
Tom Hargreaves
VMware Administrator
Virtual infrastructure that's stable, fast and resilient
VMware administrator with nine years designing, building and running virtualised infrastructure for enterprises in Sheffield. Administers vSphere, ESXi and vCenter estates, manages clusters, storage and networking, and keeps hundreds of virtual machines performing and available. Led a data-centre virtualisation and consolidation that cut physical server count and slashed power and hardware costs. Handles capacity planning, patching, backup and disaster recovery, automates with PowerCLI, and troubleshoots performance issues across compute, storage and network. Strong on the platform and the wider infrastructure it sits in, and rigorous about resilience and recovery testing. Calm during a host failure or DR event. Looking for a VMware, virtualisation or infrastructure-engineer role with an organisation that runs serious on-prem or hybrid environments.
Sheffield Enterprise IT - Sheffield, UK
VMware Administrator April 2016 to Present 10 years & 3 months
Led a data-centre virtualisation and consolidation that cut servers and slashed power and hardware costs.
Manage the clusters, the storage and the networking, with full capacity planning and performance tuning.
Handle all the patching, the backup, the replication and the full disaster-recovery design and testing.
Automate all the routine administration and the reporting with PowerCLI scripting right across the estate.
Troubleshoot all the performance and the availability issues right across compute, storage and the network.
South Yorkshire IT Services - Sheffield, UK
Infrastructure / Systems Administrator August 2013 to March 2016 2 years & 8 months
Supported the infrastructure, the backups and day-to-day operations across the business.
Learned vSphere administration and infrastructure design in a real production environment.
Gained the VCP certification and then moved into a VMware-administrator role.
South Yorkshire IT Services - Sheffield, UK
IT Support / Server Technician June 2011 to July 2013 2 years & 2 months
Maintained the servers, the backups and the user systems day to day.
Learned the Windows server, storage and infrastructure basics on the job.
Then earned the move into a full infrastructure-administrator role from there.
Sheffield Hallam University
BSc (Hons) Computer Networks (September 2010 to June 2013)
VMware
VMware Certified Professional (VCP-DCV) (January 2016 to June 2016)
Consolidation that cut costs
Recovery actually tested
vSphere Estate Upgrade
VMware Administrator (January 2019 to September 2019)
DR Site Build & Failover Test
VMware Administrator (February 2020 to July 2020)
VMware Certified Professional (VCP-DCV)
VMware (June 2016 to Present)
Storage, Backup & Disaster Recovery
VMware (April 2019 to Present)
- vSphere / ESXi
- vCenter Administration
- Cluster Management
- Storage (SAN/NFS)
- Capacity Planning
- Backup & DR
- PowerCLI Automation
- Performance Tuning
- Virtual Networking
- Windows Server