Michael Rice
Jewett, Texas
210-764-9779
michael (at) michaelrice (dot) org

OBJECTIVE

To continue my professional career in cloud computing with a growing company focused on providing exceptional products and support to its customers.

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE

RackN

Senior Systems Engineer June 2019 -- Current

• Create Infrastructure As Code workflows and pipelines that enable customers to build infrastructure in a highly customizable yet repeatable way
• Developed a Python-based agent for executing workflows on ESXi systems, significantly enhancing product adoption among large enterprise customers aiming to automate their systems
• Created support process using ZenDesk to streamline previous email only based support process
• Setup PagerDuty and tied into ZenDesk to allow 24/7 customers a way to get support after hours and streamline on-call rotation
• Added enhancements to GoLang based cli tool so customers could gather system information with a single command to provide to support team to help streamline support process for customers and engineers
• Created Python SDK and managed publishing to PyPi for distribution to customers
• Created Nagios integration for product to automate deployment and configuration
• Created Jenkins integration

Rackspace

Software Developer -- OpenStack Private Cloud Solutions R&D May 2015 -- Feb 2019

• Create custom solutions to allow customers to integrate external identity providers for use with Keystone Federation for SSO to OpenStack based clouds
• Build custom Horizon dashboards, panels, and plugins
• Create custom OpenStack Ansible roles and playbooks to extend functionality of Rackspace Private Cloud
• Build custom solutions to help facilitate the installation of Rackspace Private Cloud OpenStack Edition
• Build Ansible playbooks to automate the configuration of Ubuntu before Rackspace Private Cloud OpenStack Edition is installed

Software Developer -- VMWare Practice Aug 2012 - May 2015

• Worked with development team to redesign application stack to scale using RabbitMQ
• Created HostSystem automation that used Grails, RabbitMQ, and SSH
• Continue to maintain and enhance web based operations tool
• Onboarding all new developers to the team helping them learn the application stack and Git
• Work closely with scrum master to build stories for the Jr Developers
• Work with DevOps team to build Jenkins jobs that assist with automated deployments of Grails apps
• Created python application that is run from CRON to gather billing data from vCloud Usage Meter
• Created automated decom process for HostSystems and VirtualMachines removing lots of NVA work from the Operations team ticket queue
• Worked with product owners to design some of the NextGen VMware products Rackspace will be offering
• Worked on automated provisioning tools that will play a key role in some of the NextGen VMware products
• SME for Git and vSphere API

Virtualization Engineer Sep 2011 - Aug 2012

• Installed and configured OpenStack using early versions of the Rackspace Private Cloud
  • Worked with the development team to enhance the quality of the installer
  • Debug django based installer when it failed
  • Trouble shoot puppet manifests that were part of the install process
• Created v1 of the current automated provisioning system used by the Managed Virtualization powered by VMware product
  • Used Grails to create a series of applications that tied the CMDB into vSphere using REST
• Created web application for VMware Operations team that reduced manual work
• Created automation to handle several large volume tickets that were deemed as Non Value Add tickets
• Created web based DeClone tool using Grails, Perl, and the VMware VIX library

McClelland & Hine

Systems Administrator Jan 2007 - Aug 2011

• Replaced Cisco routers with OpenSource FreeBSD solution using quagga. Routing protocols used: OSPF
• Replaced InterTel PBX with OpenSource solution using Asterisk and a custom version of FreePBX
• Replaced legacy FreeBSD systems with updated Linux servers to provide company DNS, and file servers using SAMBA with minimal down time
• Implemented SQUID for caching and web filtering
• Implemented a VMware solution to reduce server foot print in datacenters using vSphere 3.5 and later updating to 4.1
  • This reduced physical server foot print from close to 100 servers between 3 locations to 9 physical servers
• Implemented various monitoring systems including Nagios (later updated to Icinga), SmokePing, and Munin
• Responsible for keeping Falconstor IPstor SAN updated with latest patches and doing SAN provisioning
• Replaced legacy firewalls with PFSense powered firewalls
• Implemented F5 Firepass VPN
• Provided exceptional end user support to 120+ employees on printers, faxes, Windows desktop issues, and email
• Managed company DNS servers running BIND & Email using Kerio
• Implemented puppet to allow for centralized configuration management
• Created various automated tools using PERL, PHP, and Python that integrated with VMware and Asterisk

OPENSOURCE PROJECTS

Very active member of the OpenSource community since 2005.

• simdeplower -- Python tool to deploy a vCenter Server Appliance into Fusion or Workstation
  • Source
  • Releases
  • Role: Creator
• Thunderhead -- Python SDK for VMware vCloud Usage Meter
  • Source
  • Releases
  • Role: Creator
• YAVIJAVA -- Fork of VIJAVA the Java bindings for vSphere
  • Source
  • Releases
  • Role: Creator
• pyVmomi -- Python SDK for VMware vSphere
  • Source
  • Releases
  • Role: Active Contributor, RPM Package Maintainer
• pyVmomi-community-samples -- Python scripts to demonstrate how to use pyVmomi
  • Source
  • Role: Active Contributor
• grails-weakSSL -- Grails plugin to deliberately break SSL for you by accepting any SSL certificate
  • Source
  • Releases
  • Role: Current Maintainer
• grails-jsch-ssh2 -- Grails plugin that provides ssh client using jsch-ssh2 library
  • Source
  • Releases
  • Role: Creator

PUBLIC SPEAKING

• vCenter Simulator For Functional Testing #1 Sept 2015 -- VMWorld US 2015
  • Video
  • Slide Deck
• Quick Intoduction To pyVmomi Sept 2015 -- VMWorld US 2015
  • Video
  • Slide Deck
• YAVIJAVA An Alternative Java SDK For vSphere Sept 2015 -- VMWorld US 2015
  • Video
  • Slide Deck
• Quick Deep Dive Into vCenter Simulator Configuration Sept 2015 -- VMWorld 2015
  • Video
  • Slide Deck
• Introduction to vSphere APIs Using pyVmomi March 2015 -- San Antonio VMWare User Group
  • Slide Deck
• Paths to VOIP March 2008 -- American Association of Managing General Agents Automation Conference
  • Case Study

BUZZ WORDS

Experience using the following:

• Operating Systems: Red Hat, Centos, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, FreeBSD, Mac OSX, Windows 7
• VMware: vSphere, VIX, pyVmomi, ESX, ESXi, Fusion, Workstation, Player, vCloud Usage Meter, vCloud Director, VIJAVA, YAVIJAVA
• Programming Languages: Groovy, Java, Perl, Python, PHP, Bash Scripting, limited exposure to Ruby
• Web Frameworks: Grails, Flask, Zend, limited exposure to django
• Databases: MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite
• SCM: Git, GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, Subversion
• Monitoring: Nagios, Icinga, Munin, SmokePing
• Config Management: Ansible, Chef, Puppet, SaltStack
• Other: vcrpy, betamax, dsh, fabric, Apache httpd, Apache Tomcat, BIND, Lighttpd, OmniGraffle, Jira, Trello, Pivotal Tracker, Vagrant, Jenkins, Travis-CI