Mark Slatem
System Operations
Mark Slatem
An IT professional with a consistent work history and proven track record. Successfully supporting, implementing and facilitating many aspects of clients IT infrastructures and operational needs. An effective communicator, able to manage projects and business functions to achieve objectives; seeking challenging assignments where experience will be valuable.
I enjoy understanding customer psychology and how it relates to enhancing business processes and workflows, with a particular emphasis on improving customer facing services and user interfaces. My strengths are derived from a diverse skill-set that incorporates technical proficiency, underpinned by business logic and end user understanding. I like gaining new knowledge and applying it successfully as well as recognising and evaluating the consequences of infrastructure decisions before they are made.
15 Stone Street, Caulfield South | 3162 Melbourne, Australia | Mobile: +61 431820464 | mark@onyxit.com.au | Birth: 17/02/1975
Skill Overview
| OS | Applications | Other | Hardware | Code | |||||
| • | SmartOS | • | Request Tracker | • | documentation | • | PC-Engines Alix | • | bash |
| • | OpenSolaris | • | Zabbix | • | training | • | Switches | • | html |
| • | OmniOS | • | Sawmill | • | customer interaction | • | Supermicro Servers | • | css |
| • | FreeBSD | • | Project-FiFo | • | design | • | Intel Servers | • | chef / ruby |
| • | pfSense | • | Observium | • | ZFS | • | Dell Servers | ||
| • | Centos | • | PowerDNS | • | SMF | ||||
| • | Debian | • | ejabberd | • | networking | ||||
| • | Ubuntu | • | Racktables | ||||||
| • | Windows | • | MySQL / Postgres | ||||||
| • | OS X | • | Confluence | ||||||
| • | Git | ||||||||
| • | Nginx | ||||||||
| • | Apache |
• novice • intermediate • skilled
Recent Professional History
Previous 15 Year Timeline
As a business owner for the last 15 years, I have been involved with operating 3 conceptually similar IT companies with a focus on serving the SMB market space. In this capacity our core business was to provide comprehensive IT services, focused on offering full service, outsourced IT departments for our customers.
In 2006 as part of my planned immigration strategy, from South Africa to Australia, I merged my existing client base with a local IT company “ITWizards” and became a partner. In 2007 I immigrated to Australia. For the last 7 years my role has been working remotely with a focus on infrastructure, data-centre operations and reaching business objectives. In 2007 I formed a local company called Onyx-IT to service Australian customers in Perth. I have recently moved to Melbourne for family reasons and I am now seeking a challenging role where my experience, skills and commitment to excellence can be of benefit.
Recent Experience
My responsibility has been to operate, manage and monitor our data center / colocation facilities both in South Africa as well as Australia. This ranges from identifying and testing suitable technologies and applications as well as implementation, maintenance, backup and documentation. I was also responsible conducting remote training sessions as well as in person technical training with our technical team. I was also responsible for putting together technical documentation and workflow procedures.
The core systems that I managed are as follows:
- virtualization (smartos + project-fifo)
- firewalls (pfsense)
- ticketing system (request tracker)
- monitoring applications (zabbix + monit + observium)
- backups (openindiana + nappit + rsync)
- mail systems (barricademx)
- proxies (squid + dansguardian)
- ipam (racktables)
- script storage (gitlab)
- documentation (confluence)
- diagrams (gliffy)
In addition, I look after all client connectivity and security such as branch firewalls and vpn infrastructure that terminates on individually collocated perimeter devices at our data centre. I also action all firewall rule changes and manage client proxies and zfs storage servers.
Education & Training
| present | Coursera – “Crafting an Effective Writer” |
| 2012-2013 | Coursera – “Behavioural Economics” |
| 2006-2007 | ITIL Foundation Diploma |
| 2001-2003 | Various Linux courses & seminars |
| 1996-1997 | MCSE |
| 1992-1993 | Diamond Grading Diploma |
| 1991-1992 | Graduated High School |
Personal Interests and Projects
| Project FiFo: | Documentation & adhoc “community manager” |
| SmartOS: | It’s pretty awesome!, whats there not to like? |
| screencasts: | http://www.youtube.com/user/nitronap |
| reading: | Science Fiction, Philosophy and Science |
| humour: | Everyone loves a good laugh |
| walking: | Enjoy long walks in nature + podcasts |
| blogging: | If you are reading this you are on my blog 😉 |