Ralph J. Swartwood

5102 McCoy St▪ Shawnee, KS 66226▪ Phone:(816) 853-0494 ▪E-mail:rswartwood@swartwoodconsulting.com

WebSphere Administrator and Engineer

Experienced administrator and engineer with over 15 years of experience supporting IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) Versions 5, 6, 7 and 8 on AIX, Solaris, HP/UX, and Linux.  Contracted with major corporations such as CSC, IBM, Sprint and Chrysler and major government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Federal Reserve. 

Technologies:

WAS V5, V6, V7 and V8	IBM HTTP Server/Apache	CA Introscope/BMC Patrol/Bladelogic
Java programming/J2EE  JSP/Servlets/JDBC/JMS/EJB	JACL/Jython/ANT/Unix shell scripting	IBM Support Assistant/Thread  Analyzer/Visual Configuration Explorer

Certifications:

IBM WAS Network Deployment V8.0 – Core Administration

IBM Certified System Administrator - WAS Network Deployment V7.0

IBM Certified Administrator - WAS Network Deployment 6.0

IBM Certified Advanced System Administrator - WAS V5.0

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

WebSphere Administration Consultant - 11/2002 to present

Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (2/2013-3/2014)

• Developed scripts to automate configuration and cloning of WAS cells.
• Coordinated efforts to remediate PCI vulnerabilities.
• Created disaster recovery WAS environments.
• Installed and configured WAS V6.1, V8.0 and V8.5 environments.
• Migrated WAS V6.1 applications to V8.5.
• Installed and configured IBM HTTP Server and F5.

FICO (11/2012-12/2012)

• Installed WAS V7 on AIX and migrated the existing WAS V6.1 configurations.
• Automated the WAS V7 configuration process to ensure consistency across environments.
• Developed scripts to automate the deployment of Business Objects to WAS V7 to reduce the manual effort and potential for errors.

Liberty Mutual (7/2012-10/2012)

• Provided operations support for WAS V6.1 and Introscope on Linux.
• Automated the WAS V7 build process to ensure consistency across environments.
• Developed a process to compare WAS configurations across environments using the IBM Support Assistant Visual Configuration Explorer.

IBM (1/2012-3/2012)

• Contracted with IBM to assist multiple IBM clients with WAS administration issues such as: problem resolution, performance tuning, monitoring, configuration reviews and skills transfer.

Federal Reserve (11/2011-12/2011)

• Provided operations support for WAS V6, V6.1 & V7 on Solaris and AIX.

Ameriprise Financial (7/2011-8/2011)

• Served as WAS subject matter expert for Focused Support team.
• Performed operational readiness reviews for multiple WAS environments.

Wal-Mart (10/2010 to 3/2011)

• Contracted with IBM to serve as the WAS Accelerated Value Specialist directing the identification and resolution of production outages, coordinating the Problem Management Report (PMR) process and assisting the WAS support teams with issue resolution.

Hot Topic (1/2010 to 12/2010)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

• Provided part time support for WAS V5.1 on AIX and Blue Martini commerce application.

Chrysler (8/2008 to 05/2010)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

• Served as the senior member of the WAS support team providing direction and assistance to junior members of the team regarding problem resolution and root cause analysis.
• Installed and administered WAS V5.1, V6, V6.1 and V7 on AIX and Solaris.
• Installed and administered Wily Introscope, Nagios and IBM HTTP Server.

U.S. Department of Education (4/2007 to 07/2008)                                                                                                               

• Installed and administered WAS V6 and IBM HTTP Server on HP/UX.
• Provided operations support for WAS applications on HP/UX.
• Developed Bladelogic, Jython and UNIX scripts to automate application deployment tasks.

Internal Revenue Service (9/2006 to 3/2007)

• Developed scripts to automate the WAS configuration and application deployment tasks.

Portland General Electric (7/2006 to 9/2006)

§ Installed and administered WebSphere Process Server V6 and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus V6 in development, test and production environments.

IBM (6/2006 to 7/2006)

§ Contracted with IBM to review a WAS V6 on AIX installation for a state government organization and advise on ways to improve performance and reliability.

§ Contracted with IBM to resolve application problems for a petroleum company with WAS V6 on Windows.

United Missouri Bank (3/2004 to 6/2004 and 11/2005 to 5/2006)

§ Installed and administered WAS V4, V5.1 and V6 on AIX, Solaris and Windows.

§ Upgraded WAS V5.1 to V6 and assisted with resolving application migration issues.

§ Developed scripts to automate the WAS configuration and application deployment tasks.

Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (7/2005 to 10/2005)

§ Installed and administered WAS V6 and WebSphere Portal V5.1 on Solaris.

§ Consulted on infrastructure design and application deployment issues.

Sprint (4/2005 to 5/2005)

§ Supported WAS application load and performance testing including monitoring and tuning.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (11/2002 to 1/2004 and 6/2004 to 4/2005)

§ Installed and administered WAS V4 and V5 on Windows, AIX, Linux and zLinux.

§ Installed and administered WebSphere Portal Server, IHS, Apache, and Tomcat.

ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE

Project Manager for Health Midwest (5/2002 to 10/2002)

I/T Specialist and Certified Project Manager for IBM Global Services (1/1988 to 5/2002)