Software E nginee r/Infrastr ucture Specialist - P lacement Y e ar Humzah D epep a rtmenrtmen t of Physicic s,s, L ougug h b orouou gh Univiv ersisi t y

About IBM Projects And Opportunities Skills Developed

IBM (International Business Machines) is an American multinational information technology company, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM produces and sells • IBM-Zypper, worked on package manager responsible for automating the repositories for • Problem solving and analytical skills - used daily when working on hardware, middleware and software as well as provides hosting and consulting services all versions of SLES (SLES 15 in particular) across multiple architectures. systems. in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. Also as a major • HCDC Dashboard, updated layout of the dashboard to be more representative of the • Public speaking - giving department presentations. research organization, IBM holds the current record for most U.S. patents generated room’s layout. by a business and has done so for 26 consecutive years. Some inventions by IBM • Communication - interacting with clients and colleagues through various include the (ATM), the , the magnetic stripe • Department presentation, I had the opportunity to present a refresher course on SQL mediums of communication. we see on cards, the SQL (Structured Query Language) programming language as well (Structured Query Language) as part of a group of three placement students, to colleagues • Time management - working on various projects alongside my core role. as the UPC () barcode.[1] of my department. • Teamwork - working with other colleagues and placement students from var- • macOS, I became the first Placement student to provide infrastructure support for over ious departments. Labs 60 enterprise mac servers. • Hurlsey Innovation festival and 60th anniversary, helped organise these events Hursley Labs is one of the research and development labs based in , Eng- with colleagues from Connex for IBM clients and the general public. Advice For Future Placement Students land. Many teams including DevIT, are based there working on products like Inte- • London careers fair, consisted of workshops and talks presented by VP’s, consultants gration Bus, open Liberty, Internet of Things and many more. There are also various and Graduates. facilities provided for visiting clients to test IBM’s software in a secure environment.[2] • Working in any industry is an invaluable experience and one all students should • Escape room / Hackers Den, designed and printed the housing for sensors to be used strive to get. in the room for client visits. Below are images starting from the left, of the 1st prototype printed and the final product. • Placement years can help you make connections in areas of industry before you graduate. • Use a placement year as an opportunity to test the waters of an industry in which you are interested in before you graduate. There may be aspects of that industry that you hadn’t realised you would be interested in. • Use all the resources at your disposal such as courses, workshops and conferences to gain experience and make the most of your placement year. • Soft skills are just as valuable as hard skills if not more so to companies. • When on a placement look for a mentor from that company who can answer Knowledge Gained questions you may have, they don’t have to be someone who works with you daily.

Fig. 1: Hursley House. • System Administration knowledge for Linux, Windows and macOS. Acknowledgements My Role and Responsibilities • Experience with various architectures RedHat, SLES, SUSE and X86 64. • Experience using Vsphere - creating and decommissioning VM’s as well as virtualising old I would like to thank my colleagues at IBM for their constant guidance and making I was a member of the platforms team in DevIT. We provided infrastructure support servers. my placement year an enriching experience. My team lead, Peter Griffin, for training to a range of IBM product development and Level3 service teams, based both here • Ruby used with dashing to create dashboards. me at IBM and advising me on difficult tasks. Richard Wale, for mentoring me in Hursley, the broader UK and other geographies. Some of the more significant de- when I was working on the macOS project. Graham Eames, for supplying me with velopment customers are WebSphere, CICS (Customer Information Control System) • Bash Scripting using VI and Atom. knowledge about IBM systems and infrastructure. I would also like to thank the and MQ (Messaging Query). My responsibilities included: • Github used to manage, store and edit software scripts safely. careers office at Loughborough University especially Careers advisor Rakhee Patel and my placement tutor Michael Cropper, for their support and advice during the • OpensCAD used to program and render 3D objects and models for 3D prints. application process. • Providing and configuring new systems (Virtual and servers) to teams. • Use of IBM communications systems used with clients such as notes, Sametime, Websphere • Virtualising and decommissioning existing servers. and Slack. References • Troubleshooting issues that clients may face with their systems. • Use of IBM Administrative tools such as HostDB, ITIM (IBM Tivoli Identifier Manager) as well as NetBoot. [1] Chronological history of IBM. https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/decade1920.html. • Monitoring system performance and updating systems accordingly. [Online, accessed 29/08/19]. 2019. • Ensuring all systems are compliant with IBM system requirements and have the • Docker Essentials: A Developers Introduction Badge earned - certifies I can use Docker as [2] IBM Hursley brings colour and speech to computing. correct EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) software. a software developer. https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/uk/en/stories/hursleyinnovations.html. [Online, accessed 25/08/19]. 2018. • IBM Z Analytics Foundations Badge earned - certifies that I have fundamental knowledge in IBM Z systems.