Senior engineering,
in production.

Selected engagements across research computing, rural healthcare, regional telecom, and municipal cloud. The résumé behind the roster.

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01
Higher Education HPC · Data-center design 2020–2023

Satellite image-processing HPC delivered
on timeline and on budget.

End-to-end delivery of a new HPC supercomputer for a federal satellite image processing contract — requirements analysis through go-live, plus two years of cluster support and management services.

University of Alaska Fairbanks · Research Computing Systems
124
Compute nodes
200G
HDR InfiniBand
6.5 PB
Storage delivered
80
GPUs across 20 nodes

Challenge

UAF needed a supercomputer engineered for satellite image processing under a federal government contract — with demanding requirements on compute density, low-latency interconnect, and storage throughput, all delivered inside a strict program timeline and budget.

No in-house HPC architecture team existed at the scale this build required. The environment had to be designed, specified, built, tested, and documented by an external partner who could operate at the intersection of data-center design, networking, and HPC systems.

Approach

  • Full requirements analysis across data-center and application layers
  • Data-center layout, power and cooling design
  • Three-network design: 1GE management, 25GE production (100GE external), 200Gbps HDR InfiniBand internal
  • Cluster design: 7 utility nodes, 104 CPU compute, 20 GPU compute (80 GPUs)
  • Storage: 500 TB IB-connected scratch + 6 PB permanent
  • BOM, procurement support, assembly (with Dell HPC), acceptance testing

Outcome

The HPC environment was delivered to UAF/RCS on the agreed timeline and within budget, passing acceptance testing and entering production for its federal contract workload.

Espira continued providing ongoing configuration assistance and cluster management services for two additional years, ensuring the research team could focus on science — not infrastructure ops.

Espira's team doesn't just execute — they design the thing you wish your in-house team had time to build. The HPC delivery came in on timeline and on budget.

Research Computing Systems
University of Alaska Fairbanks

Espira team on this engagement

Karl Adriaenssens · Lead architect Tom Bohn · HPC engineering

Technologies

Dell HPC NVIDIA GPU InfiniBand HDR Lustre Ethernet 100GE
02
Healthcare DR · VDI · Mobile Management 2021–present

A disaster-recovery program
for rural healthcare at scale.

Multi-year engagement designing and implementing disaster recovery, replacing storage, and rolling out modern device management for one of the largest rural healthcare corporations in North America.

Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation · Bethel, Alaska
2
Dell Unity 680F arrays
1 yr
Post-deploy support
MFA
SSO across SaaS
3
Concurrent workstreams

Challenge

YKHC operates across an immense rural geography delivering care to communities where downtime has direct patient-safety consequences. Their existing infrastructure lacked a proper DR posture for both virtual desktops and virtual servers, their storage fabric needed refresh, and their device estate was expanding faster than it could be centrally managed.

They needed a partner who could run three parallel programs — DR, storage refresh, mobile management — without the programs tripping over each other.

Approach

  • DR planning and implementation for VDI and virtual server fabric, replication and failover to the DR site
  • Stood up DR networking, servers, and storage; configured replication and failover for critical services and applications
  • Implementation of dual Dell EMC Unity 680F arrays with FAST Cache, FAST VP, iSCSI connectivity, share creation
  • Workspace ONE tenant configuration for BYOD and corporate phones, tablets, and laptops
  • Win10 modern management with lifecycle management; Identity & Access Management with SAML SSO and MFA to corporate apps
  • One year of post-deployment "white-glove" operational support

Outcome

YKHC moved from ad-hoc DR planning to a tested, documented, executable DR posture across both VDI and virtual server estates. The storage fabric now supports its full healthcare workload with FAST-tiered performance.

The Workspace ONE rollout gave IT centralized lifecycle control over the device estate, simplified onboarding for new clinical staff, and hardened authentication with MFA/SSO to corporate SaaS.

Espira team on this engagement

Brigham Mirabelli Seth Crosby Conrad Ramos Rhys Tony Mike Lane Nick Perry Jeff Read Karl Adriaenssens Mike Laggis Tom Bohn

Technologies

Dell EMC Unity 680F VMware Horizon Workspace ONE SAML / SSO Win10 modern mgmt
03
Municipal Government Cloud strategy 2021

A hybrid cloud roadmap
the whole city signed off on.

Strategic cloud-migration plan connecting the city's existing data centers to AWS — aligning IT infrastructure with business objectives and carrying the entire stakeholder group through to a committed roadmap.

City of Grand Junction, Colorado
AWS
Hybrid target
100%
Stakeholder sign-off
1
Roadmap delivered
N/A
Existing DCs retained

Challenge

Municipal IT operates under a rare combination of constraints: public-sector procurement, fixed budgets, stakeholder committees, and workloads that can't afford missteps. Grand Junction wanted a cloud strategy — but one that didn't abandon their existing investments or create a rip-and-replace migration risk.

They needed an outside perspective that could translate enterprise hybrid-cloud thinking into a plan their department heads, city council, and IT operations team would all believe in.

Approach

  • Analysis of existing infrastructure, application landscape, and operational processes
  • Design of a hybrid model integrating existing data centers with a new AWS environment
  • Iterative consultative process with heavy team education around cloud services
  • Consensus-building workshops to promote adoption of the Strategic Plan
  • Final Strategic Plan for Cloud Migration with phased roadmap

Outcome

A Strategic Plan for Cloud Migration the City could act on — with full stakeholder buy-in across IT, operations, and leadership. The hybrid model preserved prior investment in on-premises infrastructure while opening an AWS-based path for modernization and new workloads.

The education component meant the city's own teams didn't just adopt the plan — they could defend and iterate on it.

Espira team on this engagement

Karl Adriaenssens · Lead strategist

Technologies

AWS Hybrid cloud architecture TCO modeling
04
Telecom Core network · HA 2018–ongoing

Core network redesign
with zero downtime at cutover.

Dual-platform HA redesign of access and aggregation layers across three sites — protocol-driven failover, non-stop IP forwarding, and full knowledge transfer to CTC's field operations team.

Cordova Telecom · Alaska
3
Sites re-engineered
10G
Baseline capacity
0
Downtime at cutover
2x
HA platform pairs per site

Challenge

CTC needed to evolve core IP services infrastructure to a dual-platform high-availability production operations model — with automation of network resiliency, protocol-driven fail-over, and non-stop forwarding. The stakes: maintaining IP service offerings for every customer through every migration event.

The engagement spanned the CTC central office in Cordova, an AT&T service POP in Valdez, and the AT&T Mobility head-end co-location in Anchorage — each with different operational teams, different coordination requirements, and zero tolerance for cutover downtime.

Approach

  • Strategic infrastructure design & planning throughout 2018; Valdez site as pilot for the binary-platform HA model
  • Iterated the HA model to further refined high-level and low-level implementation design
  • Backfilled access and aggregation layers with paired HA units
  • Built-in automation of failover and failure recovery for non-stop forwarding
  • POC build & validation on-site at customer location before every cutover
  • Full as-built documentation, operations runbooks, and knowledge transfer to CTC field ops and executive management

Outcome

L2/L3 Cisco ASR 900-based platforms integrated and re-integrated across the three named sites. Greater overall data-bearer capacity, resiliency/redundancy strategies based on the binary-platform HA model, and dynamic L3 protocol-governed protection switching integrating both the undersea fiber segment (CDV-VDZ) and the terrestrial microwave backbone.

Every cutover completed inside its scheduled maintenance window. CTC's field operations team owns and operates the environment today.

Espira team on this engagement

Tom Bohn Joel Doetsch Jeff Read

Technologies

Cisco ASR 900 / 1002-HX Cisco ISR 4461 MP-BGP · EVPN · L2VPN MPLS IPv4/v6 dual stack
05
Healthcare DR · Hardware refresh 2022

VEEAM DR plus a rack-by-rack
compute & storage refresh.

Business continuity rebuild for a rural healthcare system — VEEAM deployment for on-premises and remote backup, paired with a staged hardware refresh that consolidated compute and storage into new rack infrastructure without interrupting clinical operations.

Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services · New Mexico
VEEAM
DR & BC platform
2
Sites: on-prem + remote
0
Clinical disruption
Gen+1
Compute & storage refresh

Challenge

RMCH needed a credible disaster-recovery and business-continuity posture without the freedom to disrupt active clinical systems. The engagement had to deploy backup infrastructure, consolidate compute and storage into new racks, and relocate production equipment — all while the hospital continued to operate.

Approach

  • VEEAM installation and configuration for on-premises and remote-site backup destinations
  • New racks installed in advance, dedicated to consolidated, current-generation equipment
  • Carefully scheduled outage windows to relocate networking, storage, and servers into the new racks
  • New power infrastructure in place prior to relocation
  • Hardware refresh covering compute and storage

Outcome

A working DR/BC solution with remote-site backup, plus a modernized and consolidated compute/storage footprint — all delivered around the hospital's clinical operating schedule.

Espira team on this engagement

Brigham Mirabelli Seth Crosby Mike Laggis Mike Lane Nick Perry Joel Doetsch Joey Bailey Jeff Read Conrad Ramos Mark Sargent

Technologies

VEEAM Rack & power infra Compute / storage refresh

Two more in the archive.

Quick cards for a pair of engagements — details under NDA or omitted for brevity.

Architecture · Cloud migration

AoS

Data-center relocation assessment for the Archdiocese of Seattle, followed by an engagement to migrate and modernize applications and services into the public cloud.

Engineering · VDI

DCI Engineers

Deployment of a new Horizon Virtual Desktop solution built on a 10-node VxRail cluster — HA firewalls, redundant core and management switching, backup, storage, and compute — through to production user migration.

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