CETRE SysAdmin & DevOps

Matt Brock - System Administrator and DevOps Engineer based in London, UK

25 years of server and infrastructure experience

We have been working with Matt for more than 10 years now. He knows our system inside out and is the single point of contact for all our infrastructure needs. He is extremely responsive to our requirements and always happy to help. He is a keen problem solver with an attention to detail. We are really happy with this association.
Steven Bullen, Technical Manager, The Mandy Network Ltd

Matt is an excellent SysAdmin and helps us when needed. He knows these systems like the back of his hand. He doesn't waste time and gets the job done. We are very happy with him.
Darren Sullivan, Head of Development, Cryptografx Security Solutions, Inc

Working with Matt was a pleasure. The level of organisation and detail was critical to the smooth and continuous running of our servers. I cannot say enough good things regarding Matt and what he brought to the table. I look forward to more opportunities in the future.
Colin Rendell, Operations Director, Hummingbird Bakery Ltd

He has brought stability and reliability to all our different environments. He brings a huge amount of enthusiasm and knowledge.
Sam Lawrence, CTO, FSB Technology UK Ltd

Matt has been invaluable in setting up our Amazon Web Services environment. He has a thorough knowledge of application hosting.
Richard Vicary, Technical Manager, LiveBook Ltd

Matt is an excellent sysadmin, meticulous and reliable, and I am very happy to recommend him.
Eamonn Vincent, Director and Partner, Media Match Inc

Matt Brock - about me and the services I provide

I've worked in infrastructure for 25 years, originally as a System Administrator focused primarily on installation and maintenance of server hardware and software. I've now moved more into DevOps Engineering with automated provisioning on cloud platforms such as AWS and GCP, using Infrastructure as Code (Iac). For over 10 years I've worked as a freelancer and contractor to provide efficient and dependable infrastructure services and consultancy for about two dozen clients, from small startups to large established companies. I've set up company infrastructures from scratch in a variety of environments, improved and optimised existing infrastructures, managed software and environment migrations, and been involved with a huge range of other application and server projects.

I work mainly with Linux and other Unix-like systems. I have extensive experience with many technologies in a wide range of industries, which enables me to assess the bigger picture in any existing or planned infrastructure. I can rearchitect as needed, optimising for cost, security, stability and performance, before fine-tuning the details and implementing the most effective solutions. My experience covers all relevant areas including web and application servers, load balancing, clustering and redundancy, disaster recovery, caching at multiple tiers, mail delivery, monitoring, virtualisation and containerisation, testing and deployment.

I can operate on a flexible basis for everyday work and also offer ad hoc support for issues outside working hours. I can offer an hourly rate or a day rate for freelance and contract arrangements as needed.

Skills and expertise

Automation and IaC provisioning: Ansible
Caching solutions: Memcached, Redis, Squid, Varnish
Cloud computing platforms: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Rackspace
Clustering, high availability, and disaster recovery: LVM, Pacemaker/Corosync, RAID
Collaboration tools: Confluence, Jira, Trello
Continuous integration and continuous delivery: Jenkins
Data centre hardware: HP ProLiant, Dell PowerEdge
Databases: MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL
Desktop OS: macOS, Windows
DNS: BIND
File sharing: Samba
Load balancing: HAProxy
Mail systems: Postfix, Exim, Courier IMAP, Dovecot, OpenDKIM, Postgrey, Mailchimp
Monitoring and analytics: Nagios, DataDog, AWStats, Webalizer, New Relic, Elastic Stack/Elasticsearch/Kibana/Logstash
Networking: Cisco
Programming and scripting languages: Perl, Python, PHP, Bash
Repository and version control: Git, Subversion, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket
Security: firewalld, iptables, ModSecurity, mod_evasive, pfSense, Fail2Ban
Server OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, BSD
Virtualisation and containerisation: KVM, Proxmox, VirtualBox, VMWare, LXC, Docker, Kubernetes, Vagrant
Web and application servers: Apache, nginx, PHP, Node.js, Java

Current and previous clients

Alpine LDN: New website infrastructure deployed on Google Cloud Platform for this brand, design and digital agency
Application Craft: Management of infrastructure monitoring for Application Craft, a cloud development platform
Ashridge Nurseries: AWS engineering and migration management for this online garden centre
Aspire London: AWS infrastructure management for this web design and development company
Bevan Kidwell: Server, security and network management for this corporate and commercial solicitor
Cryptografx Security: System administration and AWS consultancy for this two-factor authentication provider
Custodia Continuity: Programming in Bash and PHP for continuity management and backup applications
EduNation: Management and migration of AWS infrastructure for private tuition website FirstTutors
FSB Technology: Long-term systems management and devops for physical and virtual infrastructure in a high-transaction online gaming environment
General Index: All AWS infrastructure setup and server administration for this alternative commodity pricing service
Hummingbird Bakery: Server and infrastructure management and support for this American-style bakery
LondonMarketing: Migration of long-running London visitor website LondonTown from the data centre to AWS
The Mandy Network: Long-term AWS infrastructure planning, management and support for this network of entertainment industry bookings websites
Media Match Inc: Infrastructure consultancy for various projects
Memrise: Migration and scaling of AWS environment for web-based learning application
MyLiveBook: Deployment of AWS infrastructure for this online training environment
Phenomenists Internet: Ongoing infrastructure support and AWS deployment for this creative web design service company
Razor Occam: Involvement in major AWS deployments for industrial suppliers Zoro and Cromwell
Team Absence: AWS and Linux administration for financial and business-related projects

Contact details and links

Contact

Email: brock@cetre.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0)7973 797020