Muhammad Hamid Ashraf, Asst Manager - IT Network Operations

Muhammad Hamid Ashraf

Asst Manager - IT Network Operations

Ufone - Etisalat Group

Location
United Arab Emirates
Education
Bachelor's degree, Computer Engineering
Experience
11 years, 2 months

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Work Experience

Total years of experience :11 years, 2 months

Asst Manager - IT Network Operations at Ufone - Etisalat Group
  • Pakistan - Islamabad
  • My current job since July 2016

• Plan, deploy and administration and management of deployed core network and security infrastructure in North Region.(Platforms Include: ASR9000, Nexus7k, Nexus 5k, 2k FEXes, Cisco Catalyst 4800 ASA5585 and many more)
• Configuration and management of core network elements, ensure proper network configuration change management, maintenance and routine patch management in North Region (Platforms Include: Juniper J6350, SSG550, SSG20, Catalyst 2900, Catalyst 3550, 3560, 3750 switches and more)
• Level 2 support services of all network support services and critical WAN interconnects and internet gateways.(WLC 5508, WCS, ACS etc)
• Manage the RE team for daily 24/7 network monitoring and reporting. The RE team is responsible for proactive monitoring of network equipment and KPI reporting of performance, utilization and capacity via available NMS and other monitoring solutions
• Assist to IT Network Manager for preparation and evaluation of RFP, RFQ, Technical Evaluation and business cases of IT networks procurement and IT budget preparation
PROJECTS:
1. Deployment of Cisco ISE 2.4 for Wireless Network Access Control and Posturing.
2. Nationwide Wireless Upgrade Rollout
3. Layer 2 security (DHCP Snooping and Arp Inspection) provisioning on Nationwide switches.
4. Viptela SD-WAN solution for remote sites.

Network Engineer at Gulf Business Machines
  • United Arab Emirates - Dubai
  • September 2015 to February 2016

Network Engineer, Gulf Business Machines, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E
September 2015 - December 2015
Outsourced to First Gulf Bank Abu Dhabi for the 3 projects.
PROJECTS:
1. WAN Migration from Unmanaged MPLS to Managed MPLS via Etisalat IP Connect Service.
• Proposed IP Schema for different services running in the Bank
• Closely coordinating with ISP for scheduling of branch migration.
• Reviewing and verifying edge routers configuration proposed by ISP
2. Network Branches Refreshing with Cisco Stackwise and HA.
• Staging of switches with my GBM internal implementation team for each branch
• Performed survey of each branch for the requirements to be fulfilled related to power, space, model of switches.
3. Application Centric Infrastructure in Data Center (ACI)
• Performed data collection of all data center switches, which was to be analyzed later on for application mapping.
• Defined different EPGs for different application running in production.
• Initial setup of Nexus 9k, 77k switches as spine and leaf to build ACI Cloud.
• Configured APIC for different L2, L3 and L4- L7 policies.
• Defined strategy for application migration from older infrastructure to ACI Cloud.
• Worked on CISCO Nexus 7k, 5k series switches, 2k fabric extenders, MDS 9200 series switches, and well enough understanding and implementation knowledge of different data center networking technologies e.g VDCs, vPC, vPC+, OTV, ACLs, UCSM, Fibre Channel, FCoE, FCIP etc.

Networks/Systems Administrator at National Exchange Co.
  • United Arab Emirates - Abu Dhabi
  • October 2013 to September 2015

• LAN/WAN configuration for newly deployed branches.
• Deployment, Configuration and Administration of Cyberoam Network Security Appliances (UTM) .
• Web Filtering, IPS, Application restriction policies and Firewall Rules on all the Gateway devices .
• QoS policies for efficient BW utilization
• Configuration, Administration and Troubleshooting of IPSec VPNs between Branches/Sub-Branches and Head Office.
• Regular Firmware update of all Gateway Devices to overcome newly discoveredVulnerabilities and weaknesses
• Regular Databases backups for all the branches.
• Implementing necessary security policies in order to keep data integrity and privacy.
• Implementing a Highly available Private Cloud using MS System Center 2012 R2 components (SCVMM, SCSM, SCOrch, SCDPM, SCOP) and using Hyper-V Virtualization.
• Designing, Implementation, Optimization and verification of CISCO based networks as per cisco implementation and verification standards.
• Hands on Experience on CISCO 2960/3550/3560 series catalyst switches
• Hands on Experience on CISCO 1800/2600/3400/3700 series Routers.
• Well understanding and working concepts of IGP and EGP Protocols such as RIPv2, OSPF, EIGRP, BGP for their optimized Implementation as well as optimization.
• Deployment of EMC SMARTS 9.4 (SAM, IP AM/PM, ESM, OSPF, BGP) as part of Infrastructure Management Project.
• Discovery/Auto-Discovery of the Infrastructure and setting up Polling and Threshold parameters for root cause analysis and fault tolerance using EMC SMARTS IP Manager.
• Gathering topology details from Managers and representing those details in EMC SAM.
• Integrating EMC SMARTS and Watch4net using solution packs

Asst Engineer Data Center at Interactive Group (Interactive Convergence)
  • Pakistan - Islamabad
  • April 2013 to October 2013

• Installation of CentOS, RHEL5, Solaris10, Windows Server 2003, 2008 R2
• Linux/UNIX Network configuration.
• Installation of packages (RPM) and patches .
• Linux Services Management
• FTP NTP DHCP Configuration on Linux Platforms (CentOS, RHEL5) and UNIX (SOLARIS 10) .
• Creation of Groups and adding/removing users from groups in linux Environment.
• Monitoring system logs and the root's email for important messages such as errors and warnings or hardware fail errors.
• Security implementation by using ACL's & special file permissions.
• OSPF, STP, RSTP, RIP, EIGRP Protocols configurations.
• Successfully deployed Nagios Core and its integration with Services Management Software (OTRS).
• Configured Zimbra Email Server on Virtualized Test Environment

Trainee Engineer Data Center at Interactive Group (Interactive Convergence)
  • Pakistan - Islamabad
  • October 2012 to April 2013

• Ensured 24/7/365 on call availability • Monitoring in Data Center NOC for all critical Services, Servers, Network Devices and timely escalation to the concerned resources for timely action to mitigate the problem.
• Monitoring of Temperature status of Data Center and UPS capacity
• Timely Troubleshooting and ensuring always availability of Mobile TV Service.
• Mounting new servers, chasis, Router, Switch etc in Data Center and performing Management Configuration to ensure remote availability.
• Familiarized myself with various compliance policies.
• Familiarized with n+1 redundancy measures and procedures in Data Center environment to ensure 99.99%

Education

Bachelor's degree, Computer Engineering
  • at COMSATS Institute of Information Technology
  • September 2012

Core Subjects include: 1. Embedded Systems Design 2. Advanced Computer Architecture 3. Systems Programming(Win32 API Programming using C++) 4. Network Programming(C Language) 5. Data Structures and Algorithms 6. Data Communication and Computer Networking 7. Operating Systems Concepts 8. Digital Image Processing

High school or equivalent, Pre- Engineering
  • at Fazaia Degree College
  • September 2008
High school or equivalent, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology
  • at Fazaia Degree College
  • September 2006

Specialties & Skills

Security
Data Center
Juniper
Routing (OSPF, EIGRP, BGP)
Cisco Routers and Switches
Switching
Data Center Technologies (VDCs, vPC, vPC+, OTV, ACLs, UCSM, Fibre Channel, FCoE, FCIP)
Nexus Switches (9k, 7k, 5k, 2k)

Languages

English
Expert
Urdu
Intermediate
Pushto
Intermediate
Hindi
Intermediate
Punjabi
Intermediate

Training and Certifications

CCIE DC # 52223 (Certificate)
Date Attended:
March 2016
Valid Until:
January 9999
CCNP R&S (Certificate)
Date Attended:
February 2015
Valid Until:
February 2018
MCSE- Private Cloud (Certificate)
Date Attended:
September 2014
Valid Until:
September 2017
JNCIA- Junos (Certificate)
Date Attended:
July 2013
Valid Until:
July 2015
CCNA R & S (Certificate)
Date Attended:
February 2014
Valid Until:
February 2017
MCSA (Certificate)
Date Attended:
July 2014
Valid Until:
July 2017
Server Virtualization with Windows Server and System Center (Certificate)
Date Attended:
February 2014
Valid Until:
February 2017

Hobbies

  • Cyber Security
  • Ethical Hacking
  • Networks Deployments
  • Blogging
    networks-club.blogspot.com