About
Jeffrey Patton
Summary
I've been in the Information Technology sector since the early 1990's. During my time I've dealt with customers covering everything from Y2K concerns, certification paths, Identity Management and most recently custom automation. My team is currently responsible for handling the automation for internal processes within the Rackspace public cloud offerings. I'm mainly responsible for the development of API's and PowerShell modules.
Experience
| Rackspace Technology | (6 years) |
As a member of this small team our responsibility was to consolidate the build process across all public clouds for Rackspace. Each team would get design specifications for a customer build in differing formats and with differing levels of information. This created disparity between builds in the clouds and even within the same product at times. We had a handful of goals to address this issue:
- Standardize Design Documents
- Create a process to automate the build
- Standardize on a single templating language
- Reduce build times globally
- Make the build an artifact to be handed over
DevOps Engineer III (Azure Build Team) September 2018 - January 2022
As the Lead Engineer with the Build Team I worked very closely with our Azure Architects and Customers to bring their environments into reality. I was responsible for the ongoing maintenance of the ARM templates and leveraging new technologies for deployements:
- Migrating ARM from internal Github to VSTO
- Developing standards around ARM templates
- Developing automated deployments around Azure Pipelines
- Decreasing build times from days to hours
DevOps Engineer III (Azure Support) July 2016 - September 2018
As a part of the Support team for the recently created Azure Product group within Rackspace I worked directly with customers via ticketing and phone support. I worked closely with our customers to resolve issues within their environments. This could include issues that ran from simple to complex:
- Load Balancer/Application Gateway Configuration questions
- Automated server shutdown to reduce cost
- Backups
- Site-to-Site VPN troubleshooting
- OS-Level Support
| Lowe's | (1 year) |
As a Systems Admin I worked with a small team to develop efficient processes for provisioning the fleet of servers that we mainted in Azure. As a small team it was also expected that we all carry out the regular maintenance and support activities for the fleet. Duties included:
- Transition from Portal deployment to ARM templates
- Develop salt temlates for Configuration Management
- Develop scripts for VM maintenance
| University of Kansas | (8 years) |
As an Enterprise Speciliast at KU I worked with a team of Windows Admins to support the Enterprise systems that were in use across all Campus locations. My primary responsibility was handing the Windows Identity servers (Active Directory) and their supporting systems. Changes were made through a strict Change Policy where changes were required to approved by the larger Campus IT community in order to understand their impact. Some of the more interesting projects I was involved with were:
- Upgrading forest functional levels
- Developing SCOM MP's to track exploits and deliver remediations
- Working SCORCH to automate student onboarding, employee onboarding, and user decommisioning
- Automating day-to-day tasks for my team
- Developing a web portal to provision VM's on the ESXi cluster
Assistant Director IT (School of Engineering) February 2007 - May 2012
The Assistant Director of IT worked closely with the Director in all aspects of IT direction for the School. My primary responsibility was defining the direction the School would take with emerging technologies. I was directly responsible and involved with several key projects:
- Automating IT Processes with VBS
- Active Directory Consolidation
- Developing automated logon/logoff startup/shutdown scripts
- Migration from Ghost to RIS
- Implementing iSCSI SAN storage
- Migration from RIS to SCCM
- Implementing SCOM for monitoring
- Windows Desktop OS version upgrades
- Windows Server OS version upgrades
- Transitioning to PowerShell from VBS
- Active Directory migration
| Bryan College | (3 years) |
As a technical trainer at Bryan College I was expected to develop and work with Microsoft Curriculum to build solid foundations for my students to become successful IT workers. While we focused on certification for each student we were also focused on each student being able to move into the workplace and succeed. So in addition to writing curriculum and working on lesson plans and developing lab work and tests, we also worked with the students in social aspects of a job interview.
| Americomp | (8 years) |
As a certification trainer at Americomp I was expected to stay up to date with all current certifications as well as develop methods for successful completion of the various certification tests for my students. This involved developing practice tests, study guides and lab exercises to practice and re-enforce the skills being tested over.
Education
Washburn University
Computer Science May 1989 - May 1995Certifications
- Azure Adminitrator
- Microsoft Certified Professional
- Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator
- Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
- Microsoft Certified Trainer
Skills
- Windows System Administration
- Linux System Administration
- Active Directory
- PowerShell
- C#
- Azure