20A Northwest Boulevard, Suite 257, Nashua,
NH 03063
Norm@CertifiedNC.com
( (978)
337-5929
Summary
Over the past fifteen years, I have served as a
Senior Consulting Engineer with Intel Corporation; Complex Technical
Solutions Architect for IBM Global Services; PMO Architect for Pfizer
Pharmaceuticals; IT Transformation Architect for the Dow Chemical Company;
Virtual Infrastructure Architectural Consultant for the General Electric
Company; Storage and Infrastructure Solutions Architect for ITT/Exelis as
well as Cloud Architect for the US Air Force.
In these capacities, I have led over a dozen
Server Consolidation/Virtualization/Cloud migration projects, the vast
majority of which were either for Fortune 100 or large Government clients.
Although I am well versed in just about all aspects of Intel/x86 Server
Consolidation, Data Center Optimization and Data Center Relocation
(Application Profiling & Rationalization efforts, TCO/ROI assessments,
Power/Thermal studies, Capacity Planning & resource utilization evaluations,
modifications to existing Change Integration & Platform Support
procedures, data center funding model deconstruction/re-rationalization and
chargeback mechanism implementation as well as the alignment of Service
Delivery and Infrastructure Management processes with CMMI/ ITSM / ITIL Best
Practices) my “specialty” has been the design, delivery & implementation
of highly performing, stable & scalable, Capacity on Demand vision
“production level” Enterprise class private clouds and virtual infrastructures,
most of which were fully integrated with DR/BC facilities. I am also
well versed in SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and cloud service delivery models and
paradigms and I am currently VCP certified on VMware Level 6, Data Center
Virtualization, Cloud, Cloud Automation and Cloud Management silos, along
with all previous versions of VMware dating back to CY 2003. I also
hold “Hyper-V” and “Azure Cloud” implementation and architecture
certifications from Microsoft as well as Cloud Infrastructure Architecture
certifications from IBM.
In addition to my technical expertise, I also
have earned an MBA and strive to be detail oriented, data driven and ROI
focused in my approach. As an infrastructure architect, I make great
efforts to “socialize the proposed solution” (seeking input/suggestions from
all the to-be affected stakeholders/teams) and then attempt to leverage the
goodwill developed through those outreach efforts into support for my “way
forward” recommendations.
I also have significant experience implementing multi-petabyte
storage and HA/DR/BC solutions, possess considerable “business development”
skills (ability to prepare and present Business Case justifications,
cost/benefit calculations, gap and risk analysis, pivot table charts,
etc.). Lastly, I feel comfortable interfacing with Fortune 500 IT
management at the CxO/IT Governance levels in highly visible “customer
facing” roles and in supporting Business Development, Sales and Marketing
activities.
In my position with ITT/Exelis (a large Federal
systems integrator), I was called on to both apply advanced computing
technologies to solve our Government customer’s most vexing
high-performance/high-bandwidth ingest, collection, storage and analytics
problems as well as to provide strategic thought leadership in support of
Business Development activities. In this context I also earned and
currently possess a TS/SCI Security Clearance from the US Government.
Professional
Experience
ABACUS TECHNOLOGY /
US AIR FORCE, Hanscom AFB, Bedford MA
2015 - present
Cloud Architect
Provided strategic “thought leadership” and “Cloud
Strategy” for the US Air Force, Life Cycle Materiel
Command, Advanced Technology Engineering Division in a
secure TS/SCI++ credentialed environment. Devised and laid-out an
upgrade and risk mitigation plan for three enclaves of existing, Microsoft
Hyper-V v2 based virtual infrastructures (Dev/Test, Pre-Production +
Production) which were being upgraded to Windows Server 2012 R2 and Hyper-V
v3.0 in compliance with the USAF’s strict IA (Information Assurance)
regulations for highly classified environments. Researched and provided
engineering analysis for a proposed a COOP (Continuity of Operations Plan)
which included a bill of materials for the necessary infrastructure which
would need to be built out at a secondary data center (server hardware,
networks, storage, firewall appliances, etc.) together with best practice VM
and data replication strategies. Developed a cost/benefit assessment
for leveraging a VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) together with ZERO and
THIN Clients for remote delivery of several classified applications. Served
as the Lead Technical Advisor supporting the AFLCMC’s workload migration to
an AWS based private cloud (C2S). Researched the potential use of
MCP (Microsoft Cloud Platform) to host the AFLCMC “next-gen” Cloud Reference
Architecture (to host private instances of Office365 and
Skype-for-Business). Served as the “strategic advisor” to the
USAF/LCMC on cloud computing and virtualization technologies, as well as
cloud security, storage, replication, backup/retrieval, data dispersal and
continuity of operations engineering.
CERTIFIED NETWORK
CONSULTANTS, LLC, Nashua,
NH
2009 – 2014
2013-2014 (worked
as a subcontractor to IBM Corp., Oil & Gas Industry Practice, Houston,
TX)
BG-Group: Functioned as the
Infrastructure Lead at the pre-FEED stage and co-authored the Data and
Control Architecture for Automation (DCAA) User Requirements Specifications
for the proposed Lake Charles Liquefaction Plant (LCLP). LCLP is a
proposed, 15MMT natural gas to LNG export facility to be built at Lake
Charles, LA. My activities included a preliminary data center
design in compliance with Oil+Gas industry best practices (including
utilization of Industrial Firewalls with IPS/IDS modules, with complete
isolation of PCN’s). Prepared high-level physical and logical Visio
drawings for the “to-be” application hosting environment (both physical and
virtual) as well as budgetary estimates and stakeholder maps.
Sasol: Functioned as the
Project Lead for all Infrastructure and Storage Systems needed to support the
FEED (Front End Engineering Design) study for the so–called “30 Billion
Dollar Mega Project” to be built in Fort Charles, LA, which consisted of
multiple GTL (Gas-to-Liquid) refrigeration trains and ethane
crackers. This project was to be the largest single company
private investment in the history of the State of Louisiana. In this
endeavor, I analyzed the company’s current US datacenters and extrapolated a
range of “to-be” datacenter requirements, based upon the order-of-magnitude
increase in projected corporate revenues. Also worked closely with the
SAP team and roughed out a preliminary SAP environment based upon mirrored
and replicated IBM POWER 795 clusters together with many virtualized Wintel
components. SASOL (the South African Gas and Oil Company) put this
project on an 18 month “construction hold” in January of 2014..
2010-2013
ITT/Exelis Corporation (IST Division –
Nashua NH): Served
as the Storage and Infrastructure Architect for the IST business unit, with a
heavy focus on server and storage virtualization within a multi-tenancy based
compute environment. Architected highly available, high performance, and
highly secure infrastructures that scaled into the hundreds-of-servers and
dozens-of-petabytes for our Government customers. Incorporated numerous
cutting edge technologies (GPU’s and accelerators, QDR/FDR InfiniBand®,
optical storage, FC FabricCache™, 40Gb Ethernet w/VMA, parallel file and
fragmenting object storage systems, etc.) to meet or exceed customer
requirements. In this position I also served as the Solution Architect
for all new Business Development activities (responding to Government RFI’s
and RFP’s, constructing BOE’s/WBS’s, undertaking Trade Studies and
assessments, authoring Technical Volumes, liaising with Government SETA’s and
FFRDC personnel, etc.). I also gained significant experience working in
SCIF’s (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities) under NISPOM
(National Industrial Security Program) protocols, and was trained in DCDC
(Derivative Classification and Dissemination Controls) when working with
various classifications of National Security data.
2009-2010
General
Electric Company - (Corporate Treasury- Stamford CT): Architected,
designed, built, tested and implemented a highly available, fully parallel,
HP Virtual Connect enabled c7000 blade farm to host VMware vSphere4 on BL495c
server blades. This infrastructure was capable of scaling to four
c7000 enclosures, 96 blades, 6+TB of memory, 360Gb of network connectivity
and 144Gb of FC SAN I/O. The architecture featured a four
enclosure Virtual Connect Master domain, Flex-10 (10Gb) VC-Ethernet modules,
4-port VC FC SAN uplink switches and multiple 10Gb stacking links between
enclosures. My design became the “reference architecture” for all
future vSphere implementations on the c7000 chassis for all of HP.
Installed and configured HP tools including HP Insight Control software suite
(SIM, Perf Mgmt Pack, VPM, VMM, SMP, IPM, iLO Adv Pack) along with RDP
integrated with PXE boot enabled virtual MAC’s which facilitated “rip and replace”
server rebuilds and ensured the highest levels of platform
availability. Created and built-out multiple VMware HA/DRS clusters and
resource pools and integrated this environment into existing production
networks with multiple tiers of attached 3PAR T400 storage. Assessed
and planned migrations of existing physical and virtual machines into the new
environment as well as laid out various BU/DR/BC strategies for the GE
Architecture Review Board to evaluate.
INTEL CORPORATION /
INTEL SOLUTION SERVICES, Ayer, MA
2007 - 2009
Senior Consulting
Engineer
Provided strategic “thought leadership” and
“IT Optimization/Virtualization” based technical consulting services as part
of Intel’s DCoF (Data Center of the Future) practice to several Fortune 500 clients
including: DuPont Chemical, Siemens Medical, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Raymond James
and Chico’s FAS.
•
Served
as the Predictive Enterprise Integration Strategist for ISS East.
•
Served
as the Technical Lead on the General Electric Corporate Information
Technology RFP
•
Earned
a US Government “Secret” level Federal Security Clearance
•
Projects
included many multi-site virtual assessments together with several detailed
virtual infrastructure designs along with complex P2V migrations
•
Also
briefly served as an ETS (Enterprise Technology Specialist) working under a
District Manager in the Eastern Region
CERTIFIED NETWORK
CONSULTANTS, LLC, Nashua,
NH
1999 –
2007
Complex Technical
Solutions Architect (Virtualization-Consolidation-Optimization)
2002-2007
Served as Lead Infrastructure/Virtualization
Architect on the following projects:
Thomson
Financial - (Omgeo Division): Was engaged to assess the
existing VMware VI3 infrastructure and make recommendations for enhancements
and operational improvements thereto. Architected a detailed migration
plan to move the entire infrastructure off of existing, single tier EMC
Clariion storage and onto “dual tier” EqualLogic® iSCSI storage arrays,
cutting the company’s outlay for storage charges by approximately 2/3rds in
the process. Laid out a strategy to use Riverbed WAN accelerators along
with Vizioncore’s esxRanger® and esxReplicator® products to provide a cost
effective BC strategy for “company strategic” server platforms.
Pfizer: Served as the VMware
Capacity Manager for the BTE-SI (Business Technology Engineering – Shared
Infrastructure) initiative with virtual infrastructure capacity
planning/management responsibilities for fifteen VMware ESX farms (800+ VM’s)
distributed across six North American datacenters. Served as the
BTE VMware SME for the AtS ViP (Virtualization-in-Place) project which
effected the P2V conversion of almost 200 WinTel servers across four
datacenters. Performed a comprehensive “gap analysis” on the entire
existing Pfizer Virtual Infrastructure for the CIT (Corporate Information
Technology) division, making many recommendations for the improvement of
existing operations as well as proposing design enhancements for the upcoming
VI3 based “Next Generation Architecture”.
Advance Auto Parts: Advance Auto
is the second largest auto parts distributor in North America and is
currently ranked #477 on the 2006 edition of the Fortune500 survey.
This intensive, compressed 10 week project involved an assessment of the
existing AAP virtual infrastructure, a total new redesign using updated and
redundant networking components and a new two-tier SAN architecture as well
the “rolling upgrade” migration of approximately 40 VM’s off of the old
hardware and into the new environment. Additional physical servers were
then P2V’d into the new virtual infrastructure once the newly integrated, HP
DL585 based server farm was up and available.
Dow Chemical Company: The Dow Chemical effort was
an Enterprise Transformation project for the world’s largest chemical company
with a scope of 3,150 Intel servers worldwide. My duties included
design of the overall Reference Architecture for all virtualization services,
TCO/ROI analysis for the new Target Architecture, design and deployment of a
multi-server virtualized Application Hosting platform, together with an
application profiling and rationalization effort to strategize migration of
existing applications and services into the new
environment.
A.C. Nielsen: The AC Nielsen
project was a “Phase I” worldwide data center consolidation assessment with a
scope of 1,400 servers. My responsibilities included the profiling of
the companies server inventory, several presentations to corporate management
and a High Level Design of the proposed virtual architecture.
NOTE: The ITS division of IBM won the “Phase II” design and
implementation contract based upon my Phase 1 HLD.
Pfizer: Served as the PMO
Architect (supporting a $100 million dollar PMO encompassing dozens of
multi-year IT optimization projects) for both the MORE2 and HHARVEST
programs. The latter included a consolidation/virtualization effort on
behalf of the PGRD (Pfizer Global Research and Development) division of the
world’s largest pharmaceutical company. The project scope
included 4,400 servers which were being consolidated out of 11 regional data
centers across the planet and virtualized into the Groton/New London CT
datacenter. My primary effort was the delivery of a single VMware
VMotion enabled Virtual Center Farm Complex design which could scale to 2,048
Virtual Machines, but, as the PMO Architect, I worked closely with the
Application Hosting, Network, Storage, Application Profiling, Environmental,
Finance and End User Services teams as well as with the highest levels of
PGRD management.
ING (International Netherlands
Group): The
ING effort was an SO (Strategic Outsourcing) project which included the
virtualization and migration of 72 servers out of various ING offices
nationwide into the IBM SDC-West Data Center in Boulder, CO.
Albertsons Markets: The Albertsons
project included the virtualization of 32 physical servers and the delivery
of a “highly available” VMotion architecture design which included a single
Virtual Center Farm with ESX servers co-located across disparate municipal
campuses (EMC SRDF was used for storage replication between two Symmetrix
SAN’s)
City Brewery: The City Brewery
project included the virtualization of 11 physical machines onto a single IBM
x365 server running VMware ESX v1.52.
1999 – 2002
Microsoft
Enterprise Network Architect and Technical Trainer
•
Developed
a stellar industry reputation and successfully delivered scores of Exchange,
SMS, Windows2000, Active Directory, Application Center, Commerce Server,
Windows Security and MS Cluster courses to dozens of Microsoft Training
Partners and Enterprise corporate customers nationwide.
•
Provided
a variety of high quality Enterprise network technology solutions,
specializing in High-Availability SQL & Exchange clusters (using MSCS),
server consolidations (using MSCS and VMware), server and storage
virtualizations (using VMware), AD designs and implementations (including
Unix NIS->AD integration/interoperability), technology refresh driven
server platform migrations (including RAID->SAN migrations), network
discovery, documentation and health check updates (using various tools
especially Visio Enterprise) as well as just about every flavor of MS
Exchange design, roll-out, implementation, upgrade and
centralization/consolidation project imaginable.
•
Served
as the Microsoft Technologies “Subject Matter Expert” and delivered various
Microsoft centric, Enterprise Computing and Storage Systems designs
(utilizing IBM xSeries and BladeCenter server hardware combined with FastT
Storage Management devices/software) for several IBM Tier 1 Business Partners/resellers
(including: Minntek Solutions, Mainline Information Systems and Champion
Service Group).
•
Became
proficient with a number of “third party” clustering tools and technologies,
including: NSI DoubleTake and NSI GeoCluster, PolyServe Matrix Server,
Veritas Volume Manager, PlateSpin P2V as well as EqualLogic iSCSI storage
subsystems. Also proficient with the design, architecting and
implementation of database servers (SQL and Oracle) as well as thin client
technologies (Citrix and MS Terminal Server).
US DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS REGION I, (New England)
1998-1999
NT
Architect (click for position description: www.CertifiedNC.com/resume/vapd1.pdf).
•
Oversaw
and managed all aspects of NT infrastructure, user administration and network
services for a 6400 seat NT domain structure (which was my small
administrative portion of the VA’s 100,000+ seat, 25 User domain, 300
Resource domain NT4 network).
•
Monitored/managed
all mission critical network services and LOB applications (using various
Microsoft tools as well as Cabletron Spectrum) to insure that uptime
availability was maintained as required under the VA Region I Service Level
Agreement (SLA).
•
Directly
managed the Regional Exchange Bridgehead server and had direct supervisory
authority over 11 other hospital Exchange sites together with several farms
of IIS-based Intranet servers. Directly managed the VA Region I
Internet site and had ultimate supervisory responsibility for dozens of DC’s,
WINS, DNS, RRAS, Proxy, SMS and IIS servers throughout the eleven hospital
Enterprise.
•
Implemented
many major projects for VA Region I including various Exchange upgrades such
as OWA and the clustering of our entire Exchange messaging infrastructure.
Also successfully managed the project which rolled out SMS, a Primary site
and 11 Secondary sites which totaled some 6000+ managed hosts. Lastly,
I managed and implemented various electronic medical record, medical
transcription automation and telemedicine projects for VA Region I.
MASS BAY COMMUNITY
COLLEGE,
Wellesley, MA
1998 – 1999
Adjunct
Professor
Taught
“Computer Networking” classes during the evening while working as the VA
Region I NT Architect during the day.
VA MEDICAL CENTER, Bedford, MA
1990 – 1998
Network Manager
(click for position description: www.CertifiedNC.com/resume/vapd2.pdf)
•
Managed
and administered an NT4 Resource Domain together with all the File/Print
Services necessary to support an 800-bed VA Medical Center.
•
Responsible
for the entire hospital network infrastructure which included all switches,
routers, fiber and cable plants.
•
Implemented
and supported all requisite NT network services (DC’s, DHCP, WINS, and DNS)
as well as remote administration tools, change and configuration management
mechanisms, antivirus deployments and backup/disaster recovery procedures.
•
Supervised
Help Desk staff and provided Level 2 problem escalation support for all of
the hospital infrastructure technical support staff.
Education
Master of
Business Administration
Marylhurst University,
Marylhurst, Oregon
BS-CIS degree
Franklin
Pierce University, Rindge, New Hampshire
Professional Training
Microsoft
MCSE Certificate Program
Novell
CNE Certificate Program
Both through:
Boston University, Boston, MA
Basic
Electronics, Digital Circuits and Computer Technology Certifications
Control Data
Institute, Burlington, MA
Certifications and Clearances
US DOD “Top Secret / SCI”- Level Security
Clearance (IT Consultant – category = 3D7A8-I)
VMware Certified Professional #188 (vCloud,
vCloud Automation and Management, Data Center Virtualization, ESX/ESXi
Server, DRS, HA, VCB, VirtualCenter, VMotion, P2V Assistant, Enterprise
Converter, SRM, Capacity Planner, Virtualization Assessment)
IBM Certified Cloud Computing Infrastructure
Architect
Microsoft MCP – Microsoft Cloud (Azure)
Architect
Microsoft MCP – Microsoft Cloud (Azure)
Infrastructure Specialist
Microsoft MCP Specialist – Server Virtualization
with Windows Server 2012-R2 + Hyper-V
IBM Certified TotalStorage® Networking &
Virtualization Specialist
SNIA (Storage Network Industry Association)
Certified Storage Engineer
IBM High Performance xSeries® Technical Expert
Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA)
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (on NT4,
Win2000 and Win2003)
ITSM - ITIL Foundations Certified
IBM Windows 2000 on xSeries® Certified Specialist
IBM xSeries® Certified Specialist
Hewlett-Packard Accredited Systems Engineer
EqualLogic® PS iSCSI Storage Engineer
Microsoft Certified Trainer
Certified Novell Engineer (3.12 and 4.x)
Certified Technical Trainer