Neil Gailliez Intunet Job Achievements (PDF)

Neil Gailliez Achievements And Skills While Working At Intunet
Management of the businesses internal IT infrastructure
* Developing disaster recovery strategies and implementing solutions using open source technologies, examples have included:
* The installation of high availability web servers using technologies such as DRBD
* The use of file system incremental and image based backup methods for ensuring complete protection of the organisations data
* Always aiming to consider possible points of failure and incorporating fail safe measures into design decisions
* Troubleshooting issues caused by failure of 3rd party services, developing workarounds to provide fast recovery and to ensure business continuity
* Conducting root cause analysis of complex problems using command line diagnostic tools
* Aiming to develop system configurations that minimise management overhead and administrative burden
* A passion for researching new technologies and discovering ways to integrate them into service provision to benefit efficiency or provide new capabilities
* Continually working towards ensuring that Linux server systems meet a high standard of security configuration
* Responding to high profile security vulnerabilities, installing updates and when necessary developing mitigating measures
* Continually working towards the improvement of system performance and ensuring sufficient capacity to meet current and future customer demands
* Installing upgrades to live mission critical systems using methods that keep downtime to a minimum
* Use of scripting technologies such as Bash, PHP, Perl and Python for the development of management and reporting tools
* Monitoring the businesses server estate using open source tools such as Monit and Nagios, as well custom built black box system testing techniques
* Responding to serious incidents reported by the automated 24 x 7 monitoring service
* Use of configuration management tools such as Puppet for more effective management of infrastructure configuration as code
* Strong understanding of TCP/IP and DNS and troubleshooting network problems related to web hosting
* Strong understanding of firewalling concepts and configuration of firewalls based on Linux iptables and ebtables
* Configuration of VPN servers and clients
* Awareness of the principles surrounding continuous integration and the development of custom built scripts to automate development processes

* Extensive involvement with the management of externally hosted customer systems, providing expertise in areas such as:
* Advanced SQL writing for producing reports used, used for debugging data processing issues and providing management information
* MySQL and PostgreSQL database administration
* Making server configuration changes, releasing code changes and carrying out software upgrades
* Conducting in depth analysis to determine the root cause behind anomalous behaviour
* Developing specifications for system amendments
* Providing leadership on major projects work and participating in various phases of the project life cycle, including:
* Analysis for development of a specification, solution design, implementation, testing, customer liaison and after sales service

* Assisting team members with the handling of customer support issues and problems related to development project work, including:
* Use of command line tools to assist with root cause analysis
* Use of scripting skills in Bash, Perl, PHP and Python to automate time consuming work, or to provide reliable reusable mechanisms for solving problems
* Trying to provide quality assurance by double checking interpretations, and testing outcomes
* Collaborating on project work, discussing problems and making contributions to solution design
* Taking on extra work during periods of heavy workload or when colleagues are working to tight deadlines
* Providing mentorship in my areas of expertise to help colleagues learn new skills

* Continually looking for ways to cut costs of service provision in order to maximise profitability, examples have included:
* Deploying the use of the highly cost effective Letsencrypt SSL certification service across the businesses web and email hosting infrastructure
* This has reduced overheads related to the provision of these services
* Implementing and managing the use of KVM / Libvirt and Xen based virtualisation on our dedicated server hosting platforms
* This has assisted with maximising return on technology investment

* Proactively looking for area's where I can make improvements to procedures, processes and service levels, examples have included:
* Discussing and formulating best practices in cooperation with team members
* The development of semi-automated procedures that are used for configuring development environments and conducting code releases.
* Proactively expanding web hosting software capabilities and updating software versions to assist with remaining competitive
* Making custom amendments to hosting configurations in order to cater for specific customer needs, to assist with retaining and winning new business
* Initiating and managing the rollout of major upgrades to the server based software systems that run the businesses web hosting services.
* Documenting best practices, producing step by step guidelines for common operations