ABOUT ME

Hi, I'm Brian Hamilton, Azure Architect and DevOps Specialist focussing on Azure. I am a highly motivated and dedicated Infrastructure Engineer with a wealth of experience in Cloud & Infrastructure technologies, able to work on my own initiative and as part of a technical team, with excellent communication skills and the ability to understand and analyse technical problems and own them through to resolution. My current focus is primarily related to Microsoft Azure design, architecture and monitoring of Azure IAAS, PAAS and SAAS services and Azure DevOps. I enjoy staying abreast with the latest & emerging enterprise technologies. I have a growth mindset and see lifelong learning as crucial to my personal development. I continue to pursue technical certifications to recognise and validate a modern technical skillset.

I built this page as part of the Azure Resume Challenge.

Certifications

Azure Administrator Associate

May 2019

Azure Solutions Architect Expert

February 2020

Azure DevOps Engineer Expert

March 2022

Work

Deloitte

Infrastructure & Cloud Monitoring Specialist• March 2016 - Present

  • Working as part of the Systems Management Team focussed on the delivery of day to day management & monitoring capabilities necessary to ensure the availability of Deloitte’s IT infrastructure (over 3000 servers), both on premises and in the Cloud, including the platform design, management and support.
  • System Center Operations Manager & Systems Orchestrator platform expert responsible for the design decisions, management, support and maintenance of the platform.
  • Solarwinds platform expert responsible for design decisions, management, support and maintenance of the platform.
  • Responsible for designing Cloud monitoring strategies for both IAAS and cloud native solutions including:
  • Implementing an actionable alerting strategy, which includes processes enabling the interrogation of Log Analytics logs using basic Kusto (KQL) queries, integrating crash analytics and integrating user analytics on key metrics and performance indicators and integrating monitoring tools with communication platforms such as Microsoft Teams.
  • Design authentication and authorization strategies for monitoring including access solutions containing Azure AD Privileged Identity Management Conditional Access, Service Principals and Managed Identity. Configuring service connections and implementing Azure Policies to enforce organizational requirements.
  • Deploying and configuring Application Insights for Application Performance Monitoring. VM Insights for Azure Virtual Machine and Azure Scale-set monitoring and other Azure based monitoring solutions in line with customer requirements.
  • Other Azure expertise includes a broad knowledge and understanding of creating secure, scalable, highly available infrastructure and applications in Azure and associated technologies, including Compute, Network and Storage. Azure Log Analytics. Azure High Availability, Azure Automation, Azure Container technologies including Docker and Kubernetes. Serverless computing and Load Balancing to name the most relevant Azure components currently used.
  • Understanding & keen interest in deploying DevOps practices in relation to existing workloads including manage source control using Git and Azure Repos. Working with branching strategies for source code, pull requests and branch policies. Integrate source control DevOps pipelines, Artefacts. Custom dashboards on Azure DevOps. Integrating workflow with Azure Boards. Implement quality gates and testing strategies to ensure code quality. Implementing build and release strategies including experience of using a build agent infrastructure, developing and implement build triggers, build pipelines, pipeline health, reusable build subsystems such as YAML templates and Variable Groups. Release strategy (blue/green, canary, ring).
  • Keen Interest in Infrastructure as Code technologies: ARM, Terraform, PowerShell and Azure CLI.
  • Creating DevOps Monitoring process documentation including onboarding new employees, assessing and documenting applications and dependencies such as application integrations.

    • Deloitte

    Infrastructure Operations Centre Engineer• November 2008 - March 2016

  • Working as part of the Service Delivery Team focussed on the delivery of day to day operational activities necessary to ensure that the availability of the firm’s IT systems.
  • Pro-active and preventative systems monitoring and support on a 24/7 basis of all IT Infrastructure platforms including Storage, Network and Compute.
  • Perform a high degree of troubleshooting and problem identification through an understanding of networking technologies. LAN, WAN, VPN or wireless technologies
  • Back-up systems management & administration using HP Data Protector, Microsoft Data Protection Manager, BESR and NetBackup.
  • Managing Service Alert and situation management processes
  • Application Migration Project Microsoft SCCM 2007 to Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2
  • Automation of tasks and procedures using PowerShell and VBScript
  • Other technologies and platforms supported in the role include, but are not limited to Microsoft Clustering, Citrix XenApp, Active Directory, Domino server and HP SIM.
  • Patch Management

    • Stan James (UK) Ltd

    IT Systems & Network Analyst • June 2006 - November 2008

    Deloitte

    2nd Line Helpdesk Analyst • January 2006 - May 2007

    Merlin Information Systems

    Help Desk Analyst • May 2002 - December 2005