ORACLE CONSULTANT, ORACLE CONSULTANT, ORACLE ENGINEER/GLOBAL SME

Technology: Oracle RDBMS 11g to 19c (incl. RAC), Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g to 13c, Oracle Internet
Directory 11g/12c, Exadata X6, ZDLRA, Dataguard, RMAN, Centrify, vCAC/vSphere on-premise cloud
Platforms: RHEL 5/6/7, SLES 10/11, Solaris, VERITAS Cluster Server 5.0, VxFS, ASM, SRDF, MS Win Server 2012.
Responsibilities: Oracle Engineer, working as Oracle technology subject matter expert within a global technical
team. Provide evaluation of, and recommendations on, the Oracle product set for HSBC to meet customer and
business requirements. Perform full environment design, builds, capacity planning/monitoring and undertake
training/handover to global DBA/support teams. Act as technical SME on core Oracle projects throughout the
design, implementation, testing and handover stages. Design and develop build/installation scripts for automated
Oracle environment builds within on-premise vSphere cloud. Own and manage the Oracle Enterprise Manager
and OID RAC-based solutions used across the HSBC global Oracle estate. Provide consultancy on, and undertake
implementation of, dedicated OEM13c monitoring solutions for Exadata X6, PeopleSoft and ZDLRA.
Other responsibilities: Define and evolve the global Oracle product-set technical direction and implementation
standards as part of a global team of specialists/senior managers. Develop and undertake technical
demos/workshops to facilitate knowledge transfer to DBA/support teams for new technology. Define and evolve
the patching/software currency strategy, leveraging available technology such as Oracle Fleet Maintenance and
Puppet for RAC. Provide 2ndline Production support, liaising directly with Oracle Support whilst providing
technical expertise/support to a large global DBA/application support population. Perform tuning/diagnostic RCA
actions against business-critical Oracle database environments, ensuring high-availability and high performance.
Design and implement appropriate monitoring/reporting solutions to meet requirements of users/business areas,
coupling to 3rdparty reporting/capacity planning solutions such as Geneos/Athene.


Major Projects involved with:

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (OEM)
I was global SME for the OEM product at HSBC, implementing the technology across a large global Oracle estate
(in excess of 5000 databases/600 users geographically spread across US,UK,HK,FR,IN regions).

In 2012 I rolled out OEM11g, performing full architectural design and building the Production environment (11g
RAC, ASM, Dataguard) whilst undertaking a full knowledge transfer to HSBC's global teams by way of WebEx
workshops and extensive documentation. I worked closely with senior management and internal teams, assessing
requirements and utilising OEM to it's full potential as a monitoring, reporting and administration tool, integrating
seamlessly into the existing HSBC monitoring/service desk framework. This project set standards for
implementing OEM within HSBC Group; In 2017 I provided consultancy within HSBC to design/implement a local
OEM 12c solution for HSBC Private Bank in Geneva, required due to data-residency regulations.

In 2014 a business area within HSBC requested I design/implement an additional OEM 12c environment and
develop a custom PeopleSoft HCM plugin. This initiative saved HSBC more than USD $1m and enabled bespoke
monitoring/alerting and self-healing of their application estate through custom metrics, alerts, dashboards/SQL
reports and corrective actions.

Working closely with application support teams, I integrated the Global OEM environment with various external
tools (Athene, Geneos, BMC Patrol, CA Service Desk and internally developed solutions) to provide core metric /
configuration data feeds for alerting, monitoring and capacity planning purposes. I also integrated the product
into HSBCs on-premise cloud offering (VMware vCAC/vSphere), automatically installing agents and configuring
databases for newly delivered Oracle database VMs (approx. 50 each day in each of the UK and HK regions).

I subsequently undertook an upgrade of the Global OEM environment to release 12c, followed by a full
redesign/migration of the solution in 2019 to 13c on RHEL7/Oracle 12.2 with Active Dataguard (to enable Fleet
Maintenance patching of the Oracle estate). The opportunity was also taken to leverage Active Directory based
user authentication/role management, geographically remote cache nodes and agent installation/target addition
by developing a custom HPSA/Puppet automated solution.

In 2019 I was the lead technical resource on a project to evaluate, and subsequently implement, self-service patch
management of HSBC's global Oracle RAC database estate using OEM13c Fleet Maintenance. By devising,
building and iteratively testing software images golden images, I designed and implemented a global patching




solution capable of orchestration by external patch management tooling. Through custom Active
Directory/Centrify configuration, I delivered a flexible solution that permitted en-masse RAC software
management using simplified OS credential policies, whilst fully meeting internal security requirements.


Oracle Internet Directory (OID) Global Solution
I was also Global SME for OID within HSBC. In 2012 I designed and built a solution for HSBC based on OID
/Fusion Middleware 11g, migrating all TNS entries from Oracle Names and orchestrating client migration.

Used by many thousands of Oracle client installations, users and application servers, I upgraded this to OID 12c in
2014, utilising 12c RAC/Dataguard for database resiliency and SLB based failover at the application tier.

I developed an interface and custom PL/SQL package to permit self-service TNS entry management from within
HSBC's bespoke database inventory system. I also designed and implemented a custom monitoring solution for
OID, utilising Oracle Enterprise Manager and SQL reports.

Technology: Oracle RDBMS 8i-11gR2, OEM Grid Control 11g, OID 11g, Dataguard, 11g Streams
Platforms: Sun Solaris, AIX, RHEL 5, Windows Server 2003, VERITAS Cluster Server 5.0, VxFS, ODM
Responsibilities: Production DBA consultancy, 1stline support of major retail banking systems (Clydesdale and
Yorkshire Bank), project support and knowledge transfer to a large team of permanent DBAs.
Other responsibilities: Environment builds/cloning, capacity planning, performance and SQL tuning, providing
recommendations on Oracle product strategy, assisting developers, upgrades/patching and backup/recovery.

Major Projects involved with:

EDF (Enterprise Data Foundation)
I was the primary DBA resource on the project, based on an Oracle UCM/Siebel stack, Oracle 11gR1 utilising
Streams/CDC. Responsibilities included evolving the architectural design, assisting developers and environment
builds/performance tuning activities. Part of this project involved defining and implementing a RHEL image for all
Oracle Linux builds - this created a set of standards which were then adopted for all standard builds at NAG.

3D Livelink
I provided consultancy resource to define and implement a Dataguard solution for a document management
application, consisting of 5 x 11gR2 Production databases and a TAF configured application tier. I undertook a
skills transfer to the permanent DBA teams and assisted in the development of NAGE Dataguard standards. I was
also heavily involved in extensive environment performance testing, feeding back recommendations to the 3rd
party vendor for resolution.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control
This was one of the first customer sites in the world to implement OEM 11g into Production. I was the main
consultant on this project, from the initial stages of building a POC environment for NAGE, through to the
implementation phase, rolling out OEM to manage/monitor in excess of 400 Production and Pre-Production
databases. I was heavily involved in developing the architectural design, defined the security model and provided
extensive skills transfer to the permanent DBA teams during the implementation phase. By coding custom
deployment procedures and golden software images, I was also able to automate and standardise the NAGE
Oracle build process and significantly reduce deployment times of software and database instances.

Core e-Banking 11g
I provided consultancy resource to configure firewalled SSL communication between IBM WebSphere Java
applications and backend Oracle databases using custom NAGE authority signed SSL certificates, Oracle Wallet
Manager and 11gR2 ASO.

Technology: Oracle RAC 10gR2 (ASM, CRS), RDBMS 8i-10gR2, 10g Dataguard, OEM Grid Control
Platforms: IBM AIX 5.3, Win Server 2003, RHEL 5
Responsibilities: Providing Oracle RAC consultancy on a major retail banking project and knowledge transfer to
permanent DBAs and application support staff.
Other responsibilities: Environment builds/cloning, performance tuning, SQL tuning, determining and writing
standards/best practices documentation, assisting developers, shell scripting, upgrades/patching and




environment backup and recovery. Define and implement appropriate backup and recovery strategies to meet
RPO/RTO expectation.

Major Projects involved with:

T24 Globus Implementation
Major project to implement a new core banking system based on the Temenos T24 application. Using Oracle
RAC/ASM on AIX 5.3, I undertook a consultancy role working with the permanent DBA team, performing
environment builds, backup/recovery, PL/SQL coding, performance tuning, defining standards and providing an
extensive knowledge transfer of RAC skills. By extending the Production RAC cluster to 3 nodes, and performing
extensive SQL/environment tuning, I reduced the DBS overnight batch processing runtime down by half.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control
I implemented Oracle 10g Grid Control to monitor the various T24 environments, developing custom target
plugins and user defined metrics/SQL reports to replace/enhance the current DBS monitoring strategy. By
implementing bespoke systems/services and remote beacons, I developed a services monitoring dashboard to
allow 24x7 monitoring of the whole environment by DBS IT Ops.

OF SCOTLAND (HBOS) PLC.
Technology: Oracle RDBMS 8i-10gR2, OEM Grid Control 10gR2
Platforms: Solaris, IBM AIX 5.3, HP-UX IA-64 11.2, Win Server 2003, VERITAS Cluster Server 5.0, VxFS, ODM.
Responsibilities: Primarily a consultancy type role working on high profile projects and providing 1 stline
Production Support for core banking systems.
Other responsibilities: Day-to-day monitoring and fault fixing, performance tuning, SQL tuning, capacity
planning, determining and writing standards/best practices documentation, assisting developers, shell scripting,
environment builds, cloning, upgrades/patching and environment backup and recovery.

Major Projects involved with:

TMS (Transaction Monitoring System) Upgrade/Migration to 10g
I was primary DBA, implementing a 7Tb data warehouse running 3rdparty AML software - Oracle 10gR2, AIX 5, 2x
2-node VCS Clusters. I fed Oracle SME input into the architectural design, performed full sizing and determined
hardware/storage configuration. I undertook all Oracle environment builds/patching, performance tuning and
recovery testing. I undertook extensive tuning of the critical batch processes and assisted developers in creating
ETL interfaces. OEM agents were installed and configured as custom VCS resources, a configuration adopted as
HBoS standard. I also developed bespoke OEM target types to monitor the 3rdparty application processes.


IF (Intelligent Finance) Oneplan migration to HP-UX
I was the primary HBoS DBA on this project, the migration of a 1Tb banking system from Solaris to HP-UX using
the cross platform transportable database (TDB) feature with Dataguard to keep outage to a minimum (1hr). I
provided extensive tuning of the new environment and full handover to IF DBAs as part of the go-live process.

Technology: Oracle Application Server 9i,10g. RAC (9i,10g), OEM Grid Control 10gR2, Applications 11i (CRM)
Platforms: RHEL & Tru64.
Responsibilities: Monitoring and fault fixing, performance tuning, PL/SQL coding, assisting developers and
project-based work. Environment builds, upgrades/patching and standards creation/documentation. My role
involved close working contact in a team, alongside onsite Oracle Consultancy Services personnel, providing
24x7 1stline Production support.

Major Projects involved with:

PROtoCOL
A high-profile project concerning provision of multiple 24x7 portals for LEAs/students to manage the loans
process, utilising Oracle Portal, 9i RAC and 11i CRM hosted on over 20 10gAS RHEL application servers and two
2-node Tru64 database clusters. Oracle Email Server was also utilised, as was Oracle Application Server
Interconnect for data propagation and Oracle Internet Directory for identity management.




I worked alongside Oracle Consultancy staff, implementing, administering, upgrading and tuning the
environment.

Separation of Stakeholders (SoS)
I installed/configured a 3 node RAC cluster (CRS/ASM) on RHEL/ HP EVA storage, subsequently performing a
rolling upgrade to 10gR2. I undertook stakeholder migration from 9i RAC/Tru64 to 10g RAC/Linux through
transportable tablespaces, migrating from file system to ASM. I undertook a consultancy role within this project,
assisting developers on schematic design/application tuning and performed a full knowledge transfer to the DBA
team.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control
This environment was used to manage/monitor the entire SLC oracle estate (approx. 300 environments). I initially
defined the initial high-level architecture, storage and network requirements and built the environment in
conjunction with Oracle Consultancy. I continued to work with Oracle to assist development of the Grid Control
product and was invited to present at Oracle Openworld in 2006. I developed custom target plugins that allowed
integration of OAI adapters into Grid Control, allowing SLC to manage/monitor these within OEM.

Technology: Oracle Applications 10.7 (HR/Payroll and Financials), Oracle RDBMS (v7.3 - 9i).
Platforms: Sun Solaris, Tru64 Unix and Windows NT
Responsibilities: Day-to-day monitoring, 1stline Production support, fault fixing, tuning, backup and recovery,
client configuration and environment builds/upgrades/patching. Project work, user liaison and Oracle Support
contact were also a major part of the role. I was the main Oracle DBA resource on two major projects, migrating
SMG's Oracle Applications HR/Payroll and Financials systems to Rebus PSE and Agresso Financials respectively,
assisting the architectural design, defining backup strategies and performing environment builds/clones.

Technology: Oracle RDBMS (v7.3.4 - 8.1.7), Applications 10.7 (HR/Payroll), Application Server (v3.0.18 - 4.081)
Platforms: HP-UX 10.20-11, Sun Solaris 7, Windows 2000
Responsibilities: Daily monitoring, 1stline Production support, structure creations, fault fixing, schematic design,
performance tuning, PL/SQL coding, assisting developers, environment upgrades/patching and the
installation/configuration of new systems. User liaison and contact with Oracle Support were again a major part of
the job, as was project work.