Mike Blake

About

I've been working in IT for 20 years, working my way up from 1st to 3rd line engineering, then architecture. I've never been satisfied following a step-by-step guide to setting something up, I must understand how things work, and why. This has led me to deeply explore many technologies on both Microsoft and Linux platforms. I have followed the industry’s transition to “Cloud first” offerings throughout my career and have stayed current with advances in modern engineering and architecture. My experience with legacy bare metal and virtualised IaaS infrastructure underpins my deep understanding of their contemporary PaaS and SaaS replacements. This evolved knowledge makes me especially good at working on modernisation or migration projects. I’ve always been a strong proponent of innovation in infrastructure deployment, starting with wide scale automation using Saltstack, Group Policy and VMware image management, then as the technology has advanced, Azure ARM, Terraform, and IaC as part of a CI/CD pipeline. With extensive expertise in cloud architecture, particularly with Azure, I excel in IT infrastructure modernization and migration projects, leveraging both Microsoft and Linux platforms. Notable achievements include designing a new Azure Front Door based WAF service, optimizing cost savings over 1 million per year, and implementing a resilient Exchange infrastructure with 100% uptime.

Experience

• Infrastructure Designer · QuilterNovember 2020 – March 2022

  Designed multiple datacenter and office migrations, leveraging Azure, VMWare and Zerto. Designed adoption of Azure IaaS and PaaS. Designed platform for Infrastructure as Code, including Azure DevOps and GitHub.

• IT Architect · Aptum ITFebruary 2015 – October 2020

  Planning and implementation of migration to Office 365, including authentication, email, storage, SharePoint and IM/VOIP (Teams). Full IT system integration for acquired company, including domain, Exchange services, workstations and network integration. Seamless Microsoft tenant migration, including transfer of all Exchange, Teams, OneDrive and Planner data, including message history using only PowerShell (and graph API) scripting.

• Senior Systems Engineer · Peer1 HostingFebruary 2011 – February 2015

  Exchange 2010 solution design and implementation (100% uptime since deployment). VMware multisite cluster design and implementation (14 global datacenters). Windows and Linux template configuration and documentation. Network optimisation and monitoring. Juniper firewall advanced configuration (15 global data center sites running active/active dedicated fiber connections with backup VPN). Website hosting and configuration, including php and .Net. SQL server standalone and cluster installation, optimisation and maintenance.

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