Candidates About

 

Ricardo a. Calhoun

 

Technical Profile:

An established System Engineering SME and Team Lead with a demonstrated background leading world- class organizations in enterprise-wide application migrations, infrastructure implementations and change management processes based on business requirements. My professional technical experience spans 19 years with Wintel and Linux environments in various industries including Automotive and Materials Manufacturing, Food and Beverage Production, Aerospace Research, Entertainment Production, Law and Legal Services, and Financial Products and Services.

 

Through this experience I’ve developed excellent verbal and written communication skills that have been very instrumental in building productive and functional relationships between executive-level business management and technical personnel. Also, my successful collaboration and implementation strategies between application development and infrastructure teams in defining technical expectations have contributed to the sustainability of organizations such as Wells Fargo, Raytheon, NASA, IBM, The Walt Disney Companies, Dole Food Company,  The Capital Group Companies, Buchalter Nemer, ACT Litigation Services, Washington Mutual/Chase, H&R Block, Countrywide Home Loans/BofA, Lender Processing Services, Computer Science Corporation, Dell, Fidelity National Financial, Cargill, Apex Systems, CDI, Artech Information Systems, HCL, and more.

Key Achievements:

·         Provided extraordinary technical project leadership services for IBM, HCL, and the Walt Disney Companies for multiple SAN migration and high availability infrastructure projects.

·         IBM – Successfully deployed multiple virtual machine images for Oracle 11gR2 and HP ServiceGuard clustering

·         Disney – Developed strategic conversion plan and technical processes for EMC SAN migration to IBM XIV Vmax for Linux/Unix and Windows platforms.  The SAN conversion was a multi-million dollar technology investment. – Awarded “ABOVE AND BEYOND” recognition for outstanding performance and lasting contribution by Enterprise Infrastructure Services of Disney Worldwide Services.

·         Disney – Revised best practice documentation for change preparation and incident engagement to enable support teams to meet SLA targets on a consistent basis.

·         Raytheon/NASA JPL – Architected and implemented infrastructure, application and database systems for the SDSIO division of JPL.  Project scope: upgrade/replacement of networking components, server hardware/software, vendor negotiations for procurement, and datacenter design and construction. This also involved Sonicwall firewall implementation design and engineering including penetration testing using Nessus and Nmap.

·         Capital Group Companies – Technical Lead for SHARK Project: Evaluation and determination of most adaptable investment technologies based on dramatic changes in market conditions.

·         NASA Dryden Research Center - Developed hardware decommission procedure to eliminate classified data leakage scenarios and speed up redeployment of salvaged components.

·         Dole Food Company -  Cisco, Sonic and Checkpoint firewall/VPN design and engineering using ACID/SNORT for NIPS redundancy for Dole Global Headquarters, Dole Fresh Flowers, and Castle and Cooke during IT resource consolidation for Lights-Out Datacenter project. 

 

 

Professional Experience:

 

 

Wells Fargo – Wholesale Division – Capital Finance Group (through ISG) – Santa Monica, California                                                                                                                                                  09/16 - Present

Systems Engineer for Enterprise Infrastructure Team

(Contractor)

Support Methods: Change, Incident, Project, and Procedure Support for Over 750 Windows Physical and Virtual systems.

• Scripting Database cluster builds (Server 2012, Microsoft Failover and Veritas Clusters) to support Capital Finance and Wholesale Applications.
• Scripting middleware configuration for new web application infrastructure.
• Providing support for DevOps and new code deployments for Capital Finance and Wholesale applications.
• Providing strategy and implementation support for WFCF data center migration project including server commissioning, build configuration, decommissioning, and reverse logistics
• Supporting LUCAS, CHOICE, Precise, OneView, CRM and Triad applications.
• Completion and Resolution support in PAC2000 Change Requests, Work Orders, Work Requests and Problem Tickets.
• Technical documentation maintenance and reporting for various application environments
• Providing migration status to stakeholders and asset owners
• Providing War Room for emergency patching efforts for QVR and Safety and Soundness compliance.
• Evaluating Qualys vulnerability reports and implementing remediation.
• Attending EACO conference calls to provide support for high priority incident resolution.
• Participation in on-call rotation for after-hours enterprise infrastructure support.
• Providing infrastructure support for application life-cycle deployments.
• Windows Server 2012 Failover Cluster builds
• Veritas Cluster Server builds in version 6.x
• Working with Venafi to update and manage SSL certificates
• Package and Patch Deployments via HPSA
• VMware ESXi 6 updates from 5.5
• Firmware updates for HP and Dell server hardware
• PowerShell scripting for server build automation, system maintenance activities, and inventory related tasks
• Remedy (P2K) queue management for change, problem, work order, and work request records.

 

Support Methods: Change and Procedure Support Remotely for Over 3000 Windows/Linux Servers.

 

 

Walt Disney Companies (through HCL) - Burbank, California (Remote)                           04/08 – 9/16

Senior Windows Clustering SME / Technical Lead

 

Support Methods: Change and Procedure Support Remotely for Over 3000 Windows/Linux Servers.

• Attending weekly status meetings with stakeholders
• Providing weekly reports on metrics on deliverables
• Technical resource review for task assignment and scheduling
• Change management review for effective risk mitigation and back-out planning
• Runbook and project plan creation for coordination and synchronization of complex changes
• Proof-of-concept testing for standardizing and documentation of new technical procedures
• Windows Server 2012 and 2008 Failover Cluster SME
• Architecting Windows Server 2012 Failover Cluster environments using fibre channel attached shared SAN storage and SMB3 file share roles.
• SME for Windows 2012 Failover Cluster roles
• SAN software stack configuration expertise using IBM or EMC storage arrays, Veritas Storage Foundation, and Emulex or Qlogic HBA’s/10GB NICs
• Global clustering expert using Veritas or Microsoft Failover Clustered Server nodes
• Troubleshooting, support, and maintenance expert for clustered servers
• SME for Windows and Linux EMC VMAX and IBM XIV Storage across all business units for the Walt Disney Companies.
• SME for Veritas Storage Foundation and Cluster Server environments.
• Windows and Linux Technical Lead and Design Analyst for EMC VMAX and IBM XIV Storage Migration across all business units of the Walt Disney Companies.
• BigFix QNA to create and test fixlets related to System Stability Improvement Planning for clustered servers.
• BigFix Windows Client/Linux Inspector to create custom inventory reports as requested
• BigFix v9.2 troubleshooting and escalation for patching/update failures
• New VCS 5.0-6.0/VSF 4.3-5.1SP2 Cluster builds on Windows and Linux.
• Configuring DPM Protection groups for clustered file shares and folders in DPM 2006-2012.
• Pre-installation design for cluster nodes.
• Design of cluster resources and dependencies.
• Post builds installation of hotfixes, rollpacks, and maintenance packs.
• Cluster volume design and expansion/shrinking.
• Design of disk groups and volumes.
• Advanced troubleshooting including Root Cause Analysis for VCS and VSF failures and issues.
• Technical Lead with Disney Corporate Information Technology Operations for Windows and Linux Platforms working a final escalation point for all impactful outages, changes and service requests.
• RedHat Linux kernel certification testing for use with VCS Clustering, Oracle 9i database clusters, Oracle RAC clusters, and XIV and VMAX Storage designs.
• RedHat Linux VCS cluster consolidation and migration assessments for Development, QA, and Production environments.
• Redhat Linux 4.x to 5.8 and 5.x to 6.0 migrations for Corporate and Enterprise IT systems environments.
• Management of first and second level system Engineer teams in India and US to ensure technology delivery service SLA targets are met on a consistent basis.
• Windows Group Policy expertise in developing GSD331 Computer and User policy templates
• Configuring PRTG Network Monitoring Alerts
• AWS Solutions & SysOps Administrator (Associate Level).
• Experience in cloud automation using AWS Cloud Formation Templates.
• Experienced in deploying applications into Elastic Beanstalk Environment using cloud formation templates.
• Worked on AWS API Gateway for custom domain and Record sets in Amazon Route53 for applications hosted in AWS Environment.
• Experience working in Agile Scrum Software Development methodology integrating with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) environment for efficient software delivery solutions.
• Experience in creating Amazon EBS Snapshots for the backups and storing them to s3 buckets.
• Active Directory User and Object Security Management.
• Working with Security and Compliance Leadership for each TWDC segment to implement Minimum Security Baseline for Windows and Unix OS platforms. 
• Working with Security and Compliance Leadership for each TWDC segment to ensure adherence to PCI compliance standards where applicable.

 

 

 

Support Methods:  Outage and Proactive Support Remotely for Over 3000 Windows/Linux Servers and Project Management for SAN allocations and migrations.

 

·         Veritas Cluster Server Build and Troubleshooting Expert for Unix/Linux and Windows OS Platforms

·         Storage Migration Expert for IBM, EMC, and Dell Compellent Storage Hosts.

·         Set up of Cisco routers and switches, IP over Sonet (SDH). General ISP management using VitalQIP (IP Management tool), DNS management, RIPE, maintenance of SLA’s.

·         Implementation of VitalQIP to manage subnets, DNS, and VLAN mappings for various design items.

·         Project management for $10 million EMC to IBM XIV Vmax SAN fabric conversion for HP-AIX, SUN Solaris, Linux, and Windows environments.  Developed plan for preparation and execution of conversions with an emphasis on zero impact.

·         Patch management for Linux and Windows Server environment using BigFix.

·         Windows/Linux design and Engineering of iNews 3.0 Servers, FTS, Comparators, and Receivers for ABC TV operations.

·         Aspera Clustered Server design for Studio Operations.

·         Project management and design of Veritas Cluster Server for Redhat 5.x platform.  This included custom application design for clustering and simulated failure testing to ensure fault tolerance.

·         Project management for Linux and Windows environments.  Various migrations, compliance initiatives, vulnerability and high availability projects.

·         Project Manager for Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 to Xenapp Server (5.0) migration.

 

 

ACT Litigation Services - Valencia, California                                                                                   09/07 – 12/08

Web Hosting Engineer  

 

Support Methods: Remote and Onsite Support on 24/7 Schedule for 150 Management and Account Executives, 300 In-house Review Attorneys, and 250 Customers.

·         Web hosting support for eDiscovery application delivery. Responsibilities included build, optimization, and maintenance of Oracle 10g databases.  Engineering and maintenance of database, web, and image servers.

·         Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 Engineering for Global Review Team application publications and server load balancing.

 

 

 

NASA (through Raytheon) - Pasadena, California                                                                             05/07 – 03/08

JPL’s Scientific Data Systems Implementation and Operations Division

Senior Systems Engineer  

 

Support Methods: Onsite Support for 250 Web Developers and Application Development PMO’s

·         System Engineering for Raytheon-Pasadena Web Development and NASA-JPL SDSIO.  Engineering and maintenance Raytheon and NASA networks which were co-located but logically air-gapped due to JPL security requirements. Windows, Linux, VMware and Solaris platforms were supported.

·         Set up of a Remote Access Server into the Pasadena Point of Presence for remote monitoring of systems using CISCO 3640 ISDN and POTS (MICA card). Cisco 2600. Some 6500 Catalyst and MFSC experience. VPN set up (PPTP).

·         Sonic firewall design and Engineering including penetration testing using Nessus and Nmap.

·         Responsible for design and techniques to link some 35 station systems with 300 pieces of computer equipment using TCP/IP LANs and WANs using TCP/IP. Setting up Network Time protocol (NTP)

·         Project management for various deployments, migrations, and implementations.

·         Architected and implemented new infrastructure, database, and web servers.  Datacenter design and construction.

·         Managed Group Policies for servers and workstations. Expertise with AD snap-ins such as Group Policy Editor, RSoP, GPMonitor, etc.

·         Project Management VMWare ESX3.0 and 4.0 Migration for production and test environments.

 

 

Dole Global Headquarters - Westlake Village, California                                                                  04/05 – 05/07

Windows Systems Engineer

 

Support Methods:  Onsite support for 350 Corporate Executives and End-user, Remote Systems Engineering for 4000 End-users Globally

·         Troubleshooting and maintenance of Cisco PIX Firewall, Cisco content switch, Cisco 7100,7206,3600,2610,2500 routers, Exposure to Cisco 8500 and Madge ATM switches. Cisco 800 ISDN routers. 2980 series switch. Lucent  M770, P882 and P330.  Involved in security policy discussions with Price Waterhouse. Consultancy on network improvements in particular security. 

·         Redesign of head office network (Router consolidation). 802.1Q VLAN Trunking protocol. ISDN PRI/BRI dialer setups. E3 and E35 serial WAN interfaces. Cisco works. PC-Duo. Familiar with Cisco 8540 ATM switches. HP Openview en Cisco Works. Cisco PIX firewall. Cisco, Sonic and Checkpoint firewall/VPN design and Engineering using ACID/SNORT for NIPS redundancy for Dole Global Headquarters, Dole Fresh Flowers, and Castle and Cooke during IT resource consolidation for Lights-Out Datacenter project. 

·         Assigned to plan and implement Group Policies for PCI and  SOX Global Computer Controls for compliance

·         Managed multiple projects for sister companies Castle & Cooke and Four Seasons Westlake

·         Project Manager for Windows NT4 to AD and Windows XP using MS Project, Quest Tools, and Altiris workstation image deployment

·         Engineer for corporate domains.  Escalation point for Helpdesk and Desk-side support incidents.

·         Systems Engineer for Company-Wide Blackberry Messaging Servers for Domino Email Systems

·         Project management for various corporate information technology initiatives.

·         Systems Engineer for Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 and Web Reflections 3.0

 

Countrywide Home Loans - Lancaster and Simi Valley California                                                    01/04 – 02/05

Senior Support Specialist

Support Methods:  Onsite Support for 2500 Call Center End-users

·         Supported and maintained all servers and desktops for the Lancaster Customer Call Center

·         Supported and maintained all servers and desktops for the Simi Valley campuses.

·         System Engineer for Windows 2000 AD Domain Controllers and Global Catalog Servers

·         Project Management of technology delivery projects for Treasury Bank operations in Simi Valley

 

Washington Mutual - Northridge, California                                                                                                   01/04 – 02/04

Information Technology Delivery Consultant

Support Methods:  Server Assessment of 5000 Physical Server in the Northridge Campus

·         Inventory and assessment of business purposes for all technology assets in the Northridge datacenters. Preparation and determination of applicable SLA’s for Siemens technology delivery partnership with Washington Mutual.

 

H&R Block - Palmdale, California                                                                                                       12/03 – 01/04

Server Migration Consultant

Support Methods:  e-File Tax Server Migration Support for 25 local offices

• Development and execution of tax server migration for multiple offices in the Los Angeles and Kern Counties

 

Buchalter, Nemer, Fields & Younger LLC (through Bowne Business Solutions) - LA, California    06/03 – 12/04

Migration and Implementation Consultant

Support Methods:  Project Management Windows 2K AD Migration, Exchange Server migration for 700 End-user across three company offices.

• Project coordination and execution for Windows NT4 to AD and Windows XP, Exchange Server 5.5 to 2000, Wordperfect to Office 2003 with MACPAC Tools, Interwoven DMS, DocX document conversion servers, and Palm to Blackberry mobile device migration.

 

The Capital Group Companies - Los Angeles, California                                                                   11/02 – 06/03

Investment Technology Support Specialist

Support Methods:  Onsite Investment Technology and Server Support for 400 End-users

• Project management of various projects for Trading Floor and Corporate Actions departments in West LA Office.
• Provided desk-side support for Trading Floor and Corporate Actions departments.

 

NASA-Dryden Flight Research Center - Edwards AFB, California                                                               09/00 – 11/02

Technology Catalog and Deployment Manager

Support Methods:  Technology Procurement and Project Management for over 900 End-users involved with Aerospace and Aviation technology development.

·         Managed a team of six members for technology deployment/decommissions.

·         Provided technology support for multiple aerospace research departments.

·         Project Manager for Desktop Windows NT4 to Windows 2000 AD migration using Quest, MS Project, and Eudora.

 

General Motors Global Headquarters (through IBM) - Detroit, Michigan                                                   06/00 to 07/02

Project Consultant

Support Methods:  Systems Support for 300 End-users support ONSTAR technology

·         Managed various network and desktop hardware/software upgrades for GM Global HQ systems.

 

Textron Automotive - Troy, Michigan                                                                                                             03/98 – 07/00

Satellite Support Analyst

Support Methods: Systems Engineer and Desktop Support for 4 company sites totaling 500 End-users 

·         Server engineering and desktop support for 4 remote company sites (satellites).

 

 

 

 

Cadillac Plastic - Troy,  Michigan                                                                                                        07/96 – 03/98

Systems Analyst

Support Methods: Systems Analyst for Custom Oracle driven applications and general technical support for 400 corporation and sales operations end-users

·         Helpdesk Support for 74 sales branches in the U.S.

·         Desk-side for Corporate Headquarters in Troy, Michigan.

 

 

Education, Training and Affiliations:

 

• University of Michiagan-Flint

Engineering  and Computer Science Major 2-years completed 1996-1998

• Global Knowledge Courses

Advanced Windows Server 2012 Administration 2016

Advanced Powershell for Windows Management 2016

• Udemy Courses 2015/2016

Ethical Hacking

Powershell for Unix and Windows Environments

Android Application Development

• VMware VSP5 Certification for vSphere 5 2012
• VMware VTSP5 Certification for vSphere 5 2012
• ITIL- Foundation Certification 2007
• Raytheon Six Sigma Certification 2008
• iConect NXT Certified Engineer 2008