Position and/or Project Description:
Expertise in Red Hat, SuSe and AIX (3 t5 years) is required. IBM Storage (including SVC) and
backup support as well. The UNIX Midrange Support provides for the day-to-day administration,
management, and support of the UNIX environment.
Mandatory Education/Certifications:
Related Certified Professional Designation.
Desired Education/Certifications
2 to 4 years of formal education (technical school or university)
Mandatory Experience
Projects and support that include Microsoft Server, Azure and related products. This should be
from a system admin perspective and include:
1. Proficiency in Unix (Red Hat, AIX and SuSe)
2. Proficiency in Azure Administration.
3. Technical Documentation: Ability tcreate technical documentation and user guides for new
systems or updates.
4. Security Management: Ensuring the security of systems by setting up and managing
permissions.
Desired Experience:

Setting up and supporting Unix, server and Azure systems.
Deliverables
Deliverables tinclude:
● Unix and system administration.
● Server and Application Maintenance.
● Technical Support and Troubleshooting: Providing technical support and troubleshooting for
server issues tensure smooth operation.
● User Training and Documentation: Creating technical documentation and user guides, and
providing training tusers on new systems or updates.

RESPONSIBILITIES (included but not limited to):
● Ensure a secure, highly available Data Centre environment tsupport SaskPower’s
business requirements.
● Continually monitor all systems, platforms and environments for availability, capacity,
and performance, and proactively manage, including configuration management and
asset reporting and refresh, the environments, as appropriate, tminimize the risk of
service disruption.
● Provide backup and recovery and disaster recovery services and, where needed, high
availability environments. UNIX Server Technician shall effectively manage incidents and
problems following escalation and notification procedures.
● Work with appropriate third parties in a coordinated manner tensure compliance with
best practices, SaskPower policies and procedures and regulatory requirements.
● Monitor on an ongoing basis that there are adequate facilities within the SaskPower
Data Centre(s) configured for the current and planned server and other computing
requirements, including:
○ Rack space,
○ Suitable power,
○ UPS support,
○ Cabling – e.g., Network, SAN, etc.,
○ Port availability on core switches and firewalls,
○ Adequate Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Systems,
○ Blade slots in chassis, and
○ Physical security.
● Data Center Services
○ Assist with provisioning of hardened and secure data center environment located
at SaskPower facilities.
○ Follow leading practices for facility services such as power redundancy, AC, etc.
○ This includes the following services:
■ Escorted access for non-authorized SaskPower staff and representatives
will be
■ provided,
■ Environmental controls, including temperature and humidity on raised
floor space,

■ Fire alarms and fire suppressions systems,
■ Conditioned UPS based electrical circuits,
■ Uninterruptible power supply,
■ Physical security for SaskPower equipment, forms, tapes, and
documentation
■ Temporary use of shared office facilities as appropriate
■ Redundant data communication entry points tthe facility, and
■ Provide Audit reports as required by SaskPower Auditors or Internal
Audit.

● Direct Storage Management (DASD)
○ Monitor, manage, optimize, and control direct access storage performance
management, initialize direct access storage volumes, establish direct access
storage standards, and perform catalogue management.
○ Direct Access Storage Management encompasses administration, maintenance,
backup, recovery, tracking, control, monitoring, and reporting DASD and tape
data storage utilization. Storage Management produces useful information for
analyzing trends in performance, capacity, availability, and load balancing as
they are related tdata storage. This support includes the following:
● Identifying and maintaining the appropriate threshold levels treduce
potential space constraints, Communicating disk space availability,
space-related problems, and areas of potential problems,
● Data movement mirroring, remote vaulting,
● Creating and maintaining plans for system and user catalogues and for
incremental and full-volume backup and recovery,
● Recommending efficient block sizes, migration criteria, and other
parameters that affect DASD usage and capacity,
● Allocating storage pools, as required, and approved by service requests
for production and testing,
● Reporting on direct access storage utilization, allocation, and historical
usage of datasets on direct access storage.

● Capacity Management
○ Project future trends and capacity requirements for new projects and provide
such information tthe appropriate personnel as it pertains tthe services.
○ Monitor and document SaskPower's current workload trends and provide the
information to T&S Management for use in determining future capacity
requirements.
● Performance management
○ Define SaskPower‘s current and future requirements and plans determining
capacity and performance requirements. Execute approved requests of additional
capacity for Intel Windows based Servers.

○ Test Server performance, capacity, and throughput for new or changed
applications before promoting such applications intthe environment or
SaskPower components; and Establish a schedule for SaskPower’s performance
of dedicated server maintenance (for example, virus and malicious software
detection, backup, disk space cleanup) and for implementing modifications and
enhancements tthe environment tminimally affect availability of the environment.
○ Define thresholds within the selected tool's capability and performance indicators
to monitor UNIX server platform performance against such indicators.
○ Install and configure system management agents for the operating system using
SRM (Server Resource Management) tool or equivalent tool.Take appropriate
resolution action (for example tuning), when Midrange/UNIX server performance
is impacted. Monitor, collect, and analyze server performance, utilization data for
CPU, memory, LPARs, and disk space.
○ Compile configuration data and trends. Establish thresholds and exception
reporting procedures. Develop, review, revise standard reporting templates
Provide ad-hoc reports, as requested by T&S or one of the business units.

● Availability Management
○ Work with SaskPower business units tdefine availability requirements.
○ Ensure the appropriate SaskPower personnel are available tinterface with server
○ personnel, as required, tisolate or resolve problems.
○ Develop an availability plan.
○ Track, analyze and report on availability.
○ Provide hardware maintenance in accordance with the equipment manufacturer's
specifications.
○ Recommend availability improvements.
● Processing Operations
○ Responsible for selecting or defining requirements for all applications software.
The contractor will operate the applications software selected by SaskPower,
provided such applications software conforms tthe operating environment
standards.
○ Provide computer room operations support and perform console monitoring as it
relates to alerts generated by the systems management tools.
○ With the approval of the Service Owner, schedule systems maintenance
tminimize interference with SaskPower business operations; and
○ Monitor ad-hoc job submissions tproduction and user acceptance testing
Midrange/UNIX systems tverify that these jobs are successfully completed.

Systems and Technical Support

● Follow ITIL disciplines texecute incident and problem management processes.
● Incidents from the Service Desk are processed according tdefined SLUs with the
trouble ticket system.
● Work with other support teams tprovide a resolution tincidents.

● Escalate problems/incidents, where necessary, tthe required individual or group
both inside and outside of SaskPower.
● Perform all technical system support operations, including tape management,
system programming, capacity planning and performance tuning for the UNIX
systems.
● Provide support for all UNIX based systems.
● Evaluate, recommend, install, and maintain all systems software including
vendor-supplied patches, service packs, quality packs, hot-fixes, and releases.
● Apply preventive maintenance and program temporary fixes for nadditional
charge by the applicable vendor tcorrect defects
● Provide or obtain new versions and releases, upgrades, replacements, or
additional systems software as agreed-twith by the Service Owner.
● Support the operating systems and subsystems, compilers, standard products,
and operational tools.
● Maintain and manage stored server images with respect tupgrading and patching
all systems software, system management software, tools, or agents.
● Ensure backup up of stored server images is performed.
● Report the performance of the environment and tune it tachieve improved
performance levels.
● Manage and maintain server consoles.
● Install, maintain, and manage all required system management software or
agents.
● Shutdown or restart the operational environment or its components, as required,
in-line with T&S procedures.
● Monitor and administer security for the operational environment in accordance
with SaskPower security policy, including reporting security violations tSecurity.
● Utilization of account administration, passwords, Kerberos ticket granting, file
access security, audit trails and logs, encryption services along with Intrusion
Detection (maintained by the Network Group).
● Provide the skills, experience and knowledge required tsupply tier 2 support –
including backups sthere is coverage for vacation, illness, etc.
● Rebuild servers including hardware, operating system software and SaskPower
application software and data due ta server failure.
● Graceful shutdown of servers during a power outage.
● Use of asset management tool (SAP) and processes ttrack (add, move, remove)
all Midrange equipment.
● A high-level summary of Midrange server assets and their deployment is
provided withevery monthly report.

● Virus Management
● Assist Enterprise Architecture in defining policies and procedures for governing
Anti-virus such as frequency of updates, Anti-virus software used, and incident
management when a breach occurs.

● Supply and make available all virus detection software and services for SaskPower
platforms and networks, and install new updates, as they become available from
vendors.
● For those platforms and systems that dnot currently provide virus protection capabilities,
● Server Technicians will make recommendations for upgrades or replacements that will
allow increased virus protection capabilities.
● Protect, repair and secure all in-scope operating system software, application software
and hardware in the environment from viruses.
● Prevent, detect, destroy, cure or isolate computer viruses.
● Hardware maintenance and Monitoring
● Proactively coordinate and execute maintenance tasks in the environment as a
preventative measure tavoid service failure.
● Identify the most stable, current release of software and firmware and implement,
following release management documentation. Maintain synchronized operating systems
and software levels tprovide a homogenous simple, and flexible environment.
● Plan for major operating system updates, patches, and firmware releases on a regular
and predictable cycle.
Support of the following Midrange disciplines, such as, but not limited to:

● VAX DCL
● UNIX – AIX - 90 LPARS (Dynamic LPARS plus physical instances)
● Oracle and Oracle Operational DBA
● Veritas NetBackup (v6.5)
● Linux RedHat – 20 installs
● Nagios
● Manage relationships with hardware vendors.
○ Configure and maintain all in-scope peripherals relating tSaskPower‘s UNIX servers.
○ Detailed hardware monitoring on all servers tinclude alerts for hardware failures to
○ improve response time and reduce downtime.
○ Monitor the AIX environment including the Oracle databases, SAP, GIS, and Veritas
○ NetBackup, Real time monitoring is done via daemons and a scheduler.
○ The Midrange Team alsuses the AIX system scheduler trun automated scripts tcapture
○ data on the performance and availability of the system at regular intervals.
○ Monitor key backups through customized Veritas NetBackup scripts and receive
monitoring from them
○ Utilize vendor-provided system tools, third party tools and key system data logged at
regular intervals tprovide ad-hoc monitoring and reporting.
*Note - These processes and procedures are used 24/7 tdeal with both prime time and after
hour midrange problems
● Service Level Management
○ Collect details of requirements from the user organization.
○ Draw up business requirements tbe discussed with Vendor Management.
○ Draw up a monthly internal service report based on collected internal reports for
○ applications supported in their respective areas.

○ Check the quality of the internal reports.
○ Evaluate the realization of Service Level Agreements. Compare the performance
indicators and standards, such as those concerning the product delivery time, the
handling time for incidents, the invoices / payments.
○ Help tdraw up Service Level Agreements.
○ Supply input for products and services that must be bought/ordered.
○ Review and update Operating Level Agreements (OLAs) and Service Level
Understandings
○ (SLUs).
○ Consolidate monthly SLReport, based on collected reports.
○ Lead consultations with Vendor Management regarding Service Level Management.
○ Regular evaluation of the service in consultation with customer and supplier/vendors.
○ Organize a regular review; and
○ Check the agreements for quality.
● Technical Documentation
● Maintain technical documentation for in scope services including:
● Server configurations,
● IP addresses and domain names of all in scope hardware,
● Documentation of cluster and contingency plans for hardware failure,
● A diagram depicting the in-scope devices attached tthe network infrastructure,
● Preventative maintenance and repair logs provided by 3rd party support vendors,
● A list of directories for in scope equipment,
● Server build documents, and
● VLAN resource assignments.
● Standard performance reports daily, weekly, monthly
● Documented and agreed-tlisting of thresholds and triggers.
● Ensure that the service goals and objectives are achieved as well as the overall
quality of service
● delivered.
● Interact with team members, client representatives, vendors, and T&S managers and
address and
● resolve issues and concerns at the day-to-day operational level.
● Responsible for the systems architecture, planning and management of operational
projects such as
● upgrades, enhancements etc.
● Primary Transition tOperations Coordinator for all Infrastructure Projects
● Privacy Contact for Operations.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE:
Education & Certifications
● Computer Engineering / Computer Science degree or equivalent experience preferred.

● Demonstrated record of continuous improvement
● ITIL Certification (Foundation, Service Manager)
● General
● Demonstrated record of continuous improvement