Information
Technology
Leader/Professional

May 2019 – Present  ELI Global (Corporate IT/Global IT)  Miami, FL

IT Manager, Data Centers & Infrastructure 

· Develop new IT teams in support of Corporate Leadership and Global IT needs supporting Business Unit acquisitions/transitions.

· Develop IT policies and operating procedures for the newly established teams/department following ITIL. 

· Manage Data Center colocation /Azure Cloud Server support, global network (Cisco)/firewall (FortiGate) and VoIP(3CX/FreePBX) teams.

· Assess newly acquired data center colocation, its existing asset inventory, networks and security posture.

· Lead support efforts for US, India and Philippines locations.

· Develop Cost allocation strategy for services rendered to child business units.

· Sort/Route Dell equipment lease charges to appropriate business units.

· Established LDAP integration for firewall infrastructure world-wide for unified identity management.

· Deployed Monitoring Systems to monitor global network equipment for availability, bandwidth, health, usage (PRTG/Netflows), environmental quality (AVTech Appliances for Temp/Humidity/Camera/Motion Sensing).

Aug 2016 – May 2019  Eye Care Leaders/Health Care Cloud Services (Subsidiary of ELI Global) Miami, FL

Manager of Data Center Solutions 

· Manage a global team (US, India and Philippines) of Network and Systems Architects and Engineers, DBAs and InfoSec Operations Administrators in support of the company’s healthcare focused cloud infrastructure services.

· Promoted to take over Data Center Systems, Network, DBA and InfoSec Engineering globally for ELI Research/ELI Global parent company, encompassing 25 new global locations and additional geographically separated staff.

· Documented existing and designed new infrastructure layouts, IT and Security policies and SOPs encompassing HIPAA and HiTrust certifications.

· Created and maintained capacity planning and trending monthly metrics/dashboards to include all responsibility areas.

· Managed the technical resources to migrate multiple acquired companies from various email hosting services to Office 365.

· Partnered with customers, business unit liaisons to understand system requirements and develop infrastructure solutions tailored to the business/project need.

· Managed project planning, customer communications, incident, problem and change management for focus areas.

· Stabilized and rerouted backup and replication traffic to solve ISP overage charges issues, saving on monthly reoccurring charges.

· Restructured virtual backups to allow for double the virtual systems on the same existing Data Domain infrastructure.

· Redesigned and implemented a new Palo Alto Networks based routing, firewall, and IPS solution at the primary data center and India locations.

· Deployed a new blob storage solution for secure storage of medical images on a scale out solution using Dell/EMC Isilon NAS.

· Deployed new VMWare vSphere 6.5 clusters on colocation data centers and leveraged Amazon/AWS EC2 compute and S3 storage resources to expand current business capacity to absorb new departments and acquired companies.

· Currently responsible for near a petabyte of healthcare data across multiple encrypted SANs, NAS and local server storage.

· Oversee and directly manage multiple virtualization clusters across multiple geo-locations totaling near 1700 physical and virtual systems.

· Lead and developed new solutions for intra-site networking to include ISP circuits, Site to Site VPN/VPLs and Client VPN solutions.

· Revamped System Monitoring methodology and solution to be distributed and encompassing all systems and their roles using centralized tools like PRTG and NAGIOS.

· In charge of Compute (Cisco UCS, Dell x86 servers), Storage (EMC XtremIO, VNX, Unity, Isilon, Data Domain, NetGear and Synology), Network (Cisco Catalyst, Nexus, Kemp Loadmasters), Firewall/Security (Palo Alto Networks, Cisco Meraki, Cisco ASA and Carbon Black).

· Manage security investigations (viruses, ransomware, potential breaches), augmented solutions (SnapSecret, LDAP integrations for infrastructure), fixed and migrated unified systems logging (Splunk).

· Manage existing vendor relationships, support contracts, purchase documentation/justification and introduced new strategic partners to capitalize on better pricing, specialties and value-added support. To include Data Center colocations, internet circuits, compute, storage, hardware maintenance and security appliances.

· Reduced yearly Operational support costs by introducing the use of third-party support vendor for hardware extended support beyond initial manufacturer contract, reducing costs by 45%.

· Policy and procedure (SOP/SWP) documentation in support of HiTrust certification requirements.

· Project planning for data center migrations, accounting for timelines, system, application and network dependencies.

· Transferred to ELI Global (Parent Company)/Corporate IT department.

May 2013 – June 2016    University of Miami – Information Technology   Miami, FL

Director IT, UMIT Systems Infrastructure – Servers & Virtualization

· Managed the Systems Infrastructure Senior Systems Administrators/Engineers and Operational System Administrators teams (13 total employees) in support of all University Academic, Research, Administrative, Clinical, Hospital and remote sites x86 server (~3050 systems) needs.

· Deployed and maintained servers and hosts in support of the Electronic Medical Records User Portal (Epic), Application & Desktop virtualization (~110 Citrix Hosts, 3700 users).

· Supported and expanded Systems virtualization (VMware and HyperV - 85 Hosts, ~2100 Virtual servers) in support of 41,000 users.

· Management of all systems housed in five University data centers, 3 data rooms and one disaster recovery cage at the NAP of the Americas Data Center.

· Architected and implemented a consolidated systems infrastructure solutions to include Multi- Tiered Dell Blade Chassis (22)/blade servers(192) and Hyper-converged platforms(Nutanix) spanning multiple campuses and co-locations with Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity and Compliance (FDA part 11, NIH, FISMA, HIPAA, PHI, PCI-DSS, FERPA) in mind using HA Geo-clusters, VMware vCloud Network & Security and Microsoft Azure Cloud IaaS Services.

· Migrated autonomous departmental infrastructure to centrally managed services consolidating hardware and reducing operational costs.

· Windows 2003 OS end of life/ life cycle migrations or retirement of 663 systems to newer supported OSes.

· Prepared KPI reports for team activities to include virtualization consumption, capacity and cost.

· System Infrastructure fiscal year capital (CapEx) and operational (OpEx) budget planning and management.

· Policy and procedure (SOP/SWP) documentation in support of team charter.

January 2013 – April 2013  University of Miami – Information Technology  Miami, FL

Manager IT, UMIT Systems Infrastructure – Servers & Virtualization

· Managed the Systems Infrastructure Senior Systems Administrators and Operational System Administrators teams in support of all University x86/Windows server operating systems and hardware platforms (2000+) maintained within central University data centers at the Coral Gables and Medical campuses.

· Application and Desktop virtualization (Citrix), Systems virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V), University department and home folder File Server management (CIFS/DFS/Netapp).

· Designed new consolidated /virtualized system infrastructure architectures in support of University initiatives.

· System Infrastructure fiscal year capital (CapEx) and operational (OpEx) budget planning and management.

· Promoted to Director, IT for the University of Miami (UMIT).

June 2010 - December 2012  University of Miami – Miller School of Medicine  Miami, FL

Manager IT, Medical IT Core Systems and Infrastructure – Data Center Services

· Managed the Core Systems Senior Systems Administrator group and Operational System Administrators team

· Systems solution need analysis with user/vendor recommendation for administrative, research and medical departments.

· Established third party vendor hardware support for aged systems saving more than $500,000.per year

· Established and/or managed existing strong vendor relations with IBM and Dell.

· Established the use of Quest vRanger as the backup tool for virtual servers saving near $300,000 per year

· Designed and managed a dedicated iSCSI/Backup Network for better network traffic flow and redundancy. 

· Responsible for Messaging team (MS Exchange 2007) in support of 17,000 users

· Oversaw Authentication (Active Directory) with 80,000 accounts

· Supervised all Application Virtualization (Citrix XenApp) supporting the EMR (EPIC Hyperspace) with 1700 users.

· System Virtualization (VMware)

· SAN/NAS Storage and Infrastructure (EMC Vmax, DMX4, Dell/Compellent, EqualLogic, IBM, NetApp, Promise)

· Management of three on campus Data Center facilities and one Disaster Recovery Cage at the NAP of the Americas Data Center.

· Fiscal year Capital and Operational budget planning and management.

· Promoted to Manager IT, University wide responsibilities.

February 2008 – May 2010  University of Miami – Miller School of Medicine  Miami, FL

Team Lead/Senior Storage Systems Administrator/Mentor – Data Center Operations

· Team lead of the Data Center Operations Storage/Infrastructure team

· Founding member of the Change Advisory Board in support of ITIL standards.

· Founding mentor in the establishment of the Department’s Team building/Mentoring program including curriculum development.

· Replaced existing IBM Tivoli monitoring system with open-source Groundwork/Nagios saving more than $250,000 in reoccurring costs.

· Planning, documentation, vendor coordination and migration of a clinical 12 rack data center to the NAP of the Americas Data center, avoiding and mitigating downtime where possible.

· In charge of all SAN/NAS/Virtualization and Hardware Infrastructure administration for the University of Miami Hospital and the Miller School of Medicine.

· Management of a 2200 sq foot Data Center space with a Disaster Recovery site at the NAP of the Americas Data Center.

· Management and maintenance of existing and new SAN environments to include Network Appliance v3050/FAS3140/FAS3050 SAN/NAS Gateway Clusters, IBM DS4100, 4400, 4500, 4700 and 4800 SANs serving CIFS, FC/iSCSI LUNs and NFS storage as well as Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN.

· Configuration and Management of Cisco MDS9509/9124 Fabric Switches.

· Creation of a Virtual Clustered VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 with 17 Host Nodes and 150+ Virtual servers. Migration of existing aging systems to virtual systems. General systems consolidation.

· Hardware need analysis and recommendation for research/medical departments.

· Setup of Microsoft Cluster Services for SQL and File Server use in order to provide better redundancy.

· Setup and maintenance of eleven IBM H Series Blade Centers and 144 HS22 Blade servers.

· Assisted supervisor with Fiscal budget planning determining what projects and technologies to plan for. 

· Established unified reports for capacity planning for all SANs and NAS systems.

· Promoted to Manager IT, at Miller School of Medicine.

November 2006 – February 2008 University of Miami – Miller School of Medicine  Miami, FL Network Specialist III – Data Center Operations

· Member of the Data Center Operations team in charge of Active Directory and Exchange 2003 administration for the Miller School of Medicine and Jackson Memorial Hospital.

· Migrated/reestablished a working JMH MS Exchange environment recovering from a 3 week downtime by prior team.

· Migration of individual departmental domains to campus Active Directory.

· Planning and implementation of a new 1400 sq. foot, 52 rack Data Center.

· Management and maintenance of existing and new SAN environments to include Network Appliance v3050 NAS Gateways, IBM DS4100, 4400, 4500, 4700 and 4800 SANs serving CIFS, LUNs and NFS storage.

· Configuration and Management of Cisco MDS9509 Fabric Switches.

· Established the first Virtual Clustered VMware Virtual Infrastructure Environment with 6 Host Nodes and 70+ Virtual servers. Migrating existing, aging physical systems to virtual systems. 

· Systems monitoring with NetIQ AppManager 7 and WhatsUp Pro, Dell OpenManage, IBM Director and, HP OpenView.

· Setup of Microsoft Cluster Services.

· Hardware need analysis and recommendation for administrative, research and medical departments.

· Setup and maintenance of IBM H Series Blade Centers and HS20 servers.

Promoted to Senior Systems Administrator