Colin Johnston CV:   Experienced IT Systems Administrator

Profile:

• Responsible and experienced large network systems administrator with experience in finance, billing, major ISP, business and governmental infrastructure and customer support.
• My key skills are Solaris, Unix, Linux, QNX, Cisco, application software implementation and customer support experience.
• Familiar with Windows, HPUX, AIX and NT.
• Helpful, enthusiastic and willing to learn new skills.
• More than 12 years experience, including responsibility for 140 SUN servers in multiple locations in Europe involving high traffic, high reliability, business critical systems such as flight booking systems, cache systems, search engines, large scale backup management and system recovery.
• I enjoy a job where I can contribute my effort and experience.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

May 2006 -         :    Employed in Liverpool - details to be added

2005 -  April 2007:  - Halton Housing Trust.  IT Administrator

• Academy systems admin. 
• BACS.
• Progress v9 Open Accounts systems. 
• MS Exchange admin.
• Symantec exchange AV admin. 
• SQL server admin.  
• Set up and administration of on-line direct debit system using DDexpert.

2004, 2005 - Telescope Technologies Ltd.  UNIX (LINUX) / Network Administrator (www.ngat.com)

• Installation, configuration and maintenance of the QNX telescope control computers on the research and development network for telescopes in La Palma, India and China.
• Maintenance of the company network (Cisco switches and routers) and secure Internet access (Cisco IOS Firewall Feature Set).
• Design and implementation of a Linux-based VPN solution for a ‘road-warrior to office’ scheme.
• OpenSwan VPN, PPTP, L2TP and PPP configuration.
• Supporting the office NT/Win2000 workstations and users.

2003 - Manchester City Council.

2003, 2005 - Satellite Signals Ltd (part time).

• Software configuration, commissioning and testing of broadband two-way business satellite internet terminals for European networks (Eutelsat, Paris).
• Satellite network hub network configuration and IP routing.  Proxy server set up. (Global Teleports)
• SUN Sparc and SUN Netra, Solaris 10, Web site administration and configuration.
• Streaming audio broadcast server - for novel "audio-blog podcasting" service.

2000 to Sept 2002  – Inktomi, (Software, Search Engines and Cache) London
Senior Technical and Customer Support Engineer.

• Installation and customer application support for network cache software for major broadband cable ISPs in UK/Europe, plus customer support training.
• Traffic server implementation using Solaris and Linux Redhat platforms.
• Wireless traffic server implementation.
• media distribution network implementation.
• First aid at work training; technical writing training; time management courses.

1997 to 2000 -  PSINET UK Ltd, (Major ISP) Cambridge
Systems Administrator, Senior Systems Administrator
Various roles including taking full responsibility for major network management systems, mass virtual web hosting systems and cache proxy systems:
Responsible for 140 SUN servers (Solaris), set up and configuration of jukebox and server hardware, Legato backups.
Configuration and management of Veritas Volume Manager.
Set up of secondary DNS servers for PSI customers and co.uk DNS
Set up of cascade/ascend NMS * 2 for PSI Europe and PSI UK
Set up of netcool system for process traps from NMS/dialp tnt servers
Set up of disk mirroring for UK/EU service machines
Set up of netapp cache * 3 machines for UK to replace sparc20 squid machines
Set up of Global Radius servers for UK/Europe and true test environment created
Production rollout and ongoing production developments of PSIweb in UK, France and Netherlands
Audit management system setup so changes can be logged/archived for future checking/audit
Legacy radius proxy for PST Spain largest free ISP
HSRP Cisco set up and production support for Cambridge and Docklands Data Centre pops
ISP 9 server nntp server set up
UPS apc set up in France and active SNMP monitoring
DMS monitor machines for monitoring customers and machines
Redundant caching solution made using F5 Labs bigips and F5 Labs 3dns
Performance tuning set up on service machines using SarCheck. SarCheck is a Linux and UNIX performance analysis and performance tuning tool.
Test Zeus set up planned to use Zeus instead of Apache for web service
Adaptation of PSIweb virtual farm functionality using traffic server and bigips for load balancing functionality.
Secure radius set up for intranets
Y2K production service lead and on call Y2K engineer no issues of importance apart from spurious nntp news articles
Field service for EU and UK on call
Redundant NMS set up on separate location
Time management training
NMS statistics set up for global PSI network
Sorting program for psiweb web logs
Dual processor debug of SUN Solaris for panic issues
ASP setup for F1 Arrows Orange racing team
EasyJet booking set up for PSIweb shared
PSI commerce for small companies using java servlet engine

1995 to 1997 -  Anglia Polytechnic University
Research Assistant
SUN Systems Admin, SUN Research work.
Working with SUN Computing equipment, supporting ISP's in Europe with Unix Network caching software.
I set up production networks (e.g. 20 SUN work stations) and have research experience in different network technologies (10BaseT and 100baseT). I set up email server, nfs servers, Cisco routers. I also learned much about security, firewalls and customer management.

EDUCATION
BSc Information Systems Development
Qualification: HONs degree, Computing, Grade: 2/2, Graduated: 6/96

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Internet consultancy, clients all using SUN computing equipment.
Holiday interests: Hill Walking, Skiing, Sailing

Last updated 27 June 2007