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Storage Magazine March 2010

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Reports To: VP of Technology

 

The following document outlines the job description and duties for the position above.

The Systems Administrator will primarily be responsible for the day to day operation and maintenance of the our Clients Desktop support and open systems.  The position will report into the VP of Technology.  The goal of the position is to maintain a high level of availability and end-user satisfaction that meets or exceeds the performance requirements.  Much of this work is currently spread across external vendors and internal staff.  This position also needs to be focused on making the most efficient use of time and the environment.  This should include all of the day to day hands on activities for desktop support, basic server administration and management and escalation of issues with vendors involved in the managed services.  As a part of the managed services offering Penn Treaty will leverage the call desk services provided by Contour.  Those services will augment and provide ready access and tracking for support issues.  This includes extended coverage and backfill for the onsite resource when that resource is not available due to illness or other absence.  This position will also function as an escalation tier for network operations issues.  This will help network operations fulfill their responsibilities in addition to the dedicated desktop support.

He/She will be responsible for the following on a day-to-day basis:

Manage current desktop environment

o   Resolve any hardware related issues

o   Alert and resolve any performance issues and notify end-users

o   Function as an escalation point and remote hands for the call center

o   Manage issues with the vendors

o   Work with the IT staff to respond to and resolve alerts related to systems and/or  integration with the managed services offering.

o   Monitor current environment usage, performance, and availability  

o   Install, configure, test, and implement software and components as necessary on a day to day basis.  Larger projects such as organization wide upgrades amy be identified as out of scope and defined as a separate project.

o   Applicable patch releases and maintenance are included in the day to day responsibilities of the resource.

o   Responsible for planning and coordination of any new systems installation as it relates to the overall offering from Contour

o   Perform any host-level tasks needed to access the systems

Application support

o   Work with application developers and Contour to assist in troubleshooting infrastructure related issues

Backup

o   Maintain proper backup schedule

o   Restore and recover data as requested including the management of snaps and replication

o   Coordinate with off-site storage as necessary

Strategic Planning

o   Capacity planning and forecast growth

o   Identify processes and policies that will improve the overall performance of the project.   Work with management to implement these initiatives

o   Work with IT staff to identify upcoming needs and report back to management

o   Review tools regularly to identify abnormal growth

o   Provide input on vendor proposals

Network Operations

o   Escalation point for server and system related issues.

o   Second Tier advisory role to desktop support call center

o   Validation of tasks completed by the administrators as needed

o   Lead and/or participate in the creation and maintenance of system related policies

Qualified Candidates must have

o    At least 5 years experience in Windows desktop support and customer service

o    At least 1-2 years experience with basic Mac desktop functionality

o    At least 3 years windows server administration

o   Familiarity with basic concepts around Back-up maintenance and Disaster Recovery Procedures.

o   Experience with Help Desk software and ticket management procedures

o   Experience with Trouble ticket escalation and vendor management

o   Excellent interpersonal and communication skills

o   The ability to work independently and provide documentation in compliance with Contour and Customer needs.

Interested Candidates should provide their resume and cover letter to:

Att: Recruiting

640 Freedom Drive

King of Prussia, PA 19406

Or email to:           careers@contourds.com

Need help.. I am looking to hire an Sr Systems Engineer that knows the following technologies inside and out:

1) EMC – Clariion, Celerra, Avamar, and ideally knows SYM

2) VMware – ESX, View and SRM

If you know of anyone that has at least 5 years of experience and willing to join a growing company please have them send a cover letter and resume to careers@contourds.com

Thanks

Rocco

EMC CLARiiON AX4-5 Competitive Analysis

Strengths

•  Strong FC SAN vendor partnerships
• Resells through Dell as a channel (30% of revenues)
• Virtual LUN capability; ability to non-disruptively migrate LUNs internally (Virtual LUN) and externally (SANcopy)
• Cache de-staging
• Support for consistency groups with remote mirroring function
• PowerPath host multipath software for path and workload management

Positioning

• Aimed at small to medium businesses (SMBs)

• AX4-5 key claims:

• Performance, scalabilty, ease of use

• 4Gb/s end-to-end architecture
• Connectivity with iSCSI or FC

Simplify the IT environment and support VMware infrastructure

• High Scalability
• EMC claims high raw capacity utilization
• I/O optimization via PowerPath MPIO host application
• Virtual LUN Technology
• Data movement between FC & SATA
• Resiliency & Availability
• fully redundant with cache des-stage to disk
• Dual controller option to provide HA
• Snap & Mirror Consistency
• Supports both sync and async replication, as well as consistency groups

Weaknesses

• legacy design, requires disruption to scale up (CLARiiON CX range)
• SAN only; FC (Fiber Channel) or iSCSI, not both
• Management gaps; limited integration of management software
• No single operational workflow for managing both the system and its data.
• Limited product breadth and scalability
• Double-parity RAID-6 protection not available
• No multi-protocol support in a single array; NAS support for file data requires expensive, add-on gateway controllers  requiring  other mgmt
• No thin-provisioning, no data deduplication
• Snapshots copies – copy-on-write / performance penalties (see SPC-1)
• No support for SnapView clones
• Limited number of Snapshots (1 per LUN); limited number of Snap Sessions per LUN (1) and per system (16)
• No SnapSuite-like benefits; EMC Replication Manager provides an integrated environment for managing point-in-time copies, remote mirroring, and data migration services; but no Operations Manager.
• No Oracle HARD support (vs. NetApp SnapValidator)
• No integrated compliance solution (SnapVault, SnapLock, LockVault)
• Requires 4 pre-allocated drives for OS; using for data impacts performance
• External battery backup to destage cache is weak link

Why NetApp FAS2020 vs. EMC CLARiiON AX4-5

• Higher performance under snapshot (SPC-1), capacity utilization (RAID-DP, Thin Provisioning & Deduplication) & data protection (SnapSuite)
• lower total cost of ownership

• NetApp easier to install, configure, deploy, and manage

• Flex and Snap-suite dramatically simplify administration and allocation of storage

• Staff only needs to be trained in one technology for the complete storage infrastructure, reducing training costs and skill levels required

• NetApp enables Business Agility with:

• Greater versatility with multiprotocol support and upgrade paths in a single storage system
• Cascade original investment into new technologies as released by NetApp; for example, deduplication
• Common compatible architecture across the entire product range

• Gaps in functionality require customers to use disparate pieces of non-integrated software to address key areas of management, including…
• Files, Archives, Disk backup (D2D), Security, SRM
• Challenges in provisioning and re-provisioning capacity
• AX offers poor volume mgmt and limited disk pooling
• MetaLUNs must be configured based on strict guidelines — a labor-intensive and inflexible process.
• Performance impact can be negative as LUN count increases and existing LUNs are re-provisioned.