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Alex_Katsila

Meet HPE Master ASE Rene Feitelson with Premier Systems

Learn what is important to this Master ASE in the event you get beeped in the middle of the night to attend to your data center.

Rene FeitelsonRene FeitelsonName: Rene Feitelson

Employer: Premier Systems Ltd.

Title/Role: Senior Technical Consultant

Location: Blue Bell, PA

Education: B.S., Computer Science, UCLA

LinkedIn Profile:  Rene Feitelson

 

 

 

 

 

 

Certifications:

 

How did you get started? 

“Well this goes back to elementary school.  I was good in math. Then, computers started being available in high school, and I became interested in computers. Out of college, I started work as a programmer, and then I joined HP when we moved to the San Francisco Bay area from Los Angeles. I started as an HP 3000 OS Multi Programming Executive (MPE) consultant, and then I became a performance specialist. I was very interested in overall system performance and I/O performance.  I started learning HP-UX through performance analysis and hands-on experience on the systems. I also learned system admin and the operating system functions. But, from that point on, I was very much into designing systems for good I/O performance. That naturally kind of segues into storage technologies. So I was a factory person, I came out to the field, I was at HP for 22 years, and then I went to an HP customer for about four to five years, before moving to Premier Systems which is an HPE channel partner. So, a lot of what I’ve done over my career has been the same since I started at HP: system design with the goal of great performance overall, I/O performance especially, and designing systems that are easy to use. I always tell customers who have a lot of systems, they should be designed similarly or the same so when you get beeped and dragged out of bed at 3:00 in morning you don’t have to remember how one system is different from another. They should be all easy to manage, very consistent in how they are laid out, but also designed for good I/O performance.”

What is your favorite HPE technology & why?

“For a very long time I’ve been an HP-UX person, so I love HP UX. I’m all about high availability. So that’s the sweet spot I like to play in. I’ve branched out into Linux, and then I tie in the storage. The hot thing now in storage is HPE 3PAR; it’s just a great storage platform. Some of the things we learned at the AMS HPE Master ASE Conference about Synergy, is going to help us start transitioning our customers from the Blades and rack servers to Synergy. So that’s going to be exciting in the next two years.”

Any interesting customer stories you would like to share? 

“A customer that was migrating from four legacy MPE systems to four newer technologies. And they were really oversimplifying the amount of effort involved. I was more concerned about their data and a smooth migration and not falling into a trench. We sat in a meeting when they said, ‘The new hardware is going to come in mid-week.  We are going to power it up and connect everything. Friday night we are going to back up the old systems.  We are going to work all weekend, and Monday morning we are going to be live.’

I said, ‘Well that’s great. But you’ve got lots of moving pieces here and several big applications. It’s really important to test everything. So we are not doing this over a weekend.’ The customer asked, ‘How much time is it going to take?’ I said, ‘I think you need a month or two. Test all the pieces, get all things working.’ This was in the days of the hardwired terminals. I said, ‘I’ve been in your computer room, you’ve got four feet of spaghetti in cables, and none of them are labeled. You don’t know which ones are printers, which ones are terminals.’

I said, ‘If you are really going to do this over a weekend with no testing, I’m out and I’m leaving.’ I got up to leave, and they said ‘Wait, don’t leave. Please sit down.’ So we negotiated and compromised and discussed the issues. I said my goal is to protect your data and to keep your business running. There is so much risk with the approach you are taking.

So we agreed to a month. Then they shortened it to two weeks. We pretty much worked around the clock. It wasn’t too stressful although we didn’t get a lot of sleep. For the most part, on the Monday after cut-over, just about everything was running. We had some interesting issues over that cutover weekend. You have to have enough confidence in your experience to know that there are lots of ways to do something, but if the way your client wants to implement changes is going to put you at great risk, you can compromise on some things.  You can’t just be cowboys.”

What are the benefits of being a Master ASE?

“The fact that you are a Master ASE, whether that’s servers, storage, networking or software, means that you’ve gotten to the point of mastering those technologies. It also allows you, at the Master ASE leve,l to come to conferences like the AMS HPE Master ASE Conference, in Colorado Springs, CO, and network with your peers.  Everybody specializes in something different.  It’s always good to have someone to call because you know that they have done a lot more work on a certain platform or a certain environment than you have."

Any advice for women interested in pursuing a career in technology? 

"Don’t be afraid to take the science courses and all the technical courses. Set your goals on really learning a lot. Don’t be intimidated by it being primarily a male-dominated profession. For the most part, it’s a fun profession.  The men enjoy a female perspective because it creates a diverse environment and everybody in a project brings a different perspective. The troubleshooting and design ideas that you contribute to problem solving, provide for a great result for customers. As we say at Premier Systems, ‘The best man for a job is a woman."

 

 

As a Master ASE, you will be recognized as having reached the pinnacle in HPE Certifications. Customers will rely on you to bring rich technical skills to design and implement their most complex solutions. You’ll also see personal and business rewards while being able to network and share with one of the most exclusive teams in the industry.

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About the Author

Alex_Katsila

I’m an Activation Lead and working in the IT industry for almost 10 years now. I love Instagram, blogging and sharing fascinating stories about our HPE sales, presales and channel partners.