Piyush Katira

Dynamic Systems Engineer with a proven track record at Nutanix, specializing in cloud-native solutions and Kubernetes deployment. Expert in automation scripting and fostering strong customer relationships, I drive impactful PoCs and enhance product adoption, ensuring clients achieve their goals efficiently. Recognized for optimizing processes and delivering technical excellence in diverse environments.

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator
• Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Infrastructure 6
• Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist
• Certified OpenStack Administrator
• AWS Solutions Architect Associate
• VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 - Data Center Administration (VCAP5-DCA) (ID: VMW-01789995A-00546642)
• VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 - Data Center Design (VCAP5-DCD)
• VMware Certified Professional 5 - Data Center Virtualization (VCP5-DCV)
• VMware Certified Advanced Professional 6 - Data Center Administration
• VMware Certified Implementation Expert 6 – Data Center Virtualization

In the first 6 months, my discussions with customers were primarily focused on NKP and acting as an SME for all cloud-native discussions with customers across the region and specifically in UAE., Conducted multiple PoCs, demos and deep dives on NKP., Worked extensively with the partner to deploy NKP in a pre-provisioned fashion in a dark site for a federal customer in UAE., Ran NKP and Kubernetes related sessions for SEs in the METNA region to equip them with 101 NKP discussions and demos., Conducting sizing exercises to ensure optimum BoM is created for customers planning to do greenfield or brownfield setup., Working with customers to migrate from VMware or any other platform to Nutanix., Creating a roadmap vision for customers to adopt and expand on existing Nutanix products footprint., Working with partners to adopt and enable Nutanix technologies and products., Working closely with Enterprise support and engineering to resolve day 2 issues and provide product feedback and enhancements needed for the customers., Responsible for converting a lead to driving technical demos, presentation and ensuring that the customer sees the technical value of the product in the presales cycle. These activities were driven around DevOps, containerization and their app modernization initiatives., Sharing technical product previews for all VMware Tanzu products including high level overviews, deep dives and demos., Worked with customers in multiple domains like Oil and Gas, major banks in the UAE, government entities and telco customers., Providing critical day 2 support to customers on anything technical for high value customers., Driving initiatives and upselling technical solutions for business problems shared by VMware’s enterprise customers., Create a technological roadmap that aligns with customer’s vision in terms of outcomes and help them in both pre sales motion and post sales deployment too., Act as a trusted advisor whenever a customer wants to integrate different 3rd party open source or proprietary solutions as part of the overall stack., Lead Proof Of Concepts (PoCs), decide and deliver on Success criteria and work with different stakeholders internally and within customer’s teams like Infra, Networking, Storage, DevOps and Security to provide an end to end solution., Setting up CI/CD for multiple customers in Oil & Gas companies, Insurance and Betting companies and ensuring that they’re able to succeed., Working with multiple tools like Azure DevOps/Sonarqube/AKS/EKS, Prometheus/Grafana, Service Mesh like Istio., Working with tools like mission control and managing OCP clusters and integrating Antrea CNI as well., Started introducing platform engineering concepts and devSecOps tools like Snyk, Grype, and integration of SAST/DAST using VMware and Aqua tools., Setting up pipelines for cluster creations in AWS/Azure as well as on-prem in a consistent fashion., Managing production infrastructure along with Demo, Preprod test and dev environments spread across AWS, OpenStack and bare metal environments., Working with developers and helping them improve their productivity by working on design patterns in Kubernetes., Maintaining/creating CI-CD pipelines in Jenkins., Deployed an ELK stack and configured ElasticSearch snapshot backups using Curator., Using a terraform module to deploy VMs on ESXi directly which reduced the deploy time by 70-80 percent., Worked on setting up an OKD environment for testing on top of existing VMware infra., Worked on Platform9 Managed Kubernetes deployments (POCs) for multiple customers. Currently, working in the position of Solution Architect managing Dubai, Belgium and Italy based accounts as primary ones along with a fintech platinum account., Played a crucial role in completing an automation for a Telco POC to deploy Ceph., Implemented OIDC authentication via KeyCloak and Dex for a customer’s multi Kubernetes cluster environment., Assisted on an end-to-end automation project that helped achieve our customer one touch build process via Platform9 managed OpenStack., Wrote an automation tool for managing/triggering upgrades for Platform9 customers., Working on enhancing and maintaining an Ansible based Platform9 product for automated deployments of Platform9 products while onboarding new customers., Leading a team of 4 members who work in Customer Success to ensure that technical issues are resolved at the earliest., Managing & troubleshooting Platform9’s Private Cloud hosted on Platform9 Managed OpenStack (PMO) running on VMware vSphere and KVM., Completed an online hands-on course on OpenShift., Managing & troubleshooting issues on Managed OpenStack and Managed Kubernetes Deployment., Hands-On knowledge on deployment and configuration of bare-metal multi-master clusters as well as deploying Kubernetes clusters in AWS and Azure., Primary role is to provide Remote Support to VMware Clients who face issue with Configuring, Designing VMware vSphere 5.x & 6.x products., In-depth knowledge of Cloud Solutions (IAAS) based on VMware vRealize Automation/vCAC & vRealize Orchestrator (vRO)., Working on Automated provisioning using vRealize Automation (vRA) and vRealize Orchestrator (vRO)., Implementation of Distributed VMware vRealize Automation environment, Configuring vRealize Endpoints, Fabric Group, Reservations, Approval policies, Blueprints, Entitlements and Services., VMware Administration Experience of configuring vCenter, creating Datacenter, cluster, adding host, configuring DvSwitch, adding licenses, configuring Storage, Host Profile, NTP, DNS, adding host to domain., Outstanding experience and knowledge with designing, installing and implementing VMware ESXi server (5.x, 6.x), VMware vCenter (5.x,6.x), setting up vMotion, HA, DRS and related VMware products such as VM Workstation, VMware Converter, VMware Consolidated Backup and other products for virtualization., Hands-on experience with iSCSI, FC, NAS, NFS storage and RAID concepts, Basic Knowledge of Multi-pathing, zoning, Process Active and Passive I/O for the LUN’s., Working on troubleshooting of NetBackup related problems including installation & upgradations., Skilled on NetBackup Core, Devices configuration, SLPs, & troubleshooting various status codes., Exposure of working on different environments like Solaris 10,11, Linux RHEL 5.x, 6.x, AIX, Windows 2003, 2008, 2012, ESXi 5.x,6.x., Configuration & troubleshooting VMware Backup issues., Exposure at upgrading and troubleshooting NetBackup Appliance issues., Troubleshooting connectivity issues between master, media & client servers.