VMware Systems Engineer

Overview

This position will involve working in a team environment with a group of Systems Engineers involving frequent collaborative efforts with engineers from both the Network engineering & the Operations Support Center ("OSC") departments to support a variety of customer environments across multiple data centers throughout the Northeast and Midwest United States. The position will also include regular communication and support responsibilities to both the OSC and customers in multiple geographic regions.

The successful candidate will have a strong technical acumen with a deep knowledge of the fundamentals of VMware ESX and related technologies. In addition, the candidate should have a thorough knowledge of either the Microsoft Windows or LINUX operating environment. The successful candidate must also posses strong communication skills and be able to communicate to both internal and external users as well as customers on a variety of levels. A strong desire to learn and expand on existing knowledge is a requirement. Industry standard certifications are also a plus.

Technical responsibilities for the position will include building and administering multiple VMware farms across several data centers. These environments will highly available and may be either in a customer shared or dedicated arrangement. Additional experience that will benefit the candidate will include, but is not limited to, Cisco IOS, Juniper ScreenOS and EMC CLARiiON & Equallogic PS Series SAN platforms.

Minimal Travel Requirement - 5% or less.

Primary Functions

• VMWare and related technology administration with a focus on high availability and scalability of architectures.
• Either
• Administration of the multiple Windows 2003/8 domains that includes, but is not limited to, Active Directory, IIS, Exchange 2003/7 and infrastructure monitoring using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager.

-OR-

• Administration of multiple LINUX and UNIX operating systems which includes, but is not limited to, LDAP/PAM Authentication, Apache, Postfix, BIND.
• Technical activities including hardware/OS/application implementation, upgrades and support.
• Review and recommend server & software for corporate and customer applications.
• Field, review and resolve customer troubles as escalated by Expedient's OSC.
• Provide system performance and tuning as well as root cause determination in the event of failures.
• Produce and present documentation, training and standard operating procedures for both internal and customer use.
• Participate in engineering on-call, approximately 1 week per month.

Qualifications

Required

• 2-4+ years VMware ESX Enterprise administration, in a fully redundant environment utilizing SAN storage backend.
• Either
• 3-5+ years Windows systems & domain administration with Windows 2003 or later.
• Experience administering an Active Directory environment, with extensive knowledge of group policy.

-OR-

• 3-5+ years LINUX/UNIX systems administration with one of the following OSes: LINUX, SOLARIS, HPUX, AIX.
• Experience administering multiple systems in an LDAP environment, with extensive knowledge of the fundamentals of the UNIX operating system (CRON, PAM, File Systems, etc).
• Strong understanding of Internet/IP related technologies including, but not limited to, DNS, SMTP, HTTP/S, IP subnetting.
• Experience with Intel based servers & Fiberchannel/ iSCSI/SAS storage arrays. Understanding of concepts such as RAID.
• Have a working knowledge of networking technologies such as TCP/UDP port requirements, 802.1Q network trunking and routing.
• Ability to prioritize and be productive in high-pressure situations, providing timely status updates to customers, the OSC, and/or project management.
• Strong trouble-shooting ability. Ability to identify and resolve problems in "down" situations.

Preferred

• B.S. in a technical discipline.
• SAN administration experience
• Network administration experience (layer-2 switching and firewalling)
• Backup and backup related technology experience, with EMC Networker being preferred.
• Experience with load balancing technologies such as F5 LTM and CITRIX NetScaler platforms
• Experience with database technologies such as MS SQL, MySQL or Oracle
• Experience with scripting in a Windows environment (e.g. PowerShell and VBScript)

Questions You Should Know

To give you, the potential candidate, an understanding of the technical acumen required by the position, we've put together some sample questions that would be asked on a phone screen. If you find yourself unable to answer a more than one or two questions in each category without assistance (i.e. Google or the like), then it's likely you will not pass the phone screen. Answers to these questions should not be submitted with your resume; this is simply to help guide you in understanding our technical expertise requirements.

VMware

1. Describe 3 features offered in the new ESX4.
2. What's the maximum size of a VMFS volume?
3. What's EVC?
4. What's in a VMX file?

Generic

1. Define (3) levels of RAID; if parity is involved describe how the parity rests on the disks.
2. True or False: An SSL website requires a dedicated IP address. Why?
3. What port does SMTP, HTTP, and DNS run on?
4. How many IPs (approximately) are in a Class B network?
5. Name 3 processor models (mainline stuff - e.g. manufactured by Intel, AMD, SUN, IBM) which were produced in the last 4 years. Compare/contrast 2.

OS Administration (Pick either Windows or LINUX/UNIX):

Windows

1. What's the maximum amount of memory Windows 2003 Standard Edition can address? What about Windows 2008 Standard Edition?
2. What is the GAL?
3. What's the difference between SCR and CCR?
4. How do you extend the C: partition?

LINUX/UNIX

1. What is SUDO?
2. How do you determine how much SWAP is in a system?
3. What goes in /usr/local?
4. What does the command 'sed s/[.]txt/[.]RTF/ < /dev/zero > /dev/null' do?

Please send a copy of your resume and cover letter to: sys-resumes@expedient.com

EOE/AA

This position requires you to be authorized to work in the United States.