Anthony Collis
Hello I'm Anthony, an enthusiastic tech-guru who is keen on exploring both the real world and the technical world.
Based in Reading, Berkshire - I enjoy working with and learning different technologies to help save time and increase efficiency.
A little bit about me and what I do
I'm an IT Administrator with 4+ years professional experience working in the computing industry, always looking to learn and expand my knowledge in different areas of computing. I am currently working with and learning a variety of products including but not limited to; Microsoft Azure, Intune & MDM, Windows Virtual Desktops, Cisco Meraki and ConnectWise Control/Automate.
In my time outside of work I am getting to grips with using Linux and continuing to expand my knowledge around infrastructure and other IT systems/technologies. I also like to travel and explore new places, having travelled Australia for a year this has inspired me to go and see new places, as well as catching up with friends and family when I can.
My skills
More information on the different technologies I currently work with
For most of my career I have been working within Office 365 tenants and have administered different aspects of the product including; SharePoint, Exchange Admin, Teams and most other areas including general user account management.
I have regularly been working within different Windows Server enterprise environments and am familiar with Active Directory, Group Policy, Print Services, SMB File sharing and other services available with the operating system.
I am currently administering some areas of Azure including; Azure AD, Intune, AutoPilot, MDM.
I am currently getting more familiar with using it to manage and host a cloud infrastructure environment.
My experience with using system automation ranges from pushing out system wide changes via custom scripts to creating custom searches and exporting computer data based on required information.
I've been using a product called ConnectWise Automate which I am now very familiar with.
I have recently started gaining a basic understanding of Linux (Ubuntu/CentOS) by creating various different servers; Reverse Proxy, Gaming Servers, Web Servers.
I've also been using the terminal to set up these instances and make changes such as; changes to the local firewall, starting and stopping system services and scheduling automatic system tasks.
Windows Virtual Desktops (WVD) is something that was implemented where I currently work about a year ago and since it's implementation I have become familiar with how it works and have been troubleshooting various issues in the areas of FXLogics user profiles and troublesome hosts.
I hope to learn more around the creation and deployment of WVD hosts.
I have been using PowerShell mainly for automation purposes and although I'm not able to write scripts from scratch I have been able to take templates and edit scripts to be able to achieve what needs to be done.
I can see my PowerShell skills gradually developing as automation is only becoming more and more common.
I have used Virtualization to achieve a wide range of things, my home lab consists of a few virtual machines, one of which is hosting this website.
I've worked with virtual machines mainly on the following platforms; TrueNAS Scale, Microsoft Azure, Virtualbox and VMWare.
My home lab
Having my home lab is incredibly useful and convenient, it also enables my continued learning of networking and running servers outside of work.
For those who are interested, my setup consists of two physical pieces of hardware:
A HP micro server that is running TrueNAS Scale acting as a file share allowing for both internal and external access, hosts two virtual machines running Ubuntu Linux acting as a Proxy/DDNS server & Apache web server plus a VPN server.
A mini Dell Optiplex running CentOS Linux configured as an OpenGamePanel (OGP) server, used to run and manage multiplayer servers for online gaming.
Fun fact: this website is self-hosted from my home lab