Emil Grama, Developer in Bucharest, Romania
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Emil Grama

Verified Expert  in Engineering

VMware ESXi Developer

Location
Bucharest, Romania
Toptal Member Since
April 12, 2016

Emil has been working for 15 years as a senior system administrator, DevOps engineer, and technical team lead for medium/large companies in the US and Europe. He has experience working with Unix (Linux, Solaris, HP-UX) systems in all project phases from solution design to implementation, testing, and operational support. He specializes in automation, virtualization, and data center migration, and has a special interest in system security.

Portfolio

Dell International Services
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Vagrant, VirtualBox, Ansible, VMware, Puppet...
Belgacom/Proximus - Belgium
Oracle Solaris, Python, Bash, Ansible
Vodafone Romania
OpenVPN, Kerberos, OpenLDAP, Python, Bash, KVM, VMware, Linux

Experience

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Vagrant, Puppet, Python, Bash, Shell

The most amazing...

...thing I've designed and implemented was a central authentication solution (Kerberos+OpenLDAP) still in use after 5 years by thousands of systems.

Work Experience

Senior System Administration Consultant

2011 - 2016
Dell International Services
  • Provided operational administration of Unix servers for Dell clients in the US.
  • Migrated a data center for Dell US customers.
  • Configured and deployed new servers using orchestration and automation tools.
  • Wrote procedures for disaster recovery and tested them during BCP exercises.
  • Provided mentoring and guidance to less experienced team members.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Vagrant, VirtualBox, Ansible, VMware, Puppet, Solaris, Linux

UNIX Consultant

2015 - 2015
Belgacom/Proximus - Belgium
  • Worked as a backup key UNIX resource during outages; WarRoom presence.
  • Served as the escalation point for complex UNIX incidents, providing resolution and RCAs.
  • Wrote scripts to fully automate new servers and virtual machine provisioning, configuration, and patching.
  • Configured VMs in Veritas Cluster and took part in disaster recovery exercises.
Technologies: Oracle Solaris, Python, Bash, Ansible

Senior Unix Administrator/Technical Team Leader

2007 - 2011
Vodafone Romania
  • Managed technical projects for areas like system virtualization and consolidation.
  • Contributed input for medium and long-term infrastructure strategy planning (evaluating solutions, product, and vendors).
  • Proposed solutions for optimizing existing infrastructure usage to achieve better KPIs and meet all SLAs.
  • Served as the escalation point for all major incidents in the UNIX domain.
  • Supervised the work of a 5 person team, providing input, support, and guidance to less-experienced team members.
  • Designed, built, and implemented a fault-tolerant authentication and access solution for all Unix servers (Linux, Solaris, HP_UX); the solution was based on OpenLDAP, Kerberos, and OpenVPN.
Technologies: OpenVPN, Kerberos, OpenLDAP, Python, Bash, KVM, VMware, Linux

UNIX System Administrator

2004 - 2007
Vodafone Romania
  • Maintained existing infrastructure, including Unix servers, FC switches, disk arrays, and tape libraries.
  • Troubleshot and solved incidents and provided RCAs.
  • Identified tasks suitable for automation and wrote scripts to implement it.
  • Implemented new projects in close cooperation with DBAs and other support groups.
  • Contributed to solution design, implementation, and testing for BCP and disaster recovery.
Technologies: EMC NetWorker, Solaris, RHEL, Linux

Network/UNIX System Administrator

2002 - 2004
National Center For Information Technology
  • Maintained the existing infrastructure and installed, configured, and patched the server and workstations.
  • Co-authored and taught an introductory Unix course to students and employees at partner companies.
  • Added and removed network routes and provided firewall administration.
Technologies: Cisco, Solaris, Linux

Puppet Configuration File

A puppet configuration file I did for a demo project.

This file installs and configures a MySQL database server on a CentOS 7 server using an SQL script available online. It also configures an instance on NGINX to load balance requests toward two Docker containers, each running a simple Django web app that connect and query to the MySQL server.

Note: Almost all the code I've written are under NDA and cannot be shared publicly.

Tools

Veritas Cluster Server, Corosync, EMC NetWorker, VMware, Vagrant, Ansible, Shell, Puppet, OpenVPN, VirtualBox, Pacemaker, NGINX

Platforms

Solaris, Linux, KVM, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Amazon EC2, CentOS, Linux CentOS 7

Storage

LVM, Veritas Volume Manager, MySQL

Languages

Bash, Python, SQL

Libraries/APIs

Puppet.js, OpenLDAP

Other

VMware ESXi, ZFS, Oracle Solaris, Cisco, RHEL, Kerberos

Frameworks

Django

1997 - 2002

Master's Degree in Civil Engineering

Technical University of Civil Engineering - Bucharest

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