Charles W. Palmer III Professional History
Charles W. Palmer III
Data Center Network Manager
RackSpace Managed Hosting
Backbone Network Engineering
PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
Seasoned, hands-on, resourceful, get-the-job-done global network operations manager. Fully capable of balancing the strategic vision and functional needs in the design of information technology solutions. Extensive technical and leadership experience; well balanced in the areas of planning, communications, administration, and expediting. Recipient of numerous medals, awards and commendations for engineering and leadership. Held Government Clearance.
I bring Leadership Experience, Global Exposure and Technical Expertise to your team.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
- Protocols and Languages: BGP, OSPF and RIP routing protocols. SLB (Server Load Balancing) / Layer4, DNS, FTP, HTML, VTP, PVSTP, RPVSTP+. Cisco IOS and Juniper JUNOS. Perl, UNIX
- Hardware: Cisco, Juniper and Foundry
- Certifications: CCNA
Data Center Network Manager
- Lead a team of four network engineers responsible for the design and support of Rackspace's Northern Virginia networks. Directly responsible for the design and maintenance of over 2500 network devices across 3 sites.
Senior Data Center Project Engineer 2004 – 2007
- Served multiple roles; conducted site surveys, developed and documented requirements, data center acceptance, power allocation, build team member. Liaison between AOL and Data Center Providers. Directly responsible for the day to day infrastructure needs of International and US based data centers. ITIL Foundations certification.
- Participated in the infrastructure design and acceptance for data centers ranging in size between 96 and 1190 square meters, ensuring compliance with industry and standards and industry best practices.
- Planned and participated in several smooth and outage-free data center consolidations, ensuring compliance with power thresholds as well as cooling best practices. Worked closely with the collocation provider, German contractors and AOL stakeholders throughout.
- Planned and participated in the migration of an existing data center into more resilient facility ensuring compliance with environmental thresholds and infrastructure best practices. Worked closely with the collocation provider, UK contractors and AOL stakeholders to ensure a smooth and outage-free migration.
Technical Manager - 2000 – 2004
- Led a team of 5 network engineers responsible for the design, implementation, installation, configuration and support of AOL’s global web caching networks. Directly responsible for day to day maintenance, capacity planning, management and availability of 142 routers and 272 switches requiring 24 by forever uptime.
- Built teamwork and relationships by encouraging my Network Engineering staff to periodically perform their duties while located in the NOC (Network Operations Center), putting “a face with the voice.” Initiated idea and roadmap sharing meetings between my team and internal AOL stakeholders.
- Cultivated a high-uptime culture by hiring and training a knowledgeable, reliable and motivated engineering team. Continually “held vendors’ feet to the fire,” requiring stable code and reliable hardware.
- Reduced network complexity and failure analysis time by redesigning multi level network consisting of 8 Cisco routers into a flat architecture consisting of 2 Juniper routers. Across multiple sites, this resulted in a cost savings of several million dollars.
- Streamlined internal customer intake by developing an automated process for assignment and resolution resulting in quicker resolution, increased efficiency and reduced duplication of efforts.
Senior Network Engineer 1998 – 2000
- Technical lead for engineering team responsible for design, implementation, installation, configuration and support of AOL’s web caching networks throughout the United States and the world
- Lead Network Engineer as well as a member of the travel team for the installation of international web cache networks. Determined requirements and procured equipment for these deployments.
- Freed engineers to tackle more pressing tasks by writing Perl scripts to check configurations update status and eliminate or automate repetitive processes.
Senior Network Engineer
- Oversight of CGIN South American designs and twelve Customer Engineers.
- Lead Engineer for installation and migration of backbone sites within the North and South American Autonomous Systems.
- Ensured that all designs followed corporate and protocol design standards.
Technical Project Manager
for the migration of existing classified Marine Corps World Wide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS) to the Marine Global Command and Control System (MGCCS). Local technical support for the MGCCS sites in Washington, D.C. area. Responded to network installation problems as global “fly-away”, telecommunication, and telephone support. Supported NIPRNET and SIPRNET.
- Re-wrote and presented, throughout the Marine Corps, professional, custom-designed “TCP/IP” and “Hands-on Cisco Router” courses.
- Produced a less complex network design at seventeen Marine Corps SIPRNET, by developing a consistent addressing and configuration scheme.
Senior Network Engineer
- Design and plan migrations and modifications to Citicorp’s Global Router Network (GRN). Incorporated existing multi-protocol networks and customer requirements into standard consolidated networks.
Internetworking Engineer
- Technical point of contact for Internet issues concerning the usmc.mil domain. Planned, installed and managed initial Marine Corps Domain Name Servers (DNS) and Marine Corps Data Network (MCDN) routers.
- Served as initial Marine Corps’ technical point of contact for matters pertaining to the Internet/Defense Data Network (ARPANET). Received the Meritorious Service Medal for work with the Defense Data Network and TCPIP related issues.
- Built and demonstrated prototype Tactical Communications Distribution Node (TCDN), providing tactical data communication between the joint services. Received the Navy Achievement Medal and Army Certificate of Commendation for my efforts.
- Authored and presented, throughout the Marine Corps, a professional Marine Corps specific TCP/IP course, as well as user’s guides and lesson plans. I instructed, tutored and briefed at the Marine Corps Computer Science School, Joint Service demonstrations and the local community colleges. Received the Navy Commendation Medal for my efforts.
- Visit my LinkedIn Page -
Contact Me
Charles W Palmer III © 2008