Curriculum Vitae

Ben Neise is a VMware, Microsoft and Citrix certified university graduate. He has worked in desktop support, application virtualisation and packaging and, most recently, managing and supporting Dell’s Global Application Packaging VMware based infrastructure.

Ben has a wide range of technical skills combined with an ability to learn quickly, and then use that knowledge to develop original ideas and solutions. He is used to working in both a small environment with a high level of autonomy and a more traditional corporate environment.

In his spare time, Ben enjoys reading fiction, D-SLR photography, and spending time with his family.

Personal details

Name

Ben Neise

Date of Birth

16th November 1980 (29 years old)

E-mail

ben@neise.co.uk

Web

http://ben.neise.co.uk

http://www.linkedin.com/in/benneise

Experience

Technical

• Configuration and use of VMware products including VI3, vSphere 4, Server, Lab Manager, Workstation & Converter.
• Configuring, supporting and administering Windows servers (from NT to 2008 R2) running Active Directory using complex Group Policy Objects.
• Configuring, supporting and administering Citrix XenApp (application virtulisation) and Citrix XenDesktop (desktop virtualisation)
• Configuring, supporting, administering and packaging applications for, Microsoft Application Virtualization (SoftGrid).
• Administering and supporting Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007
• Installation, configuration and utilisation of Microsoft Hyper-V.
• Extensive deep knowledge of the Windows operating system, registry & services.
• Installing, configuring, and administering MS SQL, (including writing SQL queries), IIS & SCCM.
• Extensive scripting experience using Windows Shell scripting (batch files), PowerShell. Good experience with VBScript and Python.

Business

• Familiarity with ITIL and CapM best practices.
• Statistical data analysis techniques
• Excellent communication, documentation & presentation skills
• Able to train and develop skills in others

Personal Attributes

• Excellent presentation and communication skills
• Experienced at dealing with a wide spectrum of customers
• Team player
• Professional approach
• Interested in many aspects of IT/IS outside of work

Training & qualifications

Professional

May 2003

• Microsoft Certified Professional: Administering and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Environment (70-290)

August 2006

• Microsoft Certified Professional: Installing, Configuring and Administering Windows XP Professional (70-270)

March 2008

• Windows Vista: Deployment and Optimisation for Technical Professionals

November 2008

• VMware Certified Professional on Virtual Infrastructure 3
• VMware Sales Professional
• VMware Technical Sales Professional

December 2008

• Citrix Certified Administrator: XenServer Enterprise Edition 4.0

July 2009

• Microsoft Certified Professional: Implementing, Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure (70-291)

December 2009

• VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4

June 2010

• Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Configuration (70-652)

Personal

July 2002

• BSc (Hons) Psychology (2:1) University of Stirling

Positions held

Apr 2008 – Present

Infrastructure Support Team Leader for Dell Solutions UK Global Applications Packaging operation in Glasgow

Jan 2006 – Mar 2008

Application Packaging Technician for ACS (UK) Limited  then Dell Solutions UK after ACS was purchased by Dell in Nov 2006 placed at Prudential UK Limited

Sep 2003 –  Dec 2005

Technical Support Consultant for ACS (UK) Limited placed at Devro (Scotland) Limited

Sep 2002 –  Aug 2003

Prudential / Hays Personnel

Temporary New Business Administrator

Major duties

Dell Global Applications Packaging

(Glasgow) April 2008 – Present

Responsibility for a large VMware virtual Infrastructure environment running over 900 highly heterogeneous guests in over 40 individual AD domains. Managed infrastructure team to ensure that all calls are handled within OLAs, and ensuring that root-cause analysis is performed to reduce re-occurrence.

Required to rapidly create test environments to wide-ranging customer specifications, involving multiple technologies, then secure, administer and support these environments.

Current role involves installation and configuration of numerous applications, features and technologies. I.e., SQL, SCCM, Exchange.

Introduced detailed monitoring of the environment, allowing statistical trend analysis for capacity management. Benefits included increased productive virtual machine density by 30% through a programme of rightsizing machine allocations. Reduced SAN

Managed and delivered a large, complex, datacenter migration project, including upgrading from VI3 to vSphere 4. Project managed a VMware Lab Manager feasibility study.

Implemented knowledge sharing practices among the Infrastructure Support team, as well as a large number of other process improvements. These improvements reduced the average time taken to onboard a new customer’s infrastructure from 5 to 2 days.

Prudential

(Stirling) Jan 2006 – Mar 2008

Packaging applications for deployment via the Prudential’s proprietary systems, and latterly Microsoft Application Virtualisation (formerly SoftGrid) for deployment via Citrix XenApp.

Testing across multiple staged-environments to ensure a high standard of work.

Experience gained with shell scripting, registry editing application testing and deployment and a wide range of troubleshooting, analysis and system management tools.

Unique process where packager owned the application from acquisition to deployment, and was responsible for managing all stages of testing. Work was done to tight deadlines as part of a multi-stakeholder process.

Devro PLC

(Glasgow) Sep 2003 – Dec 2005

Assisted with the creation of a Microsoft Active Directory infrastructure, and the subsequent migration of over 200 workstations and users from a mixed Windows NT/95 environment to the new infrastructure.

Diagnosed and fixed a wide range of hardware, software & networking problems, both at a first line and second line level.

Deployed 150 Wyse WinTerm thin clients with a Citrix MetaFrame backend.  Included major hardware consolidation; replacing multiple PCs, printers and hardware devices with thin clients and shared workstations, and replacing multiple single-role legacy servers with a VMware ESX Server based virtualisation solution.

Self managed, prioritising user issues and collating information on problems ideally solving the root cause of the issue, with a view to reducing user dependency on Helpdesk.

Referees

Available on request