Waqas Taimoor

Experience

• 

  WIND Mobile

  Jan 2008 - Feb 2011

  Linux/Storage Systems Administrator

  Achievements: • Configured nPars & vPars on HP’s midrange enterprise Itanium based servers (rx8640) with fully populated 4 cell boards running CRM application and Oracle database • Complete end-to-end SAN management ◦ Initialization and configuration of Brocade 5100 SAN switches including firmware upgrades ◦ Zoning of all SAN attached Unix/Linux systems ◦ Management of HP EVA8400 and EVA4400 storage arrays using HP CommandView with approx 100 TeraByte storage ◦ Writing and maintaining backend storage clone scripts for production environment refreshes ◦ Storage capacity and expansion planning • Installation and initialization of HP c7000 blade enclosure chassis with FLEX10 virtual connects • Creating and maintaining virtual connect server profiles for each server in c7000 enclosures • Maintain servers and VC modules firmware matrix and upgrading them once a year • Keeping OS patch levels to the latest • Provided feedback and draft documents for the business on departmental process improvement initiatives, including Change Management. • Securing the systems with standard security policies and best practices • Configuration of Ignite-UX golden image for imaging HP-UX servers • Deployed/configured end to end Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure of about 100 systems • Configured automated RHEL imaging using pxeboot/kickstart • Deploying virtualized environments on VMware ESX4 as well as Integrity VM’s • Configured backup policies in Symantec BackupExec & HP Dataprotector 6 for all Unix platform using disk-to-disk (D2D) model • Management of HP EML Tape library using HP CommandView TL software • Unix/Linux kernel parameters tuning to troubleshoot performance issues Show less

• 

  International Financial Data Services (IFDS)

  Jan 2011 - Feb 2013

  Sr. Linux/Storage Systems Administrator

  Achievements: • Virtual provisioning of EMC VMAX using Symmetrix Management Console (SMC) • Setup of FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tierring) policy on EMC VMAX • Configuration of storage performance analyzer (SPA) to view real-time LUN I/O and other performance metrics • EMC ProSphere software deployment and configuration for SAN topology and reporting • Provisioning EMC mid-range VNXe NAS platform as well as older NS-40 lineup with approx. 40TB of shared storage • Provisioning EMC mid-range Clariion CX-3 & CX-4 storage platform using Navisphere and more recent Unisphere operating environment ◦ Setup of point in time clones using EMC Snap Clone software ◦ Setup of continuous mirroring of LUN’s using EMC MirriorView software • End-to-end configuration of Cisco MDS 9500 series SAN director switches • Provisioning HP c7000 blade system enclosure with cutting-edge FLEX Fabric (FCoE) interconnect modules • Involved in Patch Management focusing on Vulnerabilities and Risks • Upgrade of AIX TL and SP to latest level using multibos and alt_disk methods • Deployment, administration and support of VMware farm • VMware 4 upgrade to VMware vSphere 5 • ESXi 5.0 Patching and I/O performance tuning and troubleshooting at all layers of SAN • Deployment of Red Hat JBoss 5 for multiple applications Show less

• 

  IBM

  Feb 2013 - Feb 2015

  Sr. AIX Consultant

  Achievements: • Installed TSM 7.1 storage manager on AIX 7.1 TL4 • Installed TSM clients on Linux, RedHat and AIX environments • Managing and troubleshooting of IBM P5, P6 & P7 series hardware • Extensive implementation experience of IBM Micro-Partitioning (LPAR, DLPAR) • Built redundant VIOS; installing BOS from CD; Defining shared Ethernet adapters; Built VIO client LPAR’s; creating VIOS server disk resources; defining Virtual FC maps • Deployed 70 client LPAR’s using NIM on IBM Power7 P750 frames • Installed and configured NIM server for installation, backup and restore of AIX • Involved in Patch Management focusing on Vulnerabilities and Risks • Executed AIX patching for technology levels (TL), service packs (SP) upgrades • Implemented automated deployment and hardening of Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure (physical & VM’s) according to IBM stringent security policies • Configured and tuned Red Hat device mapper multipath software and Ethernet bonding for multiple projects • Implementation of VERITAS HA solution on IBM System-X running Oracle database • Deployment of new VMware datacenters including host clusters, data store clusters and distributed virtual network switches (dvswitches) on IBM fully populated 4U x3850 machines • Implemented patching automation project across 350 Red Hat servers, includes generating a list of outstanding Red Hat security advisories, download needed packages with dependencies and post-patching scanning and verification • Making sure to meet yearly SLA for updating all firmware levels of 200+ physical systems • Ensuring client’s service requests and incident tickets SLA are met • Involved in customer’s DR tests • Reviewing and approving CPPIB all Unix changes (Change Management) • Investigated complex SAN and I/O performance issues at all SAN layers Show less

• 

  Bell Media

  Mar 2015 - Jan 2016

  Sr. AIX & Red Hat Linux Consultant

  Achievements: • Installed and configured redundant VIOS on IBM Power8 frame • Upgraded and patched IBM HMC from version 7 to version 8, release 8.2.0, SP 1 • Reviewed and modified IBM AIX version 6.1 and 7.1 OS security settings to meet SOX Audit compliance • Creation of RHEL VMware virtual machine template incorporating all SOX security requirements for all future deployments • Installation/configuration of new RHEL VM’s for new projects • Oracle WebLogic startup script development and documentation of all it’s services/components • IBM TSM agent installation/configuration on AIX and RHEL platforms • Taking care of daily operational tasks including but not limited to shell scripts development/modification • Porting of shell scripts written for AIX operating system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux • Control-M enterprise scheduler agent installation on Unix and troubleshooting Show less

• 

  The Globe and Mail

  Jan 2016 - Jan 2018

  Achievements: • Migrated current Linux environments to AWS/RHEL Linux environments and used auto-scaling feature • Increasing EBS backed volume storage capacity when the root volume is full using AWS EBS Volume feature • Created S3 backups using versioning enable and moved objects to Amazon Glacier for archiving purposes • Created users and groups using IAM and assigned individual policies to each group • Installation and configuration of SAP HANA systems up to 3TB of memory in a VMware cluster configuration for high availability • Upgraded about 80 RHEL 6 systems to RHEL 7 using in-place upgrade procedure, following pre-upgrade system assessment and fixing any issues in the system assessment report • Installed & configured Operating System, Standard hardware support, system upgrades using RedHat Satellite • Installation and configuration of LDAP infrastructure to move away from legacy NIS system • Perform patch and vulnerability management tasks across all Linux systems ensuring all systems are in compliant • Complete end-to-end deployment of the publication infrastructure upgrade project, all running on RHEL 7.2 • Physical to Virtual (P2V) & Virtual to Virtual (V2V) migration of servers using vCentre Converter • Planning & executing Linux team’s monthly maintenance and quarterly patching activities myself and by engaging other team members • Wrote cron jobs and shell scripts for database backups • Preparing new Brocade SAN switches for replacing older hardware Show less Achievements: • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 installations in a Production and QA environments of PPI application • Setup printers on Linux systems for printing pre-production copies of the newspaper for QA • Physical to Virtual (P2V) & Virtual to Virtual (V2V) migration of servers using VMware vCenter Converter • Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS PCI compliant server builds • RHEL patch and subscription management using RedHat satellite • Patch Management focusing on Vulnerabilities and Risks • Ubuntu and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) version/service pack upgrades using Ansible automation tool • Logical Volume Manager (LVM) dump and restore of filesystems • Audited all Unix servers and prepared a report of issues pertaining to these systems and proposed a concrete, step-by-step plan to address these issues • Setup SNMP based hardware monitoring of all physical server hardware • Firmware update of more than 50% of the systems in the environment • Decommissioning of over 300 physical and virtual legacy servers Show less

  • Sr. UNIX/Linux & Storage Architect

    Aug 2016 - Jan 2018

  • Sr. Red Hat Linux Consultant

    Jan 2016 - Aug 2016
• 

  Freedom Mobile

  Feb 2018 - now

  Achievements: • Designed and implemented secure network infrastructure in AWS by adhering to ITSG 22 & ITSG 33 IT security risk management frameworks • Provisioned AWS Landing Zones for Sonic ESB project by creating a customized baseline of AWS accounts, networks, and security policies • Configured multi-account architecture, identity and access management, governance, data security, network design, and logging within provisioned AWS Landing Zones • Segregate subnets in VPCs for different environments like POC, Sandbox, UAT, Stage & Prod and connecting some services with other on-prem services using AWS transit gateway • Isolation of EC2 instances among different environments were made sure with help of Network ACL’s and a more granular network traffic filtration on an EC2 instance level was ensured using Security Groups and Gateway Load Balancers • End-to-end IAM management and support for organization wide users with permission policies catered to individual needs according to least access principle • All AWS provisioned resources were confined to RBAC with help of IAM roles, giving these resources access to other resources only when needed • Writing Terraform codes for cloud components building • Writing Jenkins Pipelines for AWS Workloads • Writing Packer for OS Packaging • Delivered Nutanix CALM automation project, besides deployment of Windows 2019 Server Edition VM's through a self-serve portal, post installation customization was also configured including integration into Domain join, SCCM, SCOM, Qualys, Splunk & CommVault agents silent installs Show less Achievements: • Involved in designing and deploying a multitude applications utilizing almost all of the AWS stack (including EC2, Route53, S3, RDS, Dynamo DB, SNS, SQS, IAM) focusing on high-availability, fault tolerance, and auto-scaling • Works with IT Security team to ensure the AWS environments aligns with IT Security compliance • Develops and maintains AWS cloud infrastructure user access roles • Successfully lead a major automation (DevOps) initiative from ground up to automate Linux and Windows virtual servers provisioning using various tools such as: Jenkins, Groovy, Python, Terraform, Ansible, Red Hat Satellite server, HashiCorp, Nutanix CALM • Successfully deployed two Oracle private cloud appliances (Pre-Prod and Prod) for Tier 2 Oracle database workloads allowing legacy VMware based dedicated Oracle cluster workloads to be migrated over. The storage of these private cloud appliances was backed by Oracle’s ZFS ZS7-2 storage appliance for ASM disk groups on virtual machines • Created comprehensive policies and procedures for officially transitioning new server builds to IT Unix operations team • Implemented Red Hat’s (IAM) solution for easy management of user’s access to Linux systems through Microsoft Active Directory (AD) integration Show less Achievements: • Collaborates with other business units as necessary to evaluate AWS cloud readiness of services • Attends and contributes to projects to migrate services into AWS cloud environments • Develops and improves automation of cloud service processes • Created load balancers (ELB) and used Route53 with fail over and latency options for high availability and fault tolerance • Improves monitoring of cloud services • Works closely with Tier 1 Cloud Support Techs and the Cloud Services team to remediate issues and fulfill support requirements • Responsible for implementing end-to-end Hitachi G1500 virtual storage platform for mission critical applications • Implemented complete Linux landscape resources plotting using Prometheus and Grafana • Contributed heavily to Ansible playbooks library for deploying new applications and agents • Defined and implemented decommissioning process for Linux infrastructure • Involved in Change management and incident requests Show less

  • Sr. Cloud Infrastructure Automation Engineer (Freedom Mobile acquired by Qubecor/Videotron)

    Mar 2023 - now

  • Sr. Cloud Automation Engineer (Freedom Mobile acquired by Shaw Communications Inc.)

    May 2020 - Mar 2023

  • Sr. Linux and Storage Systems Architect – Consultant

    Feb 2018 - May 2020