NIGEL ELLIS
PERSONAL DETAILS
Nationality
:
Post Code
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Driving License :
British
IG10 4QU
Full UK / Clean
E-mail
Mobile
Other
Linkedin
: nigel_ellis10@yahoo.co.uk
: 0788435198
: 020 85021116
: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/nellis1/
EDUCATION & QUALIFICATIONS
1995 International Correspondence Schools Diploma in Computer Information Systems.
1985 Ideal Schools High Level Diploma in Modern Electronics,(Distance Learning)
1983 City and Guilds 224 Electrical and Electronic Engineering (Loughton College of Further
Education) Electronic Systems Pass, Assignments Credit.
Professional courses undertaken: 17 Sun Microsystems Courses undertaken, 2 Sybase Courses Oracle
Red Hat Linux training at Oracle University. Sun Certified Soalris 10 Advocate.
PROFILE
A Solaris Systems Engineer with over 10 years of experience, gained through working for some of
the world’s largest financial institutions, managing Sun Servers infrastructures, disk arrays and
networking operations across multiple platforms (UNIX, Linux).
Vast exposure and expertise gained in the strategic planning, installing and building over 100 Sun
Servers. Configuration and optimisation of the IT infrastructure in order to consistently achieve high
availability and performance.
Proven ability to create and deliver effective IT solutions tied to business growth, organisational
development and systems / network optimisation; skilled problem identifier and trouble-shooter
comfortable and highly confident in managing systems, projects and teams in a range of environments.
Seeks contract work being immediately available for both interviews and starts for, London and
the South East.
TECHNICAL SKILL SUMMARY:
Operating systems:
Network Connectivity:
Software Langugaes
Hardware
Solaris, Red Hat Linux, Some AIX
TCP/IP. Tibco Middleware.
Bsh, Ksh Sun FMT, Snapshot, explorer, Sun VM, Veritas V.M
Sun Microsystems F15K, M Series, 3,000, 4,000, 800, Sunfire 6800, 2900.
REFERENCES AVAILABLE ON REQUEST; RECOMMENDATIONS AVAILABLE VIA LINKEDIN
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NIGEL ELLIS
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
Apr 2008 – May 2014
Oracle Corporation, Reading, UK
A major computer hardware systems and enterprise software products provider.
Unix Systems Engineer employed as part of a 4 man team to support the Sun Microsystems Unix
estate across several Data Centres in London.
Responsibilities:
 Maintained 1500-2000 Sun Servers across several Data Centres in the city of London, Southwark
and the Docklands in production (Mission Critical) development and UAT (testing environments)
 Supported hardware on Sun M8000’s, 4000’s, X Seriers, M series, F15K’s F6800’s and E2900
(V1280’s) as well as some older Sun servers as and Sun x86 platforms.
 Checked various file systems for errors and space issues.
 Maintained patch levels, including Kernel Jumbo patch requirements
 Ensured servers have high availability (uptime) and being proactive in doing this.
 Opened service requests with Oracle for server core dumps, performance issues and server
crashes, Operating System Related bugs and fixes.
 Upgraded Firmware, Ilom and Aloms on Sun servers to the latest levels to correct various bugs
found.
 Installed new Sun servers into the data centre.
 Dealt with user requirements, creating accounts for users, checking issues for any applications that
have running on the servers, user file permissions, space requirements and access levels.
 Appointed the main point of contact for the new Unix team in India due to my previous experience
and was given the responsibility of helping them understand the RBS Unix Estate.
The main project that I worked on was:
1. Heathcote Migration
RBS Server exit from 3 city data centres in the city of London to Royal Bank of Scotland’s new DC in
Romford (Heathcote). I worked as a part of a team of 10 responsible for organising the Sun server
moves, responsible for liaising with application teams as well any stakeholders who had anything
running on the server to be migrated to Heathcote. This also involved testing the server pre move,
ensuring the server was shutdown that the correct time (after close of business on a Friday evening)
Then on the Saturday making sure the servers were installed, patched and hardware diagnostics run
again on pre booting of the operating system. The migration was a success with very few problems or
the need to back out of any server migrations due to unforeseen problems.
Achievements:
 Proactively worked for 24 hours straight during a power down at the DR site (Sampson House) to
make sure all the production servers were back up and running before the start of trading in Asia
in the early hours on Monday morning. I was thanked by several senior managers for “going the
extra mile” in resolving the unexpected problems.
Technical snapshot:
Solaris 8 and 10, Sun Volume Manager, Veritas Volume Manager, EMC and Qlogic (Server side)
Solaris Patching, Firmware Maintenance, M series M5000, 4000, 3000 support. Sun Hardware
support, Oracle Calling logging via MOS (My Oracle Support). Server hardware testing.
May 2002– Mar 2008
A&O Systems, London
A&O Services Established in 1961 is an independent provider of IT services in Europe and across the
globe, specialising in field servive, maintenace and IT engineering.
Unix Systems Engineer
Employed to support the Sun Unix Estate for several large Investment Banks In London, including 4
years at Citi Group and 1 year at Deutsche Bank.
Responsibilities:
 Maintained Unix Servers, provided upgrades, checked server performance, break fix, ran
diagnostics and made sure the Sun server estate was fully functional.
 Ensured that Sun servers had as much uptime as possible in a mission critical environment.
 Dealt with issues either software (operating Systems) or hardware
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NIGEL ELLIS
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Put together procedures to assist other team members in support and to assist other team members
in supporting the sun server estate.
Worked as part of a 10 man team, who covered a 24 x 7, supporting the Sun Unix estate in large
Data Centre environments. Dealing with other Global teams running applications on the Sun estate
in London
Achievements:
 Appreciated in writing by the head of IT at Citi Bank when I saved the bank several hundred
thousand pounds by re-establishing a Sun cluster that had failed over and was seriously impacting
the performance of the server, slowing down all trades going through the system.
Technical snapshot: Sun Solaris, Sun Volume manager, Veritas Volume Manager and Sun Hardware
from large end servers to smaller servers 2-4 u in size.
May 2001 – May 2002
Abbey National Treasury, London
Abbey National Treasury Services plc provides treasury, corporate, and wholesale banking products
and services primarily in the United Kingdom.
Unix System Administrator.
Employed as part of a four man team to help move the Sun server estate from Abbey’s Offices in
Baker Street to their new offices and data centre in Triton square, Euston, London, NW1
Responsibilities:
 Working with the project red team in organising the Sun server estate move.
 Making sure patch levels and firmware on all Sun servers was up to date.
 Confirming with various teams which NFS mount points were still needed
 Prior to the move and removing old NFS shares.
 Organinsing the server moves with the couriers and installing and testing the servers once they
were installed in their new data centre.
Achievements:
 I was thanked by senior Abbey management for working long hours six days a week in helping get
the move finished on scheduled and with as few problems as possible.
Technical snapshot: Sun Solaris 2.6 and 2.7, Sun Hardware, Sun Volume manager, Veritas Volume
manager, Perle Terminal servers, Sun Cluster.
Jan 2001- April 2002
JP Morgan Chase / CSC, London
JP Morgan Chase are is a world leading financial services Established for over 200 years
Specialising in investing an trading in over 100 countires worldwide.
Unix System Administrator.
Employed to work as part of a 6 man team to maintain a large ticketing system, dealing with all Unix
issues on the Sun Solaris estate.
Responsibilities:
 Provided support for over 700 back end Sun servers in JP Morgan’s data centre in London.
 Escalated any severity one calls to management.
 Covered out of hours support 11pm-7am for any overnight production server issues, including
remotely rebooting servers.
 Issue resolution, configuring Sun Volume manager, NFS and NIS issues, File system problems,
process issues, Autofs, creating new user accounts etc etc.
 Built new servers via jumpstart and escalating any hardware issues to the Sun Hardware team
onsite.
Achievements:
 While covering for a member of staff on maternity leave I was thanked for getting the ticketing
queue down from over 500 tickets when I started to less than 95 tickets upon the return of this
member of staff.
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NIGEL ELLIS
Technical snapshot: Sun Hardware and Sun Solaris 6 and 8 Software, Sun Volume manager, Veritas
Volume manager NFS, NIS, Autofs, Sun Storage arrays.
April 1999– December 2000
Cox Insurance Services, Essex
Established over 60 years ago, Cox Insurance are a major player in the UK personal insurance
market.
Unix Systems Administrator
Employed to support The Sun Servers used for running Cox’s online Insurance portal. There were
several websites running on the an E10k cluster that were used to provide insurance quotes for online
customers. This was a mission critical system. I worked as part of a 2 man team Unix Support team.
Responsibilities:
 Logged calls with Sun Microsystems with regard to any hardware failures making sure the Sun
cluster is up and running and that no failovers have occurred.
 Monitored the system, checked for performance related issues. File systems filling up, any
potential Hardware problems. Potential resource and capacity issues, as well a being proactive in
preventing potential problems.
 Responsible for the Sun servers running Cox insurance services various websites
 Liaised with management about capicity and performance related issues.
 Kept the server patch levels up to date and checking for any known bugs.
Achievements
 Worked through the night and into the next morning when the cluster failed, which resulted in Cox
insurance websites being down, meaning no one was able to get an online insurance quote. I
worked 28 hours straight and was thanked by senior management for proactively ensuring the
servers were back up and running, enabling customers to get their online insurance quotes again.
Technical snapshot: Sun Solaris, Sun Cluster, VERITAS Volume Manager, Sun Volume Manager,
Enterprise E10K’s
April 1999-Aug 2000
Reuters International, Canary Wharf, London
A world leading news agency providing business news and financial market information across a
range of platforms.
Unix Systems Administrator
Employed to provide support on Sun servers running RITD (Reuters InterTrade direct) in a mission
critical environment. On a 24 x 6 basis.
Responsibilities:
 Escalated Severity 1 issues to senior management
 Dealt with the calls from large brokers who are having issues connecting to other brokers and
rectifying those issues.
 Checked the various processes were running per market opening to make sure they were able to
connect through the RITD system ensuring all Sun servers are maintained and have adequate
resources as the business was growing rapidly during the time I worked there.
 Ensured the 2 main clusters were up and that no failovers had occurred
 Supported the Sun Unix estate used as a trading platform to link brokers and dealers trading
equities.
Achievements:
 Saved the Bank of New York over £300,000 by acting quickly and restarting various processes on
the Sun server that had failed due to connection problems. I was personally thanked by one the
senior managers of Bank of New York and they explained that if they had been able to connect
during that time, the orders would have gone through, but at a much higher price.
Technical snapshot: Sun Solaris, Sun Cluster, Tibco Middleware, Check point firewalls, Sun
hardware, R.I.T.D (Reuters InterTrade Direct proprietary trading platform)
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