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Wassim EL-Asmar
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Montreal, QC, Canada
Toptal member since September 17, 2021
Bio
Wassim is passionate about system administration, focusing on infrastructure, automation, configuration management, and the implementation of evolutive systems. His past experiences include working with OpenStack, as well as a migration of a Docker infrastructure to OpenShift. His current contracts involve work with AWS, Kubernetes, and GitLab CI/CD. Skilled, organized, and professional, Wassim is a considerable asset to any team geared toward process automation and DevOps best practices.
Portfolio
National Bank of Canada
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Jenkins, OpenShift, Helm, Bash Script...
Desjardins Group
Concourse CI...
CAE
Chef, Jenkins, Azure, Docker, CI/CD Pipelines, DevOps, Orchestration, GitHub...
Experience
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 6 years
- Bash - 6 years
- Terraform - 6 years
- Kubernetes - 5 years
- GitLab CI/CD - 3 years
- OpenShift - 3 years
- Helm - 3 years
- Go - 1 year
Work Experience
Senior DevOps | Site Reliability Engineer
2019 - PRESENT
National Bank of Canada
- Established a structure that meets the needs of security, stability, speed, and continuous development.
- Implemented CI/CD processes with Bitbucket, Jenkins, Nexus, Harness, Helm, and OpenShift.
- Managed deployments and operation configurations in OpenShift, including replicas, probes, CPU, memory, and ConfigMap.
- Configured EKS and Kinesis Data Firehose on AWS with Terraform.
- Set up a Git flow model for code management, a proper image versioning for all built images, and a process for hotfixes on critical transactional applications in production.
- Ensured the execution of SonarQube and Veracode scans and implemented gating from the scan's reports within the pipelines.
- Managed and externalized property files in ConfigMap and templatized the application's deployments using Helm.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Jenkins, OpenShift, Helm, Bash Script, Groovy Scripting, Python, Splunk, Datadog, Go, CI/CD Pipelines, DevOps, Orchestration, GitHub, GitHub Actions, Amazon EC2, Apache HTTP Server, Prometheus, Redis, AWS DevOps, API Gateways, AWS IAM, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Containers, Cloud Infrastructure, Databases, AWS Cloud Computing Services, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Containerization, Git, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), ELK (Elastic Stack), Amazon RDS, Cloud Migration, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Monitoring, Amazon EKS, GitOps, Jira, Security, Cloud Architecture, DevSecOps, Release Management, APIs
Senior DevOps and SRE Consultant
2018 - 2019
Desjardins Group
- Implemented CI/CD with Concourse and PCF for multiple critical transactional applications.
- Supported critical transactional applications in their lifecycle in all environments from development to production.
- Collaborated with multiple teams of developers and QAs to maximize pipeline functionalities.
- Led three teams of developers which I enrolled in the DevOps processes and best practices.
Technologies: Concourse CI, VMware Tanzu Application Service (TAS) (Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF)), Bash Script, DevOps, CI/CD Pipelines, Orchestration, GitHub, Amazon EC2, Prometheus, AWS DevOps, API Gateways, AWS IAM, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Containers, Cloud Infrastructure, Databases, AWS Cloud Computing Services, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Containerization, Git, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Amazon RDS, Cloud Migration, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Monitoring, Terraform, Amazon EKS, GitOps, Jira, Security, Cloud Architecture, DevSecOps, Release Management, APIs
Senior DevOps and SRE Consultant
2018 - 2019
CAE
- Configured automation of deployments and management of configuration files for CAE web servers with Chef.
- Implemented Jenkins pipelines to trigger the Chef cookbooks for initial configuration and update part of the components.
- Used Azure DevOps to create pipelines for deploying applications to Azure.
Technologies: Chef, Jenkins, Azure, Docker, CI/CD Pipelines, DevOps, Orchestration, GitHub, Amazon EC2, Prometheus, AWS DevOps, API Gateways, AWS IAM, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Containers, Cloud Infrastructure, Databases, AWS Cloud Computing Services, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Containerization, Git, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Amazon RDS, Cloud Migration, PostgreSQL, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Monitoring, Terraform, Amazon EKS, Jira, Security, Cloud Architecture, DevSecOps, Release Management, APIs
DevOps and SRE Consultant
2018 - 2019
Gologic
- Configured an OpenShift cluster and migrated from a Docker infrastructure to the OpenShift infrastructure, including migration of all applications, databases, and every component related to the microservices.
- Refactored Bash scripts used to automate manual tasks.
- Created automation and configuration management with Chef.
Technologies: OpenShift, Bash Script, Chef, Proxmox, GlusterFS, CI/CD Pipelines, DevOps, Orchestration, GitHub, Amazon EC2, Apache HTTP Server, Prometheus, AWS DevOps, API Gateways, AWS IAM, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Containers, Cloud Infrastructure, AWS Cloud Computing Services, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Containerization, Git, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Amazon RDS, Cloud Migration, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Monitoring, Terraform, Amazon EKS, Jira, Security, Cloud Architecture, DevSecOps, Release Management, APIs
Senior System Administrator
2018 - 2019
iweb
- Administered an OpenStack infrastructure such as cloud instances and bare-metal servers and processed cluster migrations.
- Configured and troubleshot Linux and Windows web clusters such as LB, web servers, databases, and DFS and structured Hyper-V clusters.
- Set up Cisco ASA firewalls and VPN configurations and solved network issues.
- Managed backups, server clones, monitoring, investigations, and documentation.
Technologies: OpenStack, Linux, Bash Script, Cisco, Hyper-V, CI/CD Pipelines, DevOps, Orchestration, GitHub, Amazon EC2, Apache HTTP Server, AWS DevOps, Containers, Cloud Infrastructure, Databases, AWS Cloud Computing Services, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Containerization, Git, Cloudflare, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Cloud Migration, MySQL, MongoDB, Monitoring, Security, Cloud Architecture, DevSecOps, Release Management
System Administrator
2015 - 2016
OVHcloud
- Configured Linux servers to match the client's requirements, such as LVM partitions and RAID configs.
- Configured security onto Linux servers, including iptables firewall and natting rules.
- Troubleshot network availability using tcpdump, Nmap, and MTR analysis.
Technologies: Linux, Bash, Cloud, Orchestration, Apache HTTP Server, Cloud Infrastructure, Git, Cloudflare, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Cloud Migration, MySQL, MongoDB, Monitoring, Security, Cloud Architecture, Release Management
Project History
EKS Deployment with Terraform
Configured the deployment of all elements of an EKS cluster with Terraform in a scalable design, including resources, IAM roles, and policies. I also made variations of all configurations per environment and installed a custom CNI (Calico) to fix AWS IP limitation per worker node.
Configured a custom launch template in AWS, deployed an ingress controller, and created a pipeline in GitLab-CI to launch our Terraform.
Created a second pipeline that will take care of:
• Creating Docker images used as workers in our main pipeline
• Testing those worker images
• Pushing the versioned images in the GitLab registry
Deployed ExternalDNS to automate zone creation in Route 53 that verifies ingress configs automatically. Automated SSL certificate creation and signature process with Let's Encrypt to configure a service account for cert-manager and a ClusterIssuer and deploy cert-manager that verifies ingress configs, creates SSL certs accordingly, and signs certs with authority.
Configured DynamoDB to manage the LockState of our Terraform state.
Configured a custom launch template in AWS, deployed an ingress controller, and created a pipeline in GitLab-CI to launch our Terraform.
Created a second pipeline that will take care of:
• Creating Docker images used as workers in our main pipeline
• Testing those worker images
• Pushing the versioned images in the GitLab registry
Deployed ExternalDNS to automate zone creation in Route 53 that verifies ingress configs automatically. Automated SSL certificate creation and signature process with Let's Encrypt to configure a service account for cert-manager and a ClusterIssuer and deploy cert-manager that verifies ingress configs, creates SSL certs accordingly, and signs certs with authority.
Configured DynamoDB to manage the LockState of our Terraform state.
Financial Data Parsing and Outputted Into Kafka
A Go-based application that fetches stock data from API to parse it and produce structured messages into Kafka topics.
The main purpose of this application is the serialization and deserialization of data acquired from multiple API endpoints. The final product is a parsed message that the application produces onto Kafka topics which will be consumed by Elasticsearch. The application is deployed with Helm onto Kubernetes.
Outside from the applicative code, a big part of this project is the release management and infrastructure as code, taken from another project that I've built.
The infrastructure—an EKS cluster deployed through Terraform will host the application and all other parts (Elasticsearch, upcoming apps).
The AWS infrastructure is configured for the auto-scaling group to scale the EKS workers as needed.
Security—deployment and configuration of cert-manager, in charge of certificate creation and renewals.
Deployment and configuration of ExternalDNS for automatic zone creation in Route 53 from pull requests in the ingress rules.
Release management—trunk-based branching, simple image versioning. To ensure robustness, tests are run early, and production release is done often.
The main purpose of this application is the serialization and deserialization of data acquired from multiple API endpoints. The final product is a parsed message that the application produces onto Kafka topics which will be consumed by Elasticsearch. The application is deployed with Helm onto Kubernetes.
Outside from the applicative code, a big part of this project is the release management and infrastructure as code, taken from another project that I've built.
The infrastructure—an EKS cluster deployed through Terraform will host the application and all other parts (Elasticsearch, upcoming apps).
The AWS infrastructure is configured for the auto-scaling group to scale the EKS workers as needed.
Security—deployment and configuration of cert-manager, in charge of certificate creation and renewals.
Deployment and configuration of ExternalDNS for automatic zone creation in Route 53 from pull requests in the ingress rules.
Release management—trunk-based branching, simple image versioning. To ensure robustness, tests are run early, and production release is done often.
Certifications
AUGUST 2015 - PRESENT
MCA200 OpenStack Certification
Mirantis
Skills
Tools
Terraform, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, Amazon EKS, GitHub, AWS IAM, Git, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Jira, Helm, Concourse CI, Apache HTTP Server, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), ELK (Elastic Stack), Chef, Splunk, Nagios, Hyper-V
Languages
Bash, Python, Bash Script, Go
Paradigms
DevOps, DevSecOps
Platforms
Linux, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), OpenShift, Docker, Amazon EC2, AWS Cloud Computing Services, OpenStack, Azure, VMware Tanzu Application Service (TAS) (Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF)), Proxmox, Apache Kafka
Storage
Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Databases, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Datadog, GlusterFS, Redis
Other
CI/CD Pipelines, Orchestration, GitHub Actions, AWS DevOps, Containers, Cloud Infrastructure, Containerization, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Amazon RDS, Cloud Migration, Monitoring, GitOps, Security, Cloud Architecture, Release Management, Prometheus, API Gateways, APIs, Cisco, Cloud, Groovy Scripting, Cloudflare
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