Albert Holtsclaw - Senior IT Consultant

About Me

Senior DevOps Architect, Web Application Developer, Database Administrator, and Technology Enthusiast.

Currently serving as a Senior Consultant for Strata Information Group (SIG) working with Ellucian's Banner ERP system and ancillary products and services backed by a wide range of technologies. Managing infrastructure and building enterprise solutions for clients on premise and in the cloud.

Previously employed at East Tennessee State University as the Senior DevOps Architect supporting the Ellucian Banner ERP system and interconnected systems. Responsibilities: Uses Terraform and Puppet to build and manage cloud application infrastructure used by ERP systems and engineers. Builds and maintains continuous integration pipelines to support rapid deployment from source. Manages the campus Ellucian Banner ERP system on Oracle RDBMS and ancillary connected systems using Oracle and MS SQL Server in Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Responsibilities include installing, securing, and managing database systems, middleware applications, 3rd party system integrations, and custom-built applications, including various custom Web applications written in C#. Supervises duties of DevOps/DBA staff. Manages AWS infrastructure spending/budget.

As a DevOps engineer, I have experience migrating full-stack ERP systems and ancillary systems to AWS. This work involves rearchitecting legacy systems and adapting them to not only run within AWS but be able to leverage AWS services and technologies (ECS/docker, Lambda, RDS, etc.) all while also leveraging infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), configuration management (Puppet), change management (Git) and continuous integration (Gitlab CI, Jenkins) to improve infrastructure maintenance and repeatability.

Formerly employed as a Systems Analyst III (Senior Software Engineer) supporting custom Web applications and the Ellucian Banner Finance module and related functional areas. Since 2011, I have worked extensively with the Banner ERP system, specifically the areas of Banner Student and Banner Finance.

Prior to that, I was employed as a Web application developer and front-end developer in large-scale public healthcare.

As a Web application developer, I have experience working on high-profile public sector health websites with strict usability guidelines for the federal government. Additionally, I have experience building heavily-used, mission-critical Web and traditional applications in higher education (including Student Orientation, Medical Professions Advisement, and Post Office Management).

Skills & abilities (list is not all-inclusive)

90%

ASP.Net / ASP.Net MVC / Entity Framework

90%

C# / VB.Net

90%

JavaScript / jQuery

80%

CSS3

90%

SQL (Oracle and T-SQL)

60%

Pro*C / C

90%

Puppet

90%

Amazon Web Services (EC2, ECS, RDS, Lambda, Route53, etc.)

80%

Terraform

80%

Docker

90%

Version Control Systems (TFS, GIT)

60%

Python

70%

Ruby

Education

2007 to 2009 East Tennessee State University - Johnson City, TN Master of Science in Computer and Information Science, GPA: 3.88

2002 - 2007 East Tennessee State University - Johnson City, TN Bachelor of Science in Computer and Information Science, GPA: 3.39

My Specialities

Language Polyglot / Agile

Experienced with various programming/scripting languages and technologies. Quick Learner.

Full-Stack Development

Extensive experience with front-end development under strict usability guidelines as well as experience building complete backend systems and infrastructure.

Responsive Design

Experience building responsive and adaptable websites and applications.

Employment / Jobs

January 2021 to Present Strata Information Group (SIG) Senior Consultant

November 2017 to December 2020 East Tennessee State University, Information Technology Services Senior DevOps Architect

August 2015 to October 2017 East Tennessee State University, Information Technology Services Database Administrator / DevOps Engineer

August 2014 to July 2015 East Tennessee State University, Office of Information Technology Information Systems Analyst III (Finance Lead, Aux. Systems)

May 2011 to July 2014 East Tennessee State University, Office of Information Technology Information Systems Analyst II (Programmer)

July 2009 to September 2010 CGI Federal Web Application Developer / Technical Consultant

August 2007 to May 2009 East Tennessee State University, Computer and Information Sciences Graduate Assistant/Instructor

Hobbies & Interests

Music
Movies
TV
Photography

Full Resume Download:

Portable Document Format *.PDF

Talks and Presentations:

SIGConnect 2022 - Higher Education Conference
Feb 2nd 2022 4:30pm Eastern / 1:30pm Pacific
Slides: If It Isn't Codified, It Doesn't Exist: Leveraging Configuration Management (PowerPoint)

An overview of configuration management tools like Puppet and Ansible and how they can be used to codify infrastructure and system configurations to improve system maintainability and business continuity.

SIGConnect 2022 - Higher Education Conference
Feb 1st 2022 4:30pm Eastern / 1:30pm Pacific
Slides: Is Something on Fire? Using Prometheus to Monitor System and Application Health (PowerPoint)

Learn about the open-source monitoring system Prometheus and how it can be used to gain improved visibility into application and system health on premise and in the cloud. This visibility includes aspects like ad-hoc status checks, active alerting, and dashboards.

Zoom Presentation for peer institutions and AWS reps.
June 14th 2019 3:00 PM Eastern
Slides: Moving Banner to Docker & AWS: A Technical Deep Dive (PowerPoint)
Recording: Screen Recording (Video)

Tennessee Higher Education Information Technology Symposium (THEITS) 2019
April 15th 2019 Track 3, Room A-3 - Session 5.3
Slides: Moving Banner to AWS: A Technical Deep Dive (PowerPoint)

TN Summit 2016
Slides: Building an Agile, Mobile First, Banner Integrated, and Highly Available Portal on Open Source Software [Drupal] (PowerPoint)

Licenses & Certifications:

AWS for DevOps: Continuous Delivery and Process Automation
LinkedIn Learning
Instructor: Lynn Langit, Cloud Architect, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform
Issued Oct 2020 - No Expiration Date

Learning Docker
LinkedIn Learning
Instructor: Arthur Ulfeldt, Software Engineer at Yummly
Issued Oct 2020 - No Expiration Date

Open Source Contributions:

NodeJS AWS Lambda script to integrate with Amazon Alexa and Radio Thermostat home thermostats.
Contribution: A NodeJS AWS Lambda script to integrate Alexa with Radio Thermostats. Rebuilt to work with AWS Lambda instead of a dedicated NodeJS and contains updated Alexa intents defintions for additional functionality. Also updated skills/intents to fix known issues. Forked from an abandoned project.
Source: Github

Banner Job Submission Ruby Library
Contribution: Added compatibility with Banner Jobsub Proxy (banjsproxy) required for Banner 9
Source: Github | Upstream

esmdl - Command line download utility used to mimic Ellucian's ESM tool for downloading documentation and install media / patches / etc.
Contribution: Updated HTTP connectivity / request options to accommodate Ellucian TLS changes
Source: Github | Upstream

biemond-orawls - Puppet 3/4 module for WebLogic provisioning.
Contribution: Modified systemctl reload declaration to avoid module conflicts
Source: Github | Upstream

Albert Alby Holtsclaw