IT Architecture Consultant
Expert at identifying problems in varied environments and architecting robust solutions:
Passionate, highly autonomous engineer with a love for exploration, attention to detail and a taste for sharing knowledge. Fervent about crafting software tools that empower humans, insistent they should be open, solid and dependable.
Confirmed IT infrastructure architect with 8 years of experience designing, planning, migrating and evaluating large-scale environments, with a focus on cross-cutting concerns, emphasizing a systemic approach centered on user needs.
Key skills
- IS transformation
- Opportunity analysis / ROI estimation.
- IS architecture design.
- Migration planning and coordination.
- Auditing / problem solving.
- IT operations
- Processes: change management, capacity planning, backup, monitoring, supervision, incident management.
- Extensive knowledge of day-to-day operating environments.
- ITIL Foundation certified.
- IT infrastructure
- Operating systems: GNU/Linux, Windows.
- Networking: OSI model, firewalls, load balancers, WAN optimizers.
- Storage: SAN, NAS, iSCSI.
- Virtualization: VMware, XenServer, Hyper‑V.
- Consulting toolbox
- Listening and analytical thinking.
- Coaching and teaching.
- Excellent writing skills.
➥ Long experience of software development provides insights and tools for IS architecture. See résumé.
Experience
Design and implementation of Hyper-V infrastructure
To rationalize the release cycle of its internal applications, GroundLink decided to introduce fully isolated development, staging and pre-production environments for its development teams in Serbia. To make this transition cost-effective, they chose to leverage virtualization and dynamic provisioning.
- Profiled existing workload on physical infrastructure.
- Designed and sized the target virtual infrastructures, providing technology recommendations based on ROI evaluations.
- Coordinated deployment and migration with main office in New York.
- Trained local administrators on the new environment.
- Successfully migrated eligible projects to the new infrastructure, reducing hosting cost by 80%.
- Hyper-V
- PowerShell
- iSCSI
IT Architecture consulting
Infrastructure expert focusing on cross-cutting concerns, rationalization and virtualization. Conducted a total of 19 missions between 2005 and 2011.
Typical work revolved around transformations resulting from the introduction of x86 virtualization technologies in datacenters, including both technical and organizational implications.
- Technology intelligence, opportunity analysis, ROI estimation, IS architecture design, migration planning, audits, problem solving, development of ad-hoc tools.
➥ Next entries are selected missions.
Structuring of infrastructure operations
After 2008 financial crisis, the French regulatory authority was assigned a major increase in scope and budget, leading to a ten-fold increase in IT operations department. Its organisation was deeply impacted, and in need of structuring.
- Conducted interviews to assess current state of operation processes.
- Introduced ITIL-based practices to structure operations following a continuous improvement paradigm. Most notably change management,supervision and incident management.
- Provided individual support to IT management and handled communication towards teams.
- Established weekly CAB, ensuring visibility of change decisions, with their risks and dependencies.
- ITIL
- IWS Qualities
- Nagios
Branch-office IT consolidation
To reduce IT cost of foreign branch offices, Total Petrochemicals had decided to consolidate and migrate local applications to the datacenters of the main office, creating a new virtualized infrastructure to host them.
- Inventoried branch office applications, including network flows and workload profiles.
- Designed the target architecture for both hosting platform and inter-office networking.
- Communicated with branch office teams to create procedures and tools to streamline the migration.
- Coordinated foreign branch offices and suppliers to minimize business impact of changes.
- Completed deployment by the deadline , dividing physical hosting costs by 4.
- BladeCenter
- Riverbed
- SAN
- VMware
Virtualization technology intelligence
For the launch of a consolidation plan of its 20 000-server multi-subsidiary information system, Crédit Agricole wanted to define corporate standards for virtualized hosting, based on state-of-the-art tools and practices as well as upcoming trends.
- Assessed current practices among subsidiaries, looking for synergies and pain points.
- Guided IT staff as they met major virtualisation vendors.
- Conducted workshops using gathered data and field experience as input.
- Synthesized decisions into a 2-year roadmap.
Datacenter virtualization
As part of its cyclical technology upgrade, LaPoste decided to assess the viability of virtualizing its 250-server ecosystem.
- Inventoried and profiled running applications.
- Designed several target scenarios with migration paths, growth plans and ROI evaluation.
- Synthesized findings and technical risks analysis in a decision document.
- Designed the detailed technical architecture after management selected a scenario.
- Transformation project achieved neutral ROI within 2 years, while dividing TCO by 6.
- VMware
Network connectivity issue investigation
Intermittent connectivity issues with foreign B2B partners led to degrading performance and occasional loss of business data.
- Set up frame capture at backbone level and designed heuristics to discriminate relevant data.
- Tracked down issue to a combination of protocol violations at equipment level and external network conditions that would compound under pathological circumstances.
- Recommended configuration changes to reduce impact of issue.
- No business data loss was reported once changes were applied.
- Cisco Catalyst
- Python
- WireShark
Performance investigation in virtual environment
First deployment of a virtualized datacenter in Europe. Release-blocking performance issue in hosted applications threatened to make management abort the project. Oracle instances seemed to perform exceptionally poorly under VMware.
- Oracle internals were not well documented and Oracle refused to provide assistance.
- Traced application behavior at system level and identified problematic patterns.
- Pioneering virtual environments meant no usable model of the workload existed at the time.
- Isolated problematic behaviors, then instrumented them by creating test cases and benchmarks.
- Proved that virtualization was not the cause. Provided guidance on solving underlying issue.
- Prevented project from being aborted, as application went into production.
- C99
- Oracle 9i
- VMware ESX
Education
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Master's Degree in Engineering at ESIEE Paris, specializing in computer science — 2005.
- Represented my school at the Asciel (formerly Gixel) annual conference, in which I presented a report on developing trends in the electronics field for homeland security.
- Designed an FPGA-based general-purpose I/O controller for Motorola 68k embedded systems.
- Built a minimalist operating system for 68010, featuring pre-emptive multi-processing and IPC.
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M.Phil in Fundamental Algorithmics and its uses at UPEM University.
Interests
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Crypto-currencies: founded a non-profit organization to popularize blockchain technologies and promote the use and development of blockchain-based commodities as a medium of exchange.
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Beginner support, as a regular contributor to a support group answering questions and guiding future engineers as they discover and learn software development.
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I had to cut down personal pursuits to share the love of engineering with my 2-year-old son.
