Tom Braselton

217 Poplarwood Dr.

Kyle, TX 78640

 

Phone: (512) 699-4275

E-Mail: tom@thebraseltons.com

 

 

Profile

My professional experience has led me through highly demanding and diverse positions in computer maintenance, system support, development and management related fields since 1991. These positions were complemented with extensive hands-on experience designing, writing and using diagnostic software, operating systems, networking environments, storage environments and application software. Throughout my career, I have gained experience in training development, problem solving and decision making.

 

My time off has been spent maintaining my former skills and knowledge and developing new ones. I learned more about VMWare ESX servers and API usage to automate many tasks. I generated HTML formatted reports of the enumerated hosts on ESX servers with great configuration detail. There were also scripts to create new hosts with configurable parameters. I have also been developing for Twitter, Facebook and other online services to keep up with the social media aspect of the computer industry along with other web programming.

 

Experience

System Integration Engineer, Vignette; Austin, TX 6/2006-8/2008

Daily responsibilities included managing relationships with third-party vendors and internal engineering along with customer support. Also was responsible for performing Proof-of-Concept testing in the Content Management Application and Portal Server.

-    Administration/Installation/Configuration of WebLogic and WebSphere Applicaiton Servers, Oracle/Microsoft SQL/DB2 databases

-    Daily use of AIX/HP-UX/Solaris/Windows/Linux operating systems

-    Managed relationships with BEA, IBM, Autonomy and BMC

-    Developed a proficiency with Java and the J2EE architecture to write debug code for demonstration of third-party problems

 

System Test Manager, Perseus Labs; Austin, TX 3/2001-6/2006

Daily responsibilities included managing as many as ten engineers and technicians during hardware and software testing. Also created employee performance plans and administered employee appraisals.

-    Designed test plans, strategies and reports

-    Trained new employees in procedure, hardware and software

-    Designed cross-platform software test tools to stress and benchmark Intel and AMD based computers and entire subsystems. Development environments included Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, Metrowerks CodeWarrior and VIM/GCC (Linux). Tool suite included CPU, RAM, network and storage tests

-    Designed new network test tool that achieved 99% of the theoretical bidirectional maximum of a network

-    Server Blade testing. Testing included all HP hardware / infrastructure and automated server installations using HP's RapiDeploy server. Operating systems supported by the software were SuSE Linux (includes SLES and United Linux variants), RedHat Linux (Advanced Server / EL), Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003

 

Server Management Application Programmer, Dell Computer; Austin, TX 1998-2001

Daily responsibilities included writing/maintaining installation packages for HP OpenView, Dell's hardware instrumentation and Independent Hardware Vendor (IHV) applications.

-    The main install application required detailed knowledge of Microsoft MFC based applications, InstallShield and Install Wizard.

-    Supported operating systems were Windows 9x, Windows NT and NetWare

-    Developed support .DLLs and .NLMs for the Server Management Software group

 

Server Product Test Technician, Dell Computer; Austin, TX 1996-1998

Daily responsibilities included performing rigorous local and network testing/compatibility testing on prototype servers before system test.

-    Designed a filesystem test tool and benchmark using C/C++ for identifying problems and debugging

-    Designed a remote application that automatically controlled client computers to perform server testing

-    Designed a network test tool that performed unbuffered transactions which was able to achieve 99% of the theoretical unidirectional maximum of a network

-    Adjusted the network tool to test slot-to-slot PCI performance

-    Executed benchmarks to provide information to development

-    Logged and tracked issues found with the hardware or software

-    Proficiency with Windows NT, BackOffice, Novell NetWare, 10/100Mb Ethernet, Token Ring, LanDesk Server Manager, switches, hubs, routers and MAUs

 

Technical Support Associate, Dell Computer; Austin, TX 1995-1996

Daily responsibilities included providing technical support on Operating Systems, Desktops, Notebooks and Servers.

-    Software supported - Windows 3.1, 3.11, 95, Windows NT Workstation, Novell NetWare and MS-DOS

-    Able to resolve complex technical issues quickly and efficiently

-    Programmer for internal tool that supplemented Dell's diagnostic tools for easy troubleshooting

-    Star Team programmer for remote technical support of customer's computers

 

Repair Technician, Tandy Service Center; Arlington, TX 1993-1995

Daily responsibilities included the repair of PC and Macintosh computers and printers. Performed warranty repairs on most brands of computers.

-    Exceeded the required salary/labor ratio for the service area

-    Trained new employees in repairing computers and software

                                                                         

 

Field Service Technician, Metroplex Information Systems; Ft. Worth, TX 1991-1993

Daily responsibilities included the repair of computers, printers and installing networks. Networks included Novell NetWare software and all hardware for the network. Servers and workstations were custom built for each installation. This position required visits to customer locations in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex.

 

Skills / Strengths

                Operating Systems

-    Microsoft Windows 3.0-2003 including Server Versions (32bit/64bit)

-    Linux (RedHat, SuSE), AIX, Solaris (SPARC, x86), HP-UX

-    Novell NetWare 3.1-5 plus later Linux Variations

-    Mac OS-X 10.3.1-10.5.8

 

                Hardware

-    Dell PowerEdge Servers (the majority of all servers including blade servers)

-    HP (Compaq) Proliant Servers (the majority of all servers including blade servers)

-    IBM Servers (including blade servers)

-    Dell Storage Enclosures and RAID Arrays

-    HP (Compaq) Storage Enclosures and RAID Arrays

-    Routers and switches including Cisco, HP, Dell, Brocade and Nortel

-    Network Cards/Chipsets including Intel, Broadcom

-    Host Bus Adapter (HBA) including Emulex, QLogic and LSI

-    Wireless Networking - Adapters and Access Points

                                                                                 

                Applications

-    Oracle (BEA) WebLogic Server 8.1, 9.1, 9.2, 10.0

-    Microsoft Visual Studio, Apple XCode, gcc

-    Visual SourceSafe, Perforce, Subversion

-    MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle 9i, 10g

-    Dell OpenManage, HP Systems Insight Manager, HP OpenView

-    Vignette Applications - Vignette Content Management, Vignette Portal

-    BMC AppSight J2EE, JRockit Mission Control, Oracle (BEA) Guardian

                                                                                 

                Technical Knowledge

-    C/C++ (since 1996), Java (since 2006), Shell Scripting (All)

-    ODBC/JDBC Programming

-    TCP/UDP/Multicast programming, network layer debug and analyzation

-    Multithreaded programming

-    Java J2EE and Java Programming

-    PHP, Perl, HTML, CSS

 

Education and Professional Certification

-    Texas State Technical College, Waco, Texas Associates of Applied Science in Computer Maintenance, 1991

-    WebLogic 9.x Application Server System Administration

-    Management Training - Effective Hiring, Discovering Individual Styles of Communication, Coaching for Success and Setting Performance Expectations

-    Programming and Integration for HP OpenView (Ft. Collins, Colorado)

-    Dell Technical Curriculum for operating systems and hardware (Laptop, Desktop and Server)

-    Advanced Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95 and Windows NT Support

-    Microsoft Certified System Engineer - Windows NT 4.0

-    Comptia A+ Certified

-    Numerous Printer Maintenance and Repair certifications