Simon Greenwood

Senior Linux System Administrator primarily in web based technologies and the Internet

Email | Matrix

Current position

Senior System Administrator, AdminGeekZ Ltd

Specialized in

• Linux System Administration, primarily Enterprise Linux and Debian-based systems
• Web server technologies including Apache HTTPD, nginx and LiteSpeed
• Email system management and monitoring
• MySQL server optimisation
• Bash and Python scripting
• Web control panels including cPanel, DirectAdmin and
• Virtualisation and constainerisation technologies including KVM and LXC
• Service deployments with ansible, docker, containerisation
• DNS and network management

Looking for

• Remote or hybrid work
• Full time or contract
• Linux System Administration
• Break/Fix repair roles
• System design
• Discovery and Migration projects

Skills

• Linux and Unix system administration (30 years)
• System troubleshooting
• System discovery and analysis
• System design and deployment
• Almost 30 years involvement with Internet technologies

Occupation

2011 - present

AdminGeekZ Ltd, UK/International

• Senior System Administrator Remote system administration and DevOps services for businesses located around the world, principally with dedicated LAMP and nginx/php-fpm servers and cloud based systems. System tuning and provisioning for high performance and reliability based around MySQL, apache, nginx, PHP and varnish. Extensive experience with cPanel and Plesk control panels, backups and general server management. Security including system updating, hardening and tuning and the configuration of systems for HTTPS and other secure protocols.

Previous positions (to 2010)

2010 - 2011

BuzzSports Ltd, Leeds, UK

• Senior System Administrator, buzzsports.com Setting up server and desktop systems for a gaming startup in Leeds using a LAMP based system on Rackspace servers. Implementation of processes and security to meet requirements of a UK gambling license and PCI-DSS compliance.

2010

The Tote, Wigan, UK

• Contract Linux PCI-DSS Compliance Consultant Providing technical advice and support for a PCI-DSS compliance project for this high profile online betting service, including auditing production environments and developing and documenting system hardening strategies and ongoing patching and support processes in a RedHat Linux environment.

2010

Lloyds Bank for HP plc, Knutsford, UK

• Contract Technical Consultant A project at a major financial institution to identify legacy hardware and its applications and suggest a migration strategy into a managed Linux environment. This involved system discovery in a mixed Solaris and HP-UX environment and documentation and communication with stakeholders regarding requirements.

Education

1985-1988

Teesside Polytechnic, Middlesbrough. - Humanities BA

Older Positions (to 2000)

2008

O2 plc, Leeds, UK

• Contract Migration Consultant Discovery and documentation project to identify and migrate legacy hardware into a virtualized Sun Microsystems/Oracle environment.

2007 - 2008

Computacenter plc for BT plc, Salford, UK

• Contract Design Analyst Major internal virtualisation project for BT, migrating business applications running on Sun hardware to a Sun T-series environment new datacentre in Rochdale. The project involved evaluating applications for viability for migration and designing, building and migration the application.

2007

Farnell plc, Leeds, UK

• Contract System Administrator Providing assistance in rolling out a new version of the Farnell online store. Installing and patching Solaris 9 and apache and other software components on Sun V240s using JET for use as web servers; evaluating Sun T2000s as potential candidates for the web infrastructure layer.

2006 - 2007

Portrait Quadstone, Edinburgh, Scotland

• Contract System Administrator Relief system administration support for this Edinburgh based software house, managing a mixed collection of Solaris, SuSE Linux and Windows machines, including maintaining backups, print services and desktop, production and website support. Use of Legato Networker for backups, Norton Ghost for Windows system imaging, VMWare for virtualisation services and assorted tools for maintaining services and systems.

2006

Wipro for Sun Microsystems, Leeds, UK

• Contract System Administrator Providing installation support services for a greenfield platform servicing 40 machines, from V20Z to E480, in standalone and cluster configurations. Monitoring and reporting on backups using Netbackup, managing and documenting configurations at the OS level, advising on system requirements and managing service requests from client and contractors.

2006

TechnoPhobia Ltd, Sheffield, UK

• Contract System Administrator System administrator for a well established web design agency based in Sheffield. Assisting with day to day operations internally and for their client hosting services. This included working with Linux (primarily Debian with some RedHat and SuSE) Windows 2003 and Solaris systems, managing Apache and IIS web servers, qmail and courier mail systems, Oracle and MySQL databases and dealing with day to day problems and queries from staff and clients, and documenting systems and processes.

2005

EDS Business Exchange Services, Cheadle, UK

• Contract Network Analyst, Providing assistance in the design and installation of a Disaster Recovery facility for an international business unit within EDS. Configuration and installation of Cisco 2900 series routers, design of the network and DNS topologies, system monitoring and intrusion detection.

2004 - 2005

City of Edinburgh Council for BT Global Services, Edinburgh, Scotland

• Contract System Administrator Support and management of a large local authority service delivery platform at operating system level, primarily on Solaris 2.6, 7, 8 and 9 and also on SunOS and HP-UX. Principle duties involved monitoring system services using Big Brother, managing backup regimes using ufsdump based scripts and Netbackup. Storage management using Solstice DiskSuite and Veritas Volume Manager and Veritas Filesystem with NIS and samba. Reporting and managing faults with Sun and attending remote sites to oversee repairs by third party engineers. Assisting in ithe implementation of new projects and commissioning of new machines built and hardened according to CEC and BT standards using Jumpstart and direct installation methods.

2001 - 2004

Equifax plc/IBM UK Ltd, Bradford, UK

• Senior Systems Administrator Managing firewall and networking services and general system administration and support for this major UK online credit reference service. Developing firewall policies for WAN and Internet services using Checkpoint Firewall-1 on Sun and Nokia platforms. Integrating and supporting new client networks and existing services in a commercial infrastructure with twenty four hour operation and support. Assistance in the relocation and commissioning of Sun Enterprise level servers including E450, E4500 and E10000 machines. Day to day network and system administration duties including web server maintenance using apache, tomcat and Java 2; scripting in sh, ksh and perl, storage management using DiskSuite and Volume Manager and support of services running under Sun Cluster v3. Supporting load balancing systems using Cisco LocalDirector and apache and mod_rewrite. Commissioning and building of new machines using direct install and Jumpstart. Change and problem management using IBM CPMA and ManageNow systems and Bugzilla. IBM took over Equifax’s IT infrastructure in August 2003 and transferred Equifax IT staff to their employment. The Equifax platform was migrated to an IBM facility, including the migration of the firewalls to a Cisco PIX/Checkpoint FW-1 solution. Extensive involvement in the build and configuration of the new platform on Sun Enterprise machines, AIX on IBM p-series and Linux virtual machines on IBM z-series mainframes.

2000 - 2001

Granada Media plc, London UK

• Webmaster Managing the day to day operations of the web services of the Granada Broadband group. Providing technical solutions and support for a number of high profile web sites including the official ‘Coronation Street’ and ‘Emmerdale’ sites. Integrating the official Arsenal FC web site into the Granada Broadband platform. Integrating the ITV Football website into the Granada Broadband platform. Finding and implementing solutions to the problem of handling high volumes of time related traffic. Platform was based on Sun hardware running SunOne/Netscape/iPlanet and apache web servers, squid caches and various application services including Tomcat, Chilisoft ASP, Netscape Web Server/Sun Java Enterprise System and systems developed in-house.

1990 - 2000

Sportal, PSINet, assorted banks in the City, Reuters, Dow Jones, Clara.Net, Global Internet, Easynet, World Corporate Games, Finance for Business, NCB, Doncaster Borough Council