Professional
The bread winner
Current employment
I am currently filling a role as a System Administrator for South Georgia Medical Center.
This particular job has been most exciting. Challenges around every corner, a diverse mixture of talent and skill among my co-workers; as well as being my first role in which my job is NOT the center focus on which the company's primary service is offered. I am definitely in a "support" position for what is a more important service to the general public, that being healthcare. This is a first for me and is somewhat a refreshing role to play, as being part of an entity "behind the scenes".
As a System Administrator, you are assigned a number of systems (software, technology types, vendor specific hardware, etc..) in which you are responsible for maintaining and ensuring it remains in good working order. Currently, I am over the Citrix environment and offers a most challenging system to maintain. Aside from a few self-contained systems that do not interact with anything else, the Citrix environment is the central point in which the majority of software is delivered to the end users (Clinical personnel). Here in-lies the challenge with maintaining such a system. Being the "middle-man", any issues that arise from the solutions that you deliver to the end user, become YOUR issues. Citrix is generally the first system to be blamed for any issue that is experienced. That said, this means the Citrix administrator has to be well versed in ALL of the solutions that flow through it, in order to locate the root cause. Sometimes it IS Citrix, however, more times than not, the issue lies outside of the platform. In locating the issue, many times the Citrix administrator finds himself fixing issues that belong to other administrators, by virtue of having to make sure it is not Citrix.
This may sound frustrating (and at times it is), however, it keeps me on my toes and makes the day go by faster. Also, in the end, I find myself immersed in almost every aspect in I.T. To me, it is right where I want to be.
Skills and experience
In addition to Citrix (XenApp, XenDesktop), I work with other technologies, software and tools. This is very broad and can make for an obnoxiously long list, however, here are most of the other major elements that I work with on a daily basis:
Imprivata (SSO authentication and identity proofing platform, using RFID & Bio-metrics)
Veeam Backup & Recovery | Veeam Backup for Office 365
WYSE ThinOS (Proprietary Linux-based Operating system for thin client "Zero-Client" endpoint devices, made by Dell inc.)
Microsoft Hyper-V (Virtualization hypervisor for VM servers)
Microsoft SCVMM (Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Management)
Microsoft Failover Clustering (Microsoft's solution for High-Availability and failover redundancy for servers and services)
PowerShell (Powerful scripting language for automating redundant tasks) Note: See my Git-Hub page HERE for custom scripts I have written.
Microsoft Active Directory (Platform for managing user authentication, permissions, roles, categories and groups)
Microsoft Server 2012 - 2019 (Server Operating system from Microsoft)
Ubuntu 14.04 + (Linux operating systems 'primarily focusing on servers' LAMP, Docker)
Ubiquiti AirMax, UniFi, AirFiber & EdgeMax (Networking and connectivity solutions from Ubiquiti | UBWA Certification)