The Backup & Storage Specialist (Systems Engineer) is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining enterprise-grade backup, recovery, and storage solutions to ensure data integrity, availability, and business continuity. The role supports hybrid cloud, hyperconverged, and on-premises environments, working across virtualization platforms such as VMware, vSAN, and Nutanix HCI.
This position requires proactive monitoring, optimization, and troubleshooting of storage and backup systems, while collaborating with cross-functional teams to meet performance, security, and compliance requirements.
Key Responsibilities
Systems & Infrastructure Management
- Maintain the health, security, and documentation of backup, storage, server, virtualization, and hyperconverged environments.
- Perform routine maintenance including patching, firmware upgrades, and system health checks across Windows/Linux servers, VMware/vSAN/Nutanix platforms, SAN/HCI arrays, and cloud environments.
- Enforce system security through access controls, encryption, vulnerability management, and compliance with organizational standards (e.g., ISO 27001, GDPR).
- Maintain technical documentation, runbooks, and recovery procedures.
- Provide Tier-2 support for storage and backup-related issues, including capacity planning and performance optimization.
Backup & Recovery Operations
- Implement and manage enterprise backup solutions, primarily using Commvault, ensuring reliable data protection and rapid recovery.
- Configure backup policies, schedules, and retention strategies across physical, virtual, cloud, and hyperconverged workloads.
- Conduct backup integrity checks, restore testing, and disaster recovery drills.
- Troubleshoot backup failures and generate reports on backup success rates, compliance, and storage utilization.
- Integrate backup systems with monitoring tools for automated alerting and reporting.
Enterprise Storage & Hyperconverged Platforms
- Administer SAN, NAS, and hyperconverged infrastructure (e.g., VMware vSAN, Nutanix, HPE SimpliVity).
- Design and manage storage provisioning, zoning, LUNs, and vSAN datastores for optimal performance and availability.
- Monitor storage capacity, I/O performance, and system health; perform forecasting and capacity planning.
- Implement replication, snapshotting, and tiering technologies to enhance resilience and efficiency.
- Collaborate with application teams to align storage architecture with workload requirements and SLAs.
Cloud & Hybrid Infrastructure
- Support hybrid storage and backup operations across on-prem and cloud platforms (Azure and GCP).
- Provision and manage Azure Blob Storage, Azure Files, and GCP Cloud Storage for backup and data migration use cases.
- Configure and integrate cloud-native backup services with Commvault for centralized management.
- Optimize cloud storage costs through lifecycle management, archiving, and deduplication.
- Conduct security assessments for cloud storage access, encryption, and hybrid integrations.
Server & Virtualization Administration
- Administer Windows and Linux servers (Red Hat, CentOS, Ubuntu) with a focus on storage integration and performance tuning.
- Manage VMware vSphere and Nutanix AHV environments, including VM provisioning, vMotion, storage vMotion, and vSAN operations.
- Integrate virtualization platforms with enterprise storage using iSCSI, FC, and NFS protocols.
- Develop automation scripts (PowerShell, Bash, Python) for storage provisioning and backup orchestration.
Incident, Problem & Change Management
- Apply ITIL best practices to incident response, root cause analysis, and change management.
- Resolve storage, backup, and performance incidents within defined SLAs.
- Perform root cause analysis and implement preventive improvements.
- Plan and execute infrastructure changes, including upgrades and policy modifications, with proper risk assessment and testing.
- Document incidents, problems, and changes within the ITSM platform and contribute to knowledge base improvements.
Qualifications & Experience
Experience
- 5+ years of hands-on experience in enterprise backup and storage administration.
- Strong exposure to hybrid cloud, hyperconverged, and virtualization environments.
- Proven experience managing large-scale data protection using Commvault.
Education
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
Certifications (Preferred)
- Commvault Certified Administrator (CCA)
- VMware Certified Professional Data Center Virtualization (VCP-DCV)
- Nutanix Certified Professional (NCP)
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104)
- Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect
- RHCSA or ITIL Foundation (advantage)
Technical Skillset
- Expertise in Commvault Complete, including IntelliSnap and cloud integrations.
- Strong knowledge of SAN/HCI platforms, thin provisioning, replication, and storage performance tuning.
- Proficiency in Azure and GCP storage and backup services.
- Advanced Windows and Linux administration, including multipathing and performance tuning.
- Deep understanding of VMware vSphere, vSAN, Nutanix AHV, and related technologies.
- Scripting and automation using PowerShell, Python, or Bash.
- Familiarity with monitoring tools such as SolarWinds, Nagios, Splunk, or similar.
