Arvind Sreenivasan

• Responsible for the maintenance of the virtualization platform of a leading banking customer.
• Led, designed, participated and implemented a service improvement plan (SIP) for a banking customer for the VDI environment which was in a sub-standard state of operation – collaborated with the customer to implement best practices, submitted a plan to maintain the infrastructure at acceptable service levels, successfully executed agreed actions and handed over the environment in a compliant and stable state of operation.

End to end implementation:

• Implementation of a new solution for migrating AIX/Solaris workloads to a virtualized environment hosted on VMWare ESXi.
• Implementation of a new VMWare ESXi cluster as part of a program to deploy a new solution for backing up VMWare workloads.
• End to End implementation of a VMWare ESXi 9.0 cluster with vSAN for recovering VM workloads.
• Migration of VMWare horizon VDI from 7.x to 8.x.
• Migrating kyndryl teams to a different virtualization technology (citrix to VMWare horizon).
• Migration of citrix servers from traditional server hosting methods to MCS (machine creation services).
• Migrating between different MFA (multi factor authentication) mechanisms (DUO to Microsoft Authenticator hosted on Azure). Incorporation of SAML authentication.
• Installation and configuration of a certificate authority (CA), VMWare true-SSO along with VMWare enrolment server.
• Migration of multiple resources from a legacy version of the operating system to newer (2012, 2016 to 2022); certificate authority, citrix controllers, consolidation of multiple 2FA methods to one (ActivID to DUO)).
• Setting up a new VMWare App volumes for efficient application delivery within the VMWare VDI environment; migration of applications to a packaged solution via App volumes.
• Consolidation of compute resources for addressing increased utilization on the VMWare environment by re-using existing ESXi machines to save cost.
• Storage migration to flash from SVC(XIV) thereby reducing a dependence on legacy systems.
• Securing the citrix environment by incorporating MFA via MS Authenticator (SAML based dual factor authentication); integration of FAS (federated authentication services) to deliver virtual applications.
• Setting up new templates for windows OS'es and defining technical specifications.
  Migration of KMS from windows server 2012 R2 to 2022.
• Migration/upgradation of densify (automation tool) from server 2012 to 2016.
• Introduction of a new profile management tool (FSLogix) into the environment; migration of profiles from VMWare UEM/DEM (user/dynamic environment manager) to FSLogix.
• Setting up resiliency on the FSLogix environment using CCD (cloud cache directory).
• VMWare horizon connection server OS upgrades.
• Planned and executed the upgradation of the ESXi VMWare virtual environment from 7.x to 8.x
• Planned and in the process of executing an effort to enable resiliency for the vCenter infrastructure (enabling VCHA)
• Implemented best practices for enhancing the performance of the VMWare ESXi environment
• Infrastructure consolidation by performing periodic reviews of the overall resource utilization of the virtual infrastructure
• Introduction of VrOps into the virtual infrastructure for capacity management and performance analysis

Regular maintenance:

• Firmware upgrades of UAG's (unified access gateways).
• Netscalers (certificate updates, firmware updates, overall management).
• Maintain/create DHCP scopes/superscopes.

Virtualization management:

• Regular management of UAG’s (unified access gateways) – creation of new instances, maintaining existing instances by performing regular firmware updates, monitoring for performance issues, integration with load balancers (netscalers, F5), troubleshooting connectivity issues.
• Integration of new LDAPs services via citrix netscalers to provide external authentication.

Cost saving programs/effort:

• Leveraged use of an existing automation tool (Densify) in the environment to save USD 100k by implementing a software licensing cost optimization (SLCO) feature for 2008 windows servers.
• Consolidation of citrix director.
• Efficient usage of Foglight which led to significant cost saving on license renewals for another equivalent automation tool (Densify).
• Integrated RDS application farms into VMWare horizon thereby reducing the need to create multiple desktop pools; unlocked the functionality of application delivery via Horizon.
• Participated in an effort to plan migration of the Densify environment to SaaS.
• Optimized the ESXi virtual environment by implementing best practices related to storage in response to degraded performance.

Collaboration:

• Provided extended support to a customer for migrating workloads from citrix to Horizon VDI.
• Training technical teams on a regular basis to improve overall quality of service delivery.
• Providing extensive assistance to multiple platform teams on resolving potential SIP (service improvement plan) actions.
• Change management training given to multiple teams to maintain quality of changes.
• Hold regular customer meetings to understand critical issues that will need to be addressed on priority.
• Explore avenues of new business - migrating non-critical workloads to the cloud, integrate existing cloud technologies (Azure AD, Azure MFA, Azure virtual machine) to the environment, and proposing new methods of application/server delivery by leveraging automation (Ansible).
• Explored the use of Azure Virtual Desktop as a cloud based method of desktop delivery

• Handled L2/L3/escalated issues of multiple customers in a pooled environment consisting of different citrix products.
• On-call support for high severity incidents and changes of any category.
  Transition of 3 citrix environments to IBM – Transition included managing the existing environment and building a new environment for migration.
• Providing technical guidance/expertise wherever necessary.
  Providing regular training to the team on new technologies that the team needed assistance.
• Regular review of technical documents and process flows, documents to ensure they are current and up to date.
• Regular meetings with customers to understand requirements and propose upgrades.
• Engaged in regular technical discussions with IBM India engineers throughout the country to brain storm complex technical issues.
• Involved in setting up a “TCAB” (technical change advisory board) that included experts from various technologies to minimize risk of change failure.
• Engaged in problem management requests.