Enterprise Virtualization and Storage Specialist

About us:

The Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) group, part of the Information Technology Services (ITS) division, is responsible for campus core network, campus wireless, wide area network connectivity and internet connectivity for the University, including connectivity to research and education networks.

EIS is also responsible for services related to departmental network management, network, server and storage infrastructure, Windows and Linux server management services, database and application integration and support, enterprise backup service, 24/7 operation of central administrative data centres and telecommunications services.

If you’re motivated and passionate about learning technologies and dedicated to improving experiences for today’s student, consider a career with us.

Your opportunity:

Enterprise Virtualization and Storage Specialist provides highly specialized multi-role technical support for the operation of a large, complex, multi-platform hybrid cloud infrastructure in the EIS data centres that supports mission-critical IT workloads. Under the general direction of the Manager, Servers, Storage and Virtualization, the Enterprise Virtualization and Storage Specialist (EVSS) is responsible for the deployment, on-going management and systems support related to the Enterprise Virtual Computing and Storage Infrastructure (VCSI) of the University of Toronto. The EVSS works in a small dynamic team responsible for the design, development, and implementation of the VCSI environment. The EVSS is expected to provide Level III support to colocation clients.

The EVSS manages, maintains, and documents various large-scale Enterprise hardware virtualization platforms and operating systems; configures physical and virtual networks as well as physical and virtual storage on multiple vendor-specific platforms; and provides diagnostic assistance and configuration support for Storage Area Networking, IP Storage Area Networking, or Network Attached Storage. Acts as an expert technical resource to others; provides project leadership including team coordination, estimating, assigning and reviewing work for assigned projects. With the expansion of AI workloads across the university, the EVSS now also supports GPU-accelerated compute infrastructure integrated with enterprise virtualization platform, providing the foundational layer for AI/ML services delivered to client groups.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Along with other members of the team, is directly responsible for the day-to-day operation, planning, design, development, implementation, configuration, documentation, review, and management of the central administrative hybrid cloud infrastructure hosting mission critical IT services and ensuring that the infrastructure remains operational and available.
• Provides Level III support, systems analysis, programming, engineering, service management, problem resolution in support of the VCSI with various hardware virtualization platforms using Type 1 hypervisors (e.g., VMware vSphere, Proxmox) and operating systems (e.g., Linux, Solaris, BSD Unix, Windows).
• Monitors, analyses and manages performance of VCSI systems to maintain an available and stable platform for data replication, disaster recovery, and business continuity.
• Configures, administers and supports VCSI virtualnetworks and HA storage clusters on multiple vendor-specific platforms that operate 7x24x365.
• Provisions, configures, and manages GPU hardware resources and virtualized GPU workload profiles within the enterprise hypervisor environment, includingperformance monitoring, lifecycle management, and multi-tenant resource isolation for AI/ML workloads.
• Designs and reviews VCSI virtual and physical security policies as well as authorizes and enforces access controls in the VCSI (both hardware and divisional/departmental resources).
• Manages virtual teams and projects involving staff from other units and departments as well various vendors for complex, large scale, high-value, multi-discipline enterprise class storage and virtualization environments.
• Retains currency in qualifications.

Essential Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics or Mathematics, or acceptable equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Ten (10) years of work experience with at least eight (8) years of experience in:
• Working at a high technical level (Level II or III) as a Systems Programmer/Analyst with industry standard type-1 hypervisors (e.g., VMware vSphere, Proxmox). Must have extensive experience and demonstrated ability in advanced support for one or more hypervisors used in a large-scale data centre environment for mission critical IT operations.
• Direct hands-on experience in workingin a large-scale production data centre environment installing and configuring hardware including servers, networking equipment, storage systems, Fibre Channel networks and switches, computer cabinets and related components, including standardized cable dressing and management.
• Level II/III SAN support experience in large-scale enterprise environments, including IP SAN, NAS, and Fibre Channel (FC), with demonstrated expertise supporting clustered high availability (HA) storage appliance.
• Experience with commercial ZFS-based SAN/NAS storage appliances, including ZFS pool management, NFS, and snapshot-based replication and data protection strategies.
• Hands-on experience configuring and managing GPU hardware in a large-scale data centre environment, including GPU virtualization (vGPU, passthrough, or equivalent), driver and firmware lifecycle, and high-performance fabric technologies supporting AI/ML compute workloads.
• Significant hands-on experience in designing, deploying and administering public and private cloud environment.
• Strong understanding of backup and recovery concepts, including data protection, replication, and disaster recovery.
• Heterogeneous O/S systems programming/analysis level support including support of various UNIX software services.
• Engineering and administering or implementing relevant security policies and best practices including experience with Ethernet MAC layer firewalls and designing and engineering complex multilayer firewalls.
• Expert knowledge on systems performance, problem determination and troubleshooting in highly complex multiple technology domains.
• Demonstrated ability to program in administrative scripting languages (Python, PowerShell, awk, sed, shell, Perl, TCL, etc.)
• Basic skills include expert knowledge of TCP/IP, SCSI and SAS, NFS, x86 Architecture, enterprise IT hardware concepts.
• Highly organized and process driven with the ability to write proposals, make presentations to management or professional peers.

Assets (Nonessential):

• Certifications such as VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation Administrator (VCP-VCF), VMware Certified Professional – Data Center Virtualization (VCPDCV), VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Data Center Virtualization (VCAP-DCV), Cisco CCNP Data Center, SNIA Storage Engineer, or SNIA Storage Networking Expert are highly desirable.
• Experience integrating GPU resources into enterprise hypervisor and container orchestration platforms, and familiarity with GPU partitioning and multi-tenant sharing strategies in a research or enterprise environment, is highly desirable.
• Experience in engineering, optimization, orchestration and automation of private and public cloud infrastructure is highly desirable.
• Experience and in-depth knowledge of Cloud environments and associated networking technologies an asset.
• Previous experience in a similar role, managingDell NetWorker or other enterprise backup and recovery solutions, is a plus.
• Demonstrated experience writing white-papers, best-practice documents, and procedural manuals an asset.

To be successful in this role you will be:

• Communicator
• Efficient
• Meticulous
• Motivated self-learner
• Proactive
• Problem solver
• Team player