment of virtualized infrastructure, converged infrastructure, and VDI.

Department of Homeland Security 2016 - 2017

Senior Systems Engineer

•Designs and develops highly complex, integrated solutions to meet business requirements or enhance performance.

•Performs and evaluates cost analyses and vendor comparisons for large scale projects to ensure cost-effective and efficient operations. Measures feasibility of various approaches and makes recommendation(s).

•Recommends moderately complex systems investment(s) to management and customers based on results of independent assessment of current and future performance, stability, and systems management/life cycle issues.

•Provides escalated, highly complex technical support to customers by investigating and resolving systems-related matters; provides support telephonically and/or electronically.

•Plans, conducts, and oversees the technical aspects of projects; coordinates the efforts of technical support staff in the performance of assigned projects.

•Applies advanced methods, theories and research techniques in the investigation and solution of the complex system requirements and problems.

•Provides technical consultation on current and proposed systems to other organizations and clients.

•Provides leadership and work guidance to junior and mid-level personnel.

•Implements and manages requirements to existing VMware vSphere infrastructure.

•Articulates solutions through written or verbal methods.

•Troubleshoots complex problems quickly and effectively.

•Supports and manages the following:

•VMware ESXi

•vCenter

•vMotion

•Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) and High Availability (HA) configurations

•vCLI and scripting

• Security Hardening

• Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) for Virtualization HW

United States Courts 2015 - 2016

Senior Systems Engineer

•Collaborates with stakeholders on current and new projects to address operational scalability, redundancy, efficiency, and time to market.

•Proposes next generation solutions for in-use products and technologies, such as Websense Web Security and Symantec Endpoint Protection.

•Creates Concept of Operations guides that describe the general characteristics of the proposed solutions from the users' perspective and the operational environment.

•Creates appropriate design documentation and associated project plans. Manages projects and leads the implementation; reports progress and issues.

•Provides implementation, assessment and ad-hoc support to other IT administrators for their locally implemented services.

•Deploys and configures RHEL 6 and Windows 2012 R2 servers to support Websense Security Gateway Proxy solutions for local and enterprise-wide implementations.

•Deploys and configures Windows 2012 R2 servers to support Symantec Endpoint Protection solutions for local and enterprise-wide implementations.

Department of Defense 2012 - 2015

Senior Systems Engineer

•Demonstrates comprehensive knowledge and skill with routine server administration in multiple Active Directory environments to build and maintain the following:

•VMWare ESX/ESXi (V13 - vSphere 5.5)

•Builds, configures, and updates virtual machine baseline templates for use within development, test, and production virtual infrastruc- tures.

•Deploys and configures virtual machines in support of various mission-critical and mission-support projects. Provisions external storage for virtual machines as needed within development, test, and production virtual infrastructures.

•Configures networking for virtual machine communications within development, test, and production virtual infrastructures.

•Microsoft Operating Systems

•Deploys, configures, and troubleshoots Microsoft operating systems for enterprise networks.

•TCP-IP Protocol

•Configures network adapter settings for physical and virtual machines.

•Applies subnet masking and default gateway specifications.

•Troubleshoots connectivity issues.

•STIG Compliance

•Ensures enterprise endpoints are secure and hardened to comply with Security Technical Implementation Guide requirements.

•MS System Center Configuration Manager

•Collaborates with Operations & Maintenance teams to develop and advertise packages to servers and workstations via SCCM.

•MS System Center Operations Manager

•Collaborates with Operations & Maintenance teams to monitor servers and workstations via SCOM.

•EMC Symmetrix DMX3 and VMAX Storage Solutions

•Collaborates with Storage Engineering Teams to provision and configure raw device mappings for use within development, test, and production virtual infrastructures.

•Red Hat Enterprise Linux

•Deploys and configures RHEL 6 servers to support server monitoring solutions (EM7) and environment logging solutions (Splunk).

•Microsoft Failover Clustering with DFS-R.

•Symantec/Veritas Cluster Server for high-availability solutions.

•Windows Deployment Services.

•Windows ImageX for automated and manual server provisioning.

•F5 Big-IP Load Balancer.

•Familiarity with Cisco switch installation, configuration, and troubleshooting.

•Active Directory Configuration and Troubleshooting.

•Familiarity with Windows 10 installation and configuration.

•Altiris Deployment Solution.

•IIS configuration.

•MS SQL connectivity.

•MS SharePoint configuration of SharePoint farms in multiple environments.

Department of Defense 2003 - 2012

Senior Systems Engineer

• Senior systems engineer in a highly complex Windows server environment.

• Serves as mentor and SME to junior engineers.

•Extensive training-experience on Windows server systems and applications.

•Senior engineer on multiple projects:

•Ensures integration and implementation of applications, databases, networks, and server systems is successful through appropriate testing and oversight prior to transition to the operational environment.

•Ensures all documentation related to those projects is complete and understandable to the reading audience.

•Documents system design, system change, project deployment, test plan, test result, training, user guides.

•Records all project milestones, in terms of technical aspects, and ensures project deliverables are delivered.

•Identifies problems and potential risk and recommends potential solutions.

•Designs solution for the project.

•Noted for well-organized Tier-IV engineering support to Enterprise operations/Enterprise Projects Team in the redesign and reconstruc- tion of Enterprise Test and Development facility, to Enterprise Operations Support Team in the areas of HP ProLiant Server installation and configuration, server provisioning via Altiris Deployment Solution, Quest Migration tools, Microsoft Operations Manager, EMC Storage, TeamQuest Performance Software, Raritan IP/KVM products, and an array of BMC monitoring products as well as end-to-end monitoring capability of all Microsoft Windows-based production servers, both at primary and alternate sites; monitoring and metrics report to management via recently established BMC web-based toolset.

•Worked closely with management to develop and implement specific Service Level Agreements within the BMC metrics-measurement framework.

•Provided procurement support for the upgraded HP Blade Server technology.

•Implemented and evaluated TeamQuest Performance software in test and development labs.

•Demonstrated potential for using TeamQuest in the production environment and authored plan for implementation; implemented and evaluated Microsoft Project Server, demonstrating collaboration between client and master projects.

Education

University of Maryland, University College

BS, Information Systems Management

Certifications

• CompTIA Server +: May 2024

• CompTIA Security + CE: September 2022

• CompTIA Project +: December 2015

• CompTIA Security +: September 2009

• CISA Certificate for Windows Operating System Security: November 2021

• CISA Certificate for Cloud Computing Security: March 2022

• CISA Certificate for Cyber Security Analyst: March 2022

• CISA Certificate for Cyber Dark Arts: January 2022

• CISA Certificate for Security and DNS: January 2022

• Department of Army Certificate for Cyber Security Fundamentals: March 2022

2002

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