Douglas Furlong 

26 Evelyn Court, Evelyn Walk, London, N1 7PN 

Phone No. +44 (0)7787 516 804 

e-mail: douglas.furlong@gmail.com

Curriculum Vitae 

Personal Profile 

A professional systems administrator with a heavy lean on IT Management with 10 years experience working in the IT sector, of which 7 years of working as a systems administrator. Currently a member of the senior management team of a multinational company, he has responsibility for all IT services within the UK and oversight over several key global systems. 

Skills 

Unix and Linux 

Variants 

I am a proficient Unix administrator with a history of working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Solaris, OSX and numerous other Unix/Linux variants. 

Network Services 

I have frequently been responsible for the initial configuration/ migration/ ongoing maintenance of the following network services; BIND, DHCPd, Cyrus IMAPd (IMAP, POP, Secure IMAP, Secure POP, Horde webmail infrastructure), OpenLDAP, NFS, Samba, ssh etc. 

Administration/ Network Monitoring 

Including the usual requirements for general system administration I have also been instrumental in implementing backup routines in my previous companies using various methods, and comprehensive network monitoring using SNMP and MRTG, Cricket and Nagios. 

Cisco 

Routers 

Maintained firewalls based on the ip access-lists, VPN Configuration to other routers or Pix Firewalls (IPSec, shared secrets IKE), Creating multiple networks and maintaining a firewall between them. Dial in server (ISDN and Analogue) 

Network monitoring & general configuration 

2948g Switches, Configuration of Basic VLANS on a 2948G switch, Nominal configuration and monitoring of a Cisco 2948g switch 

PIX Firewalls 

In my most recent position I’ve been responsible for maintaining firewalls in numerous locations around the world. 

Microsoft Windows 

Backups 

I’ve utilised numerous methods for backing up NT servers including the native products provided by windows a software like ArcServe, BackupExec and Bru. 

MS Exchange 

Initial configuration, setting up users, mailing lists, SMTP service, news groups, and the web interface. 

Network Services 

NT Domain controller for user verification, print servers, user shares, DHCP and WINS 

Experience 

        Cibernet Plc London, E1        November 2004 – Present

Cibernet provides financial and data clearing to mobile phone companies worldwide. The UK arm specialises in financial settlement for the global GSM market, including reconciliation, invoice production and debt management.  

IT Manager/ Senior Systems Administrator 

I am the IT Manager for the UK arm of Cibernet Plc, reporting directly in to the UK Operations Director and the Global IT Director.  

• While at Cibernet my managerial responsibilities included but were not limited to; 

  • Introduction and oversight of a trouble ticketing system to improve the quality of service provided to members of staff. Request Tracker (BestPractical) was used to achieve this. 

  • General managerial duties governing my team, including; Performance reviews, disciplinary procedures, oversight of work, mentoring etc. 

  • Oversaw the harmonisation of  a heterogeneous environment, to reduce the number of software conflicts and pave the way for a controlled role-out of both upgraded hardware and software.

  • Hiring of new staff members. 

• While at Cibernet I was responsible for accomplishing the following from a technical perspective; 

  • Overseeing the user acceptance testing of a major release of Cibernet's custom application. 

  • Co-ordinating the role out of Cibernet's updated web/server platform. 

  • Migration of the email server environment from Apples X-Serve to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

  • Preparing for the consolidation of file the serving facilities to Red Hat Enterprise Linux from a combined Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X configuration. 

  • Establishing a reliable backup solution for a heterogeneous environment including OS X, Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

• Maintaining the production environment running on Apple OSX servers. 

  The biggest challenge with this responsibility was to learn the bespoke system that has been developed by the Cibernet development group. 

  • Managing the upgrade process for minor releases of the bespoke application.  

  • Acting as a gateway between the users of the application and development to raise bug reports. 

  • Investigating performance related issues, and feeding information back to development where appropriate. 

  • Testing fail over configuration with backup systems. 

  • Day to day maintenance. 

• Assisting in the maintenance and configuration of internal servers providing network services to Cibernet Plc, these included; 

  • Email servers running on both the Apple X-Serve platform, and Red Hat Enterprise Sever 4 (Postfix/Sendmail and Cyrus IMAPd) 

  • Authentication system running on the Apple X-Serve, utilizing Apple's OpenDirectory system. 

  • File Servers running on the Apple X-Serve, Red Hat Enterprise Sever 4 and Windows NT/2k 

  • Backup server running BruApp on Linux, in both the Production and Office environments. 

  • Updating Pix firewalls due to the addition and removal of services/ clients. 

        Firebox.com Ltd London, SW2        March 2003 – November 2004

Firebox Ltd could best be described as the on-line equivalent of the Gadget Shop (is an on-line retailer of luxury gadgets and gifts). 

Senior Systems Administrator 

I was the sole person responsible for the  network stability and overall network services, and all technology related purchasing.

• I was responsible for the overhaul of all of Firebox's network services. This included, but was not limited to, the implementation of the following: 

  • File and print serving for both Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. This was achieved using Samba. Reliability and flexibility was achieved by using RAID 5 and Logical Volume Management (LVM). 

  • Company e-mail server peaking at a throughput of of over 100k of emails per day. The Cyrus IMAP server was used to provide the core of this mail system with Open LDAP, amavisd-new, ClamAV, SpamAssasin and Horde (Imp) being used to complete the solution. 

  • Spam/Virus control was an important aspect of the network. Being a very Internet oriented company we were receiving over 10k of virus infected mails each month as well as many more thousand SPAM related mails. Using amavaisd-new in association with Clam AV and SpamAssasin, all inbound/ outbound emails were scanned to maintain network integrity. In addition to this, all Windows systems were protected using the AVG anti-virus suit of utilities. 

  • User account information was stored in an OpenLDAP database, providing a single source of account information for all system. 

  • Router/ Firewall/ Proxy: This was set-up using ProxyARP and provided firewall protection using IP-Tabels and the proxy services provided by Squid. 

• I oversaw the migration of over 70% of the company's systems to Linux and managed distribution upgrades. 

  As can be expected with such a drastic migration, extensive documentation was required. This documentation concentrated on detailing the configuration of the Linux desktops and the deviation from Fedora's standard. Heavy use of Diff and Patch were used to ensure nothing was missed. 

  Achieving this required the heavy use of the following technologies. 

  • Fedora Core 

  • Bash scripting to customise the systems beyond the scope of Kick-Start 

  • Extensive use of troubleshooting tools like Tcpdump and ethereal to investigate and troubleshoot client/ server communication. 

  • Red Hat's Kick-Start system 

        Arthur Andersen London, TW7        2001 – 2002

Digital Solutions was an arm of Arthur Andersen that developed web applications primarily using the the Broad Vision application. Clients included Wallmart and My Travel. 

Senior Systems Administrator 

I was responsible for maintaining the development and test environments for the projects, as well as acting as a liaison between Arthur Andersen's network security and clients, to organise connectivity to environments within Arthur Andersen's networks. 

• I administered numerous *nix environments including Solaris, AIX and Red Hat Linux, which provided the project development environments. This included initial planning and configuration and ongoing maintenance. 

• I liaised between Andersen Digital Solutions,  Arthur Andersen Network Security and clients to resolve connectivity issues. This usually involved setting up separate dial-in systems or negotiating what protocols could be allowed through our firewall, and investigating alternate solutions where possible.

• I provided initial support and maintenance for Oracle and DB2 relational data base systems, including installation, configuration and backup. 

• I was responsible for the entire development and testing requirements which included specifying the hardware depending on requirements and planning the installation and configuration of the systems. 

        Xpedior UK Ltd London, TW7        1999 – 2001

Senior Systems Administrator 

Give an overview of my responsibilities. 

• I was the sole person responsible for building up the UK's network infrastructure. This included but was not limited to: DNS (Bind), mail (Exchange), NT4 Domain and Internet connectivity. 

• I was responsible for the IT related purchasing, including specifying requirements and obtaining quotes. 

• I provided 3rd line technical support relating to both internal systems and external solutions.

• I administered a Nortel Option 11C phone system; requiring the configuration of voice mail, calling groups and new users. 

• I oversaw the installation of a new office's IT related systems; this included expansion of network connectivity and telephony. 

        iDesk Plc London, NW9        1997 – 1999

iDesk Plc specialised in providing telephone helpdesks to ISP's and virtual ISP's. In addition to this they provided specialist support to small businesses that were unable to support an internal helpdesk. 

Systems Administrator 

• Assisted in the day-to-day administration of the Cable & Wireless e-commerce platform. 

  This involved supporting the following applications; Netscape Enterprise Server, Open Market's Transact version 3 and 4, Sun Solaris, Firewall One. 

• Supported the implementation of Electronic Commerce for various organisations including; Clockwork Web and Oxford University Press. 

• Aided in the maintenance and improvement of the inter-departmental network. 

Business Call Centre Technician 

• Technical support to Cable & Wireless Business customers, provided trouble shooting and configuration of mini networks using ISDN routers. 

• Provided general support for common office applications. 

• General administration of numerous Linux boxes running Red Hat Linux. 

Interests 

I have recently purchased a property with my partner and am going through the phase of “renovating”, I currently expect to be enjoying this particular task for years to come. When I'm not failing to renovate, I enjoy cycling in the summer, reading books, and catching up with my friends when I have a chance.