unix consulting in the uk. real life unix observations and tips.

Halvard "Hal" Halvorsen.

Profile.

Professional Development and Memberships.

• Sun^TM Certified System Administrator (SCSA). Solaris 2.6, 7, 8, 9.
• Sun^TM Certified Network Administrator (SCNA). Solaris 2.6, 7, 8, 9.
• Sun^TM Certified Security Administrator. Solaris 9.
• Firewall-1 Certified CheckPoint^TM Security Administrator (CCSA). Firewall-1 3.x.
• Over 20 UNIX and networking related training courses.
• Computer Engineer, Bergen University College, Norway.
• Member of PCG - The Professional Contractors Group.
• Member of USENIX - The Advanced Computing Systems Association.
• Member of SAGE - The System Administrators Guild.

Skill Set.

• Solaris - 2.x, 7, 8, 9.
• RedHat Linux 6, 7, 8, 9.
• Internet and e-commerce - Iplanet/Netscape and Apache web servers, DNS, sendmail, HTML/XHTML.
• Solstice DiskSuite and Veritas Volume Manager.
• Veritas NetBackup and File System (vxfs).
• Networking - TCP/IP, Cisco IOS, NIS, NFS, automount, Samba, NTP, BOOTP/DHCP.
• Security - Firewall-1, iptables, TCP wrapper, Unix hardening, JASS, web servers, nmap, crack.
• Programming - UNIX shells (Bourne, Korn and C shell) and
  also knowledge of/trained on CVS, SCCS, Java, C, FORTRAN.
• All Sun hardware from the Sparcstation 1 to the Ultra Enterprise 10000.

Career History.

Unix Systems Administrator, Sapient, London.

November 2003 - .

• Unix administration and support on Solaris 8/9 and RedHat Linux 9.
• Web server administration (Apache 2).
• Basic WebLogic administration (WebLogic 7/8).
• Designing and setting up internal NTP configuration.
• Writing system documentation.
• Using products like BigBrother and Legato Networker.

Unix Systems Specialist, Pfizer Ltd, Sandwich, UK.

September 2001 - November 2003. Unix Architecture and Build, Corporate IT. Contract renewed 4 times.

• Planning, installation and upgrades of Solaris 8 on Sun Enterprise servers (up to SunFire F6800).
• Unix administration and support
• Utilising products like BMC Patrol, Legato NetWorker, DiskSuite and Veritas Volume Manager.
• Producing system procedures and documentation.
• Samba installation and configuration.
• Sendmail 8 implementation and rollout on Solaris and RedHat Linux 8.

Unix Installation Engineer, Net-a-porter.com, London.

August 2001. Contract position.

• Short term consultancy. Planning, installing and configuring firewall, hardened Solaris 8 and Linux.

Systems Consultant, Bondclick, London.

March 2001 - June 2001. Contract position.

• Managing Solaris part of B2B architecture (Solaris 8, Java Message Queue, RSA ACE/SecurID).
• Engineering and installing NTP for time synchronization across the Solaris e-commerce platform.
• Design, installation and configuration of system monitoring (BigBrother, sar).
• Shell scripting - including writing custom scripts for BigBrother.
• Web server administration using Iplanet Web Server 4.1 and Apache 1.3.
• NIS installation, configuration and management.

Systems Consultant, Qxl.com, London.

November 1999 - March 2001. Contract renewed 3 times.

• Managing and enhancing the QXL e-commerce environment.
• Web server administration using Netscape Enterprise Server 3.6 and Apache 1.3.
• Unix system Administration on Sun Solaris 2.6/ 7/ 8 and RedHat Linux 6.
• Designing, installing and configuring Veritas NetBackup 4.2 for complete UK site.
• Hardware installations and upgrades on Sun Ultra Enterprise servers.
• Environment consisting of Sun Enterprise Servers (E6500/4500/450/420R/250) -
  several of these were clustered using Veritas Cluster Server 1.1 (VCS).

Unix Systems Consultant, Sun Professional Services, Sun Microsystems, UK.

December 2000. Coutts Bank (London) placement. Contract position.

• Short term consultancy. Solaris and Sun server audit.

Unix System Administrator, Sun Professional Services , Sun Microsystems, UK.

June 1999 - October 1999: Glaxo Wellcome (Stevenage) placement. Contract renewed once.

• Administrating Sun part of SAP landscape (development, QA/test and production).
• Environment consisting of 2 clustered Sun Enterprise 10000 ("Starfire") servers and several other Sun Enterprise servers (E450's and Ex500's) using modern disk technology (A5000 and D1000).
• Sendmail 8 configuration.
• Supporting operators, Oracle DBAs and SAP Basis consultants.

Unix Systems Consultant, Global Asset Management, London.

November 1998 - April 1999. Contract position.

• Project work (Unix security and shell programming).
• Production support on Sun Enterprise servers running Solaris 2.5.1 and 2.6.
• Firewall-1 (3.0b) and network administration (NIS/DNS/DHCP).
• Supporting developers and DBAs (Oracle, Informix).

Unix System Administrator, Merrill Lynch, London.

October 1997 - November 1998. Enterprise Technology Services. Contract renewed 3 times.

• Building and administrating complete Year 2000 lab consisting of over 40 Sun machines.
• Bourne and C shell programming: porting and re-writing automatic build code (4000+ lines).
• Firewall-1 administration (including upgrade from 2.1 to 3.0b).
• Supporting DBAs, testers and developers in QA and Y2K test environments.

Senior Systems Consultant, Skrivervik Data AS, Trondheim (Norway).

1991-1997. Skrivervik Data is Norway's representative for Sun Microsystems, Cisco and NCD in this period.

• Consulting and security work.
• Installations, migrations and upgrades.
• Practice covering Sun, Cisco and NCD (hardware and software).

System Administrator, SINTEF RUNIT, Trondheim (Norway).

1986-1991. SINTEF RUNIT - The Computing Centre at the University of Trondheim.

• Unix system administrator Cray X/MP 216 supercomputer, Silicon Graphics SGI Iris 4D NFS fileserver and Sun workstations.
• Project work and management.

Training overview for Halvard Halvorsen.

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