IT Specialist / UNIX Systems Administrator

FAISAL AZFAR

Tel #: 732-***-****

Electronic mail: **********@*****.***

SUMMARY

IT professional with over 10 years of experience in UNIX Systems Administration, Production Support and OA&M (Operations Administration and Maintenance).Significant UNIX Systems Administrator experience on Solaris (2.5.1, 2.6, 7, 8, 9 10) and Linux. Have also worked on the AIX, HP-UX and Windows platforms. Worked in both lead and participating roles in a number of initiatives involving: IT security, S-OX (Sarbanes Oxley) testing, Software Upgrades, UNIX platform migration and Server builds/ installations.

RELATED SKILLS

Hardware: SUN Servers / storage: E3000, E3500, E6500, SunFire 3800,

SunFire V490, A5000/5200 arrays.

IBM Servers /storage: IBM Blade Center H, IBM HS21 blades, IBM Xseries

Servers, IBM DS 4700 SAN storage.

Operating Systems: Sun Solaris 2.51, 2.6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Red Hat Linux Enterprise Server /

Advanced Server 4, RedHat Server 5

HP-UX, AIX 5.x, Windows (NT, XP, 2000)

Computer Languages: SQL, UNIX shell scripting (Ksh, bash, sh), Perl, HTML.

Middleware /Software: WebSphere Application Server, Apache/ Tomcat, Jrun, Sun One/Iplanet

WebServer.

VERITAS Volume Manager, VERITAS Netbackup, Solstice Networker

Sablime (Software configuration Management tool).

Connect Direct, IBM Tivoli DM, MQ Series.

Networking/ Security: TCP/IP, NIS, DNS, NTP, SSH, FTP, DHCP, Sendmail, LDAP.

KEY COURSES AND TRAINING

SUN Solaris 10 OS Advanced Systems Administrator course

Red Hat Linux Enterprise Server “Rapid Track” course

IBM WebSphere Extended Deployment course

VERITAS Storage Foundation 5.x course

VMware Vsphere QuickStart Series

PROFESSIONAL AWARDS AND CERTIFCATIONS

IBM Bravo Award recipient June 2006

IBM Bravo Award recipient June 2007

RHCT (Red Hat Certified Technician) June 2008

IBM Global Thanks Award, IBM Thanks Awards 2007, 2008, 2009

ACHIEVEMENTS

Successfully tested S-OX (Sarbanes Oxley) Operating System controls. Assisted Development teams in fixing S-OX vulnerabilities in time, and to the satisfaction of Auditors.

Successful Migration of an in-house AT&T application platform to new IBM hardware and middleware. This entailed migration of unsupported software / middleware on Solaris 8 running

on E6500s, to new IBM x series servers running on the Red Hat Linux Enterprise 4 server

Operating System. The Web Server software (Iplanet 4.x) was migrated to IBM’s WebSphere

Application 6.x server.

Worked on hardening Linux and Solaris servers against network vulnerabilities. This resulted in 0 ‘high exposures’ when the servers were tested in network scans.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

IBM Integrated Technology Delivery, Server System Operations

IT Specialist / Systems Administrator 01/2008 -> Present

Operating System installation / builds - subsequent maintenance of IBM Bladecenter Hs21 servers and corresponding IBM SAN (Storage Array Network) DS 4700 setup. Worked on Server Operating System installation scripts (Red Hat Enterprise Server / Advanced Server 4 and Red Hat Server 5 platforms) as well as SAN storage configuration. Assisted the Application Development team in Application server software (WebSphere Application Server) and Database (IBM Db2) Installations.

Worked in the “Global Complex Change” team on Solaris and Linux installations / patches

and other Operating system related issues. This included Solaris kernel tuning, Volume manager

disk replacements, disk array raid configurations and SUN cluster.

Also involved in Middleware / Third party vendor software Installations, configuration and

performance tuning (where applicable) of products such as: Connect Direct, WebSphere

Application Server, Apache web server, Tomcat and MQ series.

Participated in a major Solaris 8 -> 10 upgrade project. Modified OA&M scripts ( in ksh) to work on

the Solaris 10 platform. Configured startup services and configuration files to work in accordance

with Application Development requirements. Wrote server performance monitoring and

User login id migration shell scripts.

IBM Global Services, Middletown NJ (client site) 01/2006 –> 01/2008

IT Specialist

Participated in security initiatives (Sarbanes-Oxley) and Axent (Security health-checking tool) to fix vulnerabilities and subsequently, ensure compliance. As a S-OX tester, tested IBM managed Applications for non compliance relating to both Logical Application security (e.g. Developer read only access to Production code/data), and Operating System controls (e.g. Password complexity, aging, file permissions). Any exposures showing up in testing results were tracked to closure.

Systems Administrator/ Operations Administration & Maintenance / Application Support / Production Support / UNIX Platform migration

Worked on Maintenance / Upgrade of Server Operating Systems and Hardware on both development test and Production Servers- predominantly Solaris and Linux platforms. Worked with and supported Application / Development teams.

Worked in a lead role in OA&M, systems administration and Application/production support for four different in-house applications. Application Support included system monitoring, software builds, application release deployments, setting up System test as well as the corresponding production environments. Worked on upgrading various third party software products to ensure Software currency and also Operating System (kernel parameter) tuning to enhance Server and Application response time.

Production support involved working with developers and other system administrator/OA&M Team for quick resolution of any production issues. Used IBM and Third party ticketing tools to create and track production configuration / code changes as well as SCM (Software configuration Management) tools (e.g. sablime) and UNIX shell build scripts for builds, deployments and tracking code modification.

Led an infrastructure / System Administration team on a UNIX migration initiative to migrate to the Linux (Red Hat Enterprise 4) platform (on IBM X-Series servers), from Solaris (2.6, 8) running on End of Life SUN hardware (E3500, E6500). Middleware included WebSphere Application Server 6.x Connect Direct 3.x and Database Oracle 10.

IBM Global Services, Middletown NJ (client site) 01/2000 –> 01/2006

UNIX Systems Administrator / Mentor

Worked on Operating System and third party vendor software installations, maintenance /patching of various UNIX Operating Systems. Assisted DBA with Oracle installation. Fixed minor hardware issues as well (CPU/memory disk replacement and upgrades) on SUN E6500s /E3500s /SunFire 3800.

Performed Operating System performance tuning, including configuring kernel parameters (tcp and memory related parameters). Used UNIX utilities (e.g. nice, top, sar, netstat, vmstat) to monitor server performance.

Led and coordinated various Software Upgrade projects such as Solaris 2.6 to Solaris 8 and 9 (live Operating System Upgrades) and VERITAS Volume Manager 3.04 to VERITAS Volume Manager 3.5.

Wrote feasibility studies documenting risks and proposing solutions to existing infrastructure Server arrangements.

Mentored and taught other System administrators UNIX and System administration skills.

EDUCATION Rutgers College, New Brunswick, NJ

Bachelor of Science May 1997

Double Major in: Physics and Computer Science

Rutgers Mini-MBA certificate Finance Essentials April 2007

Rutgers Mini-MBA certificate Business Essentials December 2007

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