Role Overview

The Backup & Storage Specialist is responsible for designing, implementing, and operating enterprise backup, recovery, and storage solutions to ensure data integrity, availability, and business continuity. The role supports on-premises, hyperconverged, and hybrid cloud environments, including VMware, vSAN, Nutanix HCI, Azure, and GCP.

This position focuses on proactive monitoring, optimization, troubleshooting, and compliance of storage and backup systems while collaborating with infrastructure, security, and application teams.

Key Responsibilities

1. Backup & Recovery Management

• Implement, configure, and manage enterprise backup solutions (primarily Commvault) across physical, virtual, cloud, and HCI workloads.
• Define and maintain backup policies, schedules, retention, and replication strategies.
• Perform regular backup validation, restore testing, and disaster recovery drills.
• Monitor backup performance, troubleshoot failures, and produce compliance and utilization reports.
• Integrate backup platforms with monitoring and alerting tools.

2. Enterprise Storage & Hyperconverged Infrastructure

• Administer SAN, NAS, and HCI platforms (VMware vSAN, Nutanix, HPE SimpliVity, Dell EMC, HPE 3PAR).
• Design and manage storage provisioning, zoning, LUNs, datastores, and vSAN configurations.
• Monitor capacity, performance, and health; conduct forecasting and capacity planning.
• Implement replication, snapshots, tiering, and high-availability storage features.
• Align storage configurations with application performance requirements and SLAs.

3. Cloud & Hybrid Infrastructure Support

• Manage hybrid storage and backup integrations across Azure, GCP, and on-premises environments.
• Provision and manage Azure Blob Storage, Azure Files, and GCP Cloud Storage.
• Configure cloud-native backup services and integrate them with Commvault.
• Optimize cloud storage costs using lifecycle policies, archiving, and deduplication.
• Ensure cloud storage security, encryption, access control, and compliance.

4. Server & Virtualization Administration

• Support Windows and Linux servers (RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, SUSE) with a focus on storage performance and integration.
• Administer VMware vSphere and Nutanix AHV environments, including VM provisioning, vMotion, and storage vMotion.
• Integrate servers and hypervisors with enterprise storage using FC, iSCSI, and NFS.
• Develop automation scripts for storage provisioning and backup orchestration.

5. Incident, Problem & Change Management

• Apply ITIL best practices for incident response, root cause analysis, and change management.
• Resolve backup, storage, and performance incidents within defined SLAs.
• Conduct root cause analysis and implement preventive and monitoring improvements.
• Plan and execute changes such as firmware upgrades, policy updates, and capacity expansions.
• Maintain accurate records in ITSM tools (e.g., ServiceNow).

6. General System Management & Documentation

• Perform routine maintenance, patching, firmware upgrades, and health checks.
• Enforce security controls, encryption, vulnerability management, and compliance (e.g., ISO 27001, GDPR).
• Maintain detailed documentation, configurations, and operational runbooks.
• Provide Tier-2 support and guidance on storage capacity and performance optimization.

Qualifications & Experience

Required Experience

• 5+ years of experience in enterprise backup and storage administration.
• Strong hands-on experience with Commvault in large-scale, multi-site environments.
• Proven expertise in VMware vSphere, vSAN, Nutanix AHV, and hyperconverged platforms.
• Solid experience with Windows and Linux server administration.
• Hands-on experience with Azure and GCP storage and backup services.
• Knowledge of storage protocols (FC, iSCSI, NFS) and enterprise SAN/HCI systems.
• Experience achieving high availability and uptime (99.99%) through resilient design.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.

Certifications (Preferred)

• Commvault Certified Administrator (CCA)
• VMware VCP-DCV
• Nutanix Certified Professional (NCP)
• Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104)
• Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect
• RHCSA or ITIL Foundation (advantage)

Key Technical Skills

• Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery (Simpana, IntelliSnap, cloud connectors)
• Enterprise SAN / HCI storage administration and replication
• VMware vCenter, vSAN, NSX, Nutanix AHV
• Azure & GCP storage and backup services
• Scripting & automation (PowerShell, Python, Bash, Terraform/ARM)
• Windows & Linux performance tuning and multipathing
• Monitoring tools (SolarWinds, Nagios, Splunk)