Sunny Suen

currently: Job hunting

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Answers from Sunny

What advice do you have for someone looking for their first job out of college?

Skills! Skills! Skills!
Imagine I was a CS or IT rookie looking for a relevant position at the entry level. Definitely love to try my hand at as many open source packages as possible, like Linux, Open Solaris, Apache, Tomcat, JBoss, ActiveBPEL, Axis, JDK, GNU C/C++, Perl, PHP, Zebra, etc, etc. YMMV ...

These are all quality stuff and will surely help you go a long way towards coping with any "Inferior But Marketable" kitsch in the real world.

Opportunities abound for you to learn the trades all by yourself:
1. Self-study & hands-on practice at home.
2. Volunteering for some technical community projects.
3. Helping your grans, folks, in-laws or friends set up a home network or personal portal.
4. If you've got the means, prepare for some of the many, many certification exams out there. Notably the Big 4: Cisco, Oracle, Sun & Redhat, the holy grail in the IT industry.... read more

Posted @ 08:34AM, April 06, 2007 by Sunny Suen | Permalink
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Work history

Versatix IT Solution Consultancy February 2003 to September 2007
IT Architect

tags: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

How would you describe your time at Versatix IT Solution Consul...?

1.1 Major accomplishments

1.1.1 Designed and implemented a multi-tiered ASP infrastructure with resilient and scalable features to enable a local ASIC manufacturer to automate its B2B shipment process. The core production components were sustained by a distributed architecture over a firewall-segmented network topology, where the web and application servers were deployed in load balancing pools to interact with the LDAP and database HA clusters.

1.1.2 Developed an on-line catalogue/shopping cart application as a web service prototype for the above account. With a lightweight home-made XML parser built into the software, a special JDBC driver was implemented as a local SOAP stub to support a client-side applet, which also featured drag and drop functions in its GUI utilities.

1.1.3 Developed a versatile web application server capable of invoking Java servlets as well as legacy Perl scripts & C library functions dynamically in persistent CGI processes. It was started from scratch as a prototype to supplement a tender proposal for a pre-sale engagement opportunity.

1.1.4 Devised and executed test plans for stressing Sun or Linux servers in out-sourced jobs.

1.1.5 Performance evaluation and tuning of Sun or Linux servers in out-sourced jobs.

1.1.6 Analysed and fine-tuned the performance of a Weblogic 6.1 server in an out-sourced job. Subsequently planned and conducted the procedure of upgrading the application server to a Weblogic 8.1 cluster, which involved configuring load balancing and HA measures, as well as redeploying the applications in production.

1.1.7 Schematic exposition and comment on parts of the Linux 2.2.x kernel's TCP/IP source code as a technology transfer deliverable for end users.

1.1.8 Tender proposal documentation on ASP infrastructures, some of which also deal with the provision of geographical server load balancing facilities and DR site.

1.1.9 Contrived a parallel architecture for load balancing devices to be integrated with the BGP, OSPF, VRRP and STP network technologies in an R & D project.

1.1.10 Currently in the process of designing a blue-print architecture for the QoS treatment of server clusters in a de-centralisation project on a web hosting data centre. It also addresses the integration of differentiated services on Sun and Linux platforms in a heterogeneous environment.

1.2 Technologies and tools

1.2.1 Sun servers, systems and software involvement:
Full ranges of Sun Fire and Enterprise servers, except E10K/E15K
Sun StorEdge FC/SCSI RAID arrays 3310/3510
Solaris 2.x, Sun Cluster, Solstice Backup Server, SunScreen Firewall
Solaris Bandwidth Manager, Solaris Resource Manager and Sun Management Center

1.2.2 Third-party products involvement:
Veritas Cluster Server, Veritas Foundation Suite
Veritas Volume Manager
Checkpoint Firewall
BigIP F5 and Resonate Central Dispatcher
Oracle 9i Database Server
BEA Weblogic Application Server
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Cluster Suite

1.2.3 Open source products involvement:
Linux 2.4.x (RedHat 9.x and Slackware 9.x)
Linux 2.4.x traffic control utilities
Apache 1.3.x, TomCat 4.x
Linux Virtual Server and Volume Manager
Linux HeartBeat and Piranha (trial version) HA Clusters
Linux SuperSparrow for geographical server load balancing
GateD and Zebra for BGP and OSPF implementation

1.2.4 Development contexts and tools involvement:
Solaris STREAMS kernel modules
Linux Netfilter kernel modules
Apache web server modules
Apache SOAP and Axis,
Sun Java Web Service Pack and J2EE

---... read more
Sun Microsystems March 2000 to May 2002
IT Consultant

tags: • • • • • • • • • • • •

How would you describe your time at Sun Microsystems?

2.1 Major accomplishments

2.1.1 Designed and delivered multi-tiered ASP/portal infrastructures with resilient and scalable features in media, recreational, trading and financial businesses.

2.1.2 SunTone architectural assessment of ASP-hosting data centres.

2.1.3 Security assessment and penetration testing of the banking and financial IT environments.

2.1.4 Implemented HA solutions for Sun database clusters.

2.1.5 Implemented load balancing solutions for Sun enterprise server farms.

2.1.6 Capacity planning and performance evaluation of Sun enterprise servers and occasionally, some NT boxes.

2.2 Teamwork organisation and ownership apportion

2.2.1 As a member of the technical consultant team (team size < 30) in Sun Professional Services under the leadership of the SunPS manager.

2.2.2 As a temporary member of various ad hoc delivery teams (team size < 10) under the leadership of the project managers in charge of individual projects.

Assumed ownership of the tasks concerned with the design, implementation, testing, documentation and technology transfer practices.

2.3 Technologies and tools

2.3.1 Sun servers, systems and software involvement:
Full ranges of Sun Fire and Enterprise servers, except E10K/E15K
Solaris 2.x, Sun Cluster, DiskSuite Volume Manager, Solstice Backup Server, SunScreen Firewall and Sun Network Data Replicator
Sun ONE Web Service Pack, iPlanet Web, Messaging, Proxy, Application and LDAP servers

2.3.2 Third-party products involvement:
Veritas Volume Manager, Veritas NetBackup and Checkpoint Firewall
BigIP F5, Foundry ServerIron, Alteon Web System, Resonate Central and Global Dispatcher
Oracle 9i RAS Parallel Server, Oracle Media Servers and Informix Dynamic Server

2.3.3 Open source products involvement:
Linux 2.2.x (RedHat 6.x and Slackware 4.x)
Apache 1.3.x

---... read more
VItruvix Systems September 1998 to March 2000
System Specialist

tags: • • • • • • • • • • •

How would you describe your time at VItruvix Systems?

3.1 Major accomplishments

3.1.1 Capacity planning and benchmarking of Solaris and Linux servers.

3.1.2 Solaris 2.x/Linux 2.2.x installation and network configuration.

3.1.3 Support advanced Unix technologies like DNS, NIS+, sendmail (w/o. virtual addressing), web server (w/o. virtual hosting, SSL), RAID, firewalls, Y2K patches and system migration, backup operation, performance tuning, etc.

3.1.4 Maintain and upgrade home-made Internet/Intranet applications for e-commerce, remote processing and IDE, etc.

3.1.5 As a trainer in system administration and Java programming.

3.1.6 Technical documentation of availability, security and change management procedures.

3.2 Teamwork organisation and ownership apportion

3.2.1 As a member of a technical consultant team (team size < 10) that was led by the CTO as a unit among the upper echelons of the company organisation.

3.2.2 As a senior member of ad hoc task forces (team size < 10) to plan, conduct and supervise a variety of IT support duties performed by the systems engineers.

Assumed ownership of different technical tasks, where the piecemeal jobs of server installation, configuration, backup and other operations were delegated to individual engineers.

3.3 Technologies and tools

3.3.1 System environments involvement
Solaris 2.x, Linux 2.0.x, NT 4.x,

3.3.2 Subsystem or service software involvement
Sun Cluster, DiskSute, Veritas VM, and SunScreen Firewall

3.3.3 Development tools involvement
Java(JDK, JSDK, JDBC), CGI/Perl, Oracle(Pro*C, OCI, OraPerl), mSQL

---... read more
Innovative Information Systems October 1996 to July 1998
System Engineer

tags: • • • • • • • • • • •

How would you describe your time at Innovative Information Systems?

4.1 Major accomplishments

4.1.1 Pre-sale hardware capacity planning/benchmarking and post-sale system configuration of Sun Microsystems products.

4.1.2 Developed Intranet/Internet applications for e-commerce, inventory control, automated quotations and remote processing, etc.

4.1.3 Developed client-server RDBMS applications to perform transaction processing, business decision support and medial imaging, etc.

4.1.4 Network administration for MIS and development services.

4.1.5 As a trainer in Solaris system administration and Java programming

4.2 Teamwork organisation ownership apportion

4.2.1 As a member of a system engineering team (team size < 10) under the leadership of a system engineering manager in a flat hierarchy.

4.2.2 Shared ownership with other engineers in undertaking pre-sale, development and MIS administration duties.

4.3 Technologies and tools

4.3.1 System environments involvement:
Solaris 2.x, Linux 2.0.x, NT 4.x and NetWare 4.x.

4.3.2 Development tools involvement:
On Solaris with C/C++, Motif, Xt, X11, OpenGL, Tcl/Tk, Java(JDK, JSDK and JDBC), CGI/Perl, OraPerl, MsqlPerl, Oracle PL/SQL, Proc*C, OCI functions and mSQL, etc.
On NT with Visual C++/Basics, MFC, ODBC and Win32, etc.

---... read more

Education

University of Oxford, UK August 1990 to October 1991
Master of Science in Computing

How would you describe your time at University of Oxford, UK?

Specialized in software engineering and programming.
University of London, UK September 1985 to August 1988
Bachelor of Science in Mathematics

How would you describe your time at University of London, UK?

Graduated with First Class Honours, equivalent to GPA 4 - 4.5.

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