Intel Server Support - Junior/Intermediate/Senior

Our customer is looking for 3 Intel Server Specialists: Junior, Intermediate, and Senior for 3 years contracts in Regina starting in late November or early December.

Description of Service:

· Provide and ensure a secure, highly available Data Centre environment to support customer’s business requirements.

· Continually monitor all systems, platforms and environments for availability, capacity and performance; proactively manage, including configuration management, and asset reporting and refresh, the environments as appropriate to minimize the risk of service disruption.

· Provide backup and recovery and disaster recovery services and, where needed, high availability environments. Intel Server Technician shall effectively manage incidents and problems following escalation and notification procedures.

· Work with appropriate third parties in a coordinated manner to ensure compliance to best practices, policies and procedures and regulatory requirements.

· Monitor on an ongoing basis that there are adequate facilities within the Data Centre(s) configured for the current and planned server and other computing requirements, including:

· Rack space,

· Suitable power,

· UPS support,

· Cabling – e.g. Network, SAN, etc.,

· Port availability on core switches and firewalls,

· Adequate Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Systems,

· Blade slots in chassis,

· Physical security,

· SQL Support,

· SMS Support, and

· VMWare Support.

Desired Technologies:

Data Center Services · Provide contact information for the Data Centre Manager and management escalation path.

· Provide a hardened and secure data center environment located at facilities.

· Follow leading practices for facility services such as power redundancy, AC, etc.

· This includes the following services:

· Escorted access for non-authorized SaskPower staff and representatives will be provided,

· Environmental controls, including temperature and humidity on raised floor space,

· Fire alarms and fire suppressions systems,

· Conditioned UPS based electrical circuits,

· Uninterruptible power supply,

· Physical security for SaskPower equipment, forms, tapes, and documentation,

· Temporary use of shared office facilities as appropriate,

· Redundant data communication entry points to the facility, and

· Provide Audit reports as required by SaskPower Auditors or Internal Audit.

Capacity Management · Project future trends and capacity requirements for new projects and provide such information to the appropriate personnel as it pertains to the services.

· Monitor and document current workload trends and provide the information to CI&T Management for use in determining future capacity requirements.

Performance Management · Define current and future requirements and plans determining capacity and performance requirements.

· Execute approved requests additional capacity for Intel Windows based servers.

· Test Server performance, capacity and throughput for new or changed applications before promoting such applications into the environment or components; and

· Establish a schedule for performance of dedicated server maintenance (for example, virus and malicious software detection, backup, disk space cleanup) and for implementing modifications and enhancements to the environment to minimally affect availability of the environment.

· Define thresholds within the selected tool's capability, performance indicators to monitor Intel (Windows OS) server performance against such indicators.

· Install and configure system management agents for the operating system using SRM (Server Resource Management) tool or equivalent tool.

· Take appropriate resolution action (for example tuning), when Intel server performance is impacted.

· Monitor, collect, and analyze server performance, utilization data for CPU, memory, and disk space.

· Compile configuration data and trends;

· Establish thresholds and exception reporting procedures.

Availability Management · Work with SaskPower business units to define availability requirements; and

· Ensure the appropriate SaskPower personnel are available to interface with Server personnel, as required, to isolate or resolve problems.

· Develop an availability plan.

· Track, analyze and report on availability.

· Provide hardware maintenance in accordance with the equipment manufacturer's specifications.

· Recommend availability improvements.

Processing Operations

· Responsible for selecting or defining requirements for all applications software. The contractor will operate the applications software selected, provided such applications software conforms to the operating environment standards.

· Provide computer room operations support and perform console monitoring as it relates to alerts generated by the systems management tools.

· With the approval of the Service Owner, schedule systems maintenance so as to minimize interference with business operations; and

· Monitor ad-hoc job submissions to production and user acceptance testing of Intel systems to verify that these jobs are successfully completed.

Systems and Technical Support · Perform all technical system support operations, including tape management, system programming, capacity planning and performance tuning for the Intel systems.

· Provide support for all Intel-based Windows OS systems.

· Evaluate, recommend, install and maintain all systems software including vendor-supplied patches, service packs, quality packs, hot-fixes and releases.

· Apply preventive maintenance and program temporary fixes for no additional charge by the applicable vendor to correct defects.

· Provide or obtain new versions and releases, upgrades, replacements or additional systems software as agreed with the Service Owner.

· Support the operating systems and subsystems, compilers, standard products and operational tools.

· Maintain and manage stored server images (Virtual Centre) with respect to upgrading and patching all systems software, system management software, tools or agents.

· Ensure backup up of stored server images is performed.

· Report the performance of the environment and tune it to achieve improved performance levels.

· Manage and maintain server consoles.

· Install, maintain, and manage all required system management software or agents.

· Shutdown or restart the operational environment or its components, as required, and in line with CI&T procedures.

· Monitor and administer security for the operational environment in accordance with security policy, including reporting security violations to Security.

· Provide the skills, experience and knowledge required to supply tier 2 support – including backups so there is coverage for vacation, illness, etc.

· Rebuild servers including hardware, operating system software and application software and data due to a server failure.

· Graceful shutdown of servers during a power outage.

Virus Management · Assist Enterprise Architecture in defining polices and procedures for governing Anti-virus such as frequency of updates, Anti-virus software used, and incident management when a breach occurs.

· Supply and make available to all virus detection software and services for SaskPower platforms and networks, and install new updates, as they become available from vendors.

· For those platforms and systems that do not currently provide virus protection capabilities Server Technicians will make recommendations for upgrades or replacements that will allow increased virus protection capabilities.

· Protect, repair and secure all in-scope operating system software, application software and hardware in the environment from viruses.

· Prevent, detect, destroy, cure or isolate computer viruses.

Hardware maintenance and · Proactively coordinate and execute maintenance tasks in the environment, as a preventative measure to avoid

Monitoring service failure.

· Manage relationships with hardware vendors.

· Configure and maintain all in-scope peripherals relating to Intel servers.

· Detailed hardware monitoring on all servers to include alerts for hardware failures to improve response time and reduce downtime.

Service Level Management · Collect details of requirements from the user organization.

· Draw up business requirements to be discussed with Vendor Management.

· Draw up a monthly internal service report based on collected internal reports for applications supported in their respective areas.

· Check the quality of the internal reports; and

· Evaluate the realization of Service Level Agreements. Compare the performance indicators and standards, such as those concerning the product delivery time, the handling time for incidents, the invoices / payments.

· Help to draw up Service Level Understandings (SLU’s)

· Supply input for products and services that have to be bought / ordered.

· Review and update Operating Level Agreements (OLAs) and Service Level Understandings (SLUs);

· Consolidate monthly SLO Report, based on collected reports.

· Lead consultations with Vendor Management regarding Service Level Management.

· Regular evaluation of the service in consultation with customer and supplier/vendors.

· Organize a regular review; and

· Check the agreements for quality.

Technical documentation · Maintain technical documentation for in scope services including:

· Server configurations,

· IP addresses and domain names of all in scope hardware,

· Documentation of cluster and contingency plans for hardware failure,

· A diagram depicting the in scope devices attached to the network infrastructure,

· Preventative maintenance and repair logs provided by 3rd party support vendors,

· A list of directories for in scope equipment,

· Server build documents, and

· VLAN resource assignments.

-Virtualization

-VMWare

-Hyper-V

-Citrix

- SCCM administration

-SQL Server Administration

-McAfee / EPO

-Storage / Capacity

-Netbackup

-Disaster Recovery

-Server Administration

-Group Ploicy

-Active Directory

-ASMA/RSA/RSA2

-Windows Server 2008

-Microsoft Exchange

-MS Sharepoint

-ITIM/ITAM Configuration and Administration

· Data center services

· Capacity Management

· Performance Management

· Availability Management

· Processing Operations

· Systems and Technical Support

· Virus Management

· Hardware maintenance and Monitoring

· Service Level Management

· Technical documentation

Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES)

Desired Certifications:

ITIL Certification (Foundation, Service Manager)

MCSE – Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer

Microsoft Certified Professional + Internet

MCP – Microsoft Certified Professional

MCSA - Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator

PSE – Professional Server Expert

VMware Certified Professional (VCP)

VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP)

VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX)

Desired Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or 2 yr technical program or combination of education and /or experience in a related field

Desired Experience:

3-5 years

Strong communication skills, both written and verbal

Maintains strong attention to detail in high-pressure situations

Solid understanding of business practices with fundamental understanding of project management methodology

Requires excellent computer skills

- Asset Management