Senior Storage Administrator

The storage team owns the on-premises and hybrid infrastructure that keeps mission-critical systems running around the clock. That means PowerMax V4 and PowerStore arrays, Cisco MDS SAN fabrics, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager with Data Domain appliances, and a Commvault environment with HSX clusters handling complex SQL Server workloads. The team sits inside a larger Infrastructure Services group and works closely with DBAs, SysAdmins, network admins, and application owners to keep platforms stable, current, and recoverable.

Success in this role looks like storage and SAN environments that stay within defined SLAs, code currency maintained without unplanned outages, and disaster and cyber-recovery plans that hold up under tabletop and live tests. Failure looks like deferred maintenance that compounds into stability incidents, capacity surprises that catch the business off guard, or backup jobs that silently fail until a restore is needed.

This is a hands-on technical role, not a management or advisory one. You will be writing scripts, running changes through the change management process, tuning replication and snapshot policies, and working vendor escalations with Dell. The hybrid on-site requirement in Pickering reflects the nature of data center work: some tasks require physical presence.

- Languages: Shell scripting, PowerShell (PowerCLI)
- Automation: Ansible Automation Platform
- Storage platforms: Dell/EMC PowerMax V4 (enterprise), Dell PowerStore (mid-tier unified)
- SAN: Fibre Channel SAN, Dell/EMC Connectrix, Cisco MDS fabrics
- Data protection: Dell PowerProtect Data Manager (PPDM), Dell PowerProtect Data Domain
- Backup: Commvault with HSX clusters
- Virtualization: VMware vSphere (design through mission-critical production)
- OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Microsoft Windows Server
- Database: Microsoft SQL Server (as a supported workload, not a DBA function)
- Observability: exposure to Dynatrace for performance and root-cause analysis
- Asset: exposure to Nutanix AOS/AHV

- Complete a documented audit of current PowerMax V4 and PowerStore configurations, identifying deferred maintenance and capacity risks within the first 90 days
- Execute a scheduled storage and SAN firmware/code update cycle in coordination with Dell, with zero unplanned outages attributable to the update process
- Deliver a reviewed and tested disaster and cyber-recovery runbook covering storage and data protection layers, validated through at least one tabletop and one planned test
- Migrate or consolidate at least one identified workload onto current data protection policies within the PPDM and Commvault environments
- Produce monthly capacity and SLA reports covering storage, SAN, and data protection services against defined thresholds
- Develop or extend at least two automation scripts (PowerCLI or Ansible) that reduce manual effort in routine storage operations or reporting
- Contribute documented updates to at least one existing standard, process, or policy covering storage or data protection service delivery

A typical week opens with a review of overnight backup job reports from Commvault and PPDM. Any failures get triaged: is it a connectivity issue on the SAN fabric, a SQL Server VSS problem, or a policy misconfiguration? That triage produces either a ticket or a change request, depending on whether a fix can go in immediately or needs a change window.

Mid-week tends to involve scheduled work blocks for platform maintenance. That might mean coordinating a PowerMax code update with Dell support, validating replication consistency groups after a fabric change, or running a capacity planning query and updating the monthly report. Change submissions go through the organizational change management process, so there is documentation work alongside the technical work.

Collaboration happens in short, focused touchpoints rather than long meetings. A DBA needs a new LUN provisioned for a SQL Server migration. An application owner wants to understand why snapshot schedules are affecting their backup window. An Infrastructure Architecture peer is scoping a new workload and needs storage sizing input. These conversations are typically handled async or in brief syncs, with the output being a ticket, a design note, or a configuration change.

Toward the end of the week, time goes toward longer-horizon work: reviewing a draft runbook section for the next cyber-recovery test, writing a PowerCLI script to automate a recurring storage health check, or documenting a configuration standard that currently exists only in institutional memory. The 18-month contract scope means there is real deliverable pressure to move that kind of work from backlog to done.