Rating plateMalmö · SE
Veljko Radan
- Role
- OT Infrastructure Specialist
- In service
- Since 2008 · 18 years in IT and OT
- Field
- Industrial datacentres, virtualisation, backup, segmented networks
- Location
- Malmö, Sweden
I'm Veljko Radan, and I work on the infrastructure that keeps factories running. Since 2023 I have been an OT Infrastructure Specialist at Alfa Laval, in Group Digital and the Factory Networks team. My area is the factories' own datacentres, from hardware and virtualisation to backup, power and remote access for vendors.
01 — Work
What I do
In a factory, an outage is not a ticket in a queue. It is a production line standing still. That is why my work is as much about planning and coordination as it is about technology.
- Industrial datacentres end to end. Server hardware, VMware vSphere and vCenter, vSAN clusters, and the documentation that lets someone else take over.
- Backup and restore. I own the backup strategy and make sure it can be restored, not just that the jobs turn green.
- Power and availability. UPS and graceful shutdown, so a power cut becomes a controlled event rather than a crash.
- Secure remote access. Vendors reach their machines through Claroty Secure Remote Access, on Zero Trust principles instead of open tunnels.
- Incidents and changes. Incident management in ServiceNow following ITIL, an incident handbook with priority and SLO matrices, and a Change Advisory Board.
- Team lead. I lead an operations team of senior engineers, with colleagues in several countries.
02 — Technology
What I know
Virtualisation and datacentre
Clusters that survive losing a node, a room or a power feed.
- VMware vSphere
- vCenter
- vSAN
- Stretched cluster
- DRS · vMotion
- HPE ProLiant · iLO
- Proxmox VE
Backup and restore
Strategy, immutable copies and restore tests that actually happen.
- Veeam B&R
- Hardened Linux repo
- Immutable backup
- GFS retention
- SQL application-aware
- Instant Recovery
- restic
OT and security
Segmentation between factory networks and IT, and controlled access in.
- Purdue model
- Network segmentation
- Zero Trust access
- Claroty SRA
- Fortinet
- OPNsense
- Suricata
Identity and Microsoft
From on-premises AD to hybrid identity and modern device management.
- Active Directory
- Group Policy
- Entra Connect
- Microsoft 365
- Intune · Autopilot
- Conditional Access
- Windows Server
Power and availability
What happens during the minutes a UPS buys you.
- UPS sizing
- Graceful shutdown
- Fault domains
- DR tests
- Runbooks
Automation and AI
Tools that remove manual work, built with verification as a gate.
- PowerShell
- PowerCLI
- Python
- ServiceNow
- AI coding agents
- Git
Networking and DNS
Segmented networks you can still troubleshoot at three in the morning.
- VLAN design
- Policy routing
- WireGuard
- Unbound
- DNSSEC · DoT
- Split DNS
Operations and process
The kind of order that turns an incident into a lesson, not a repeat.
- ITIL
- Incident management
- Change Advisory Board
- Root cause analysis
- Lean Six Sigma
03 — Experience
From first line to OT
-
2023 – present
OT Infrastructure Specialist
Alfa Laval · Group Digital, Factory Networks
The factories' datacentres, in a programme that separates the factory networks from the corporate IT network. Architecture responsibility for virtualisation and backup, team lead, incident management and vendor work.
-
2022 – 2023
Senior System Administrator
Midsona AB
Brought acquired companies into the group's IT: three companies from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, AD to hybrid identity, and device management to Autopilot and Intune.
-
2021 – 2022
IT Consultant
IXX IT-partner AB
Microsoft 365 migrations for around ten companies in Skåne, permissions and PowerShell automation.
-
2012 – 2021
IT Technician, second line and on-site
Experis / ManpowerGroup
Assignments across Skåne and the Copenhagen area at companies including Afry, Tieto, Ericsson, Volvo, Region Skåne, Coop, Akzo Nobel and the pharmaceutical companies Daiichi Sankyo, Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb. Manufacturing, telecoms, regulated pharma and the public sector.
-
2008 – 2012
IT Technician, first line
Sandvik, Svedala
On-site support in the factory, networks and servers. That is where it started.
-
2009 – 2019 · alongside
Freelance analyst
Smartodds (UK)
Statistical modelling of football in the Swedish, Scottish and Slovenian leagues. Ten years of trusting data over gut feeling.
Education and certifications
- IT Security (Higher Vocational Education), Academia Masters, 2006–2008. PKI, TCP/IP, Windows Server, Active Directory and Linux.
- Fortinet NSE 3 · Microsoft MS-900 (verified on Credly) and SC-900 · Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt
- Swedish, English and Croatian
04 — Articles
What I write about
General practice from running infrastructure in factories, written for the people who do the work.
Patching without stopping production
In a factory, you don't decide when a server may reboot. How to plan upgrades that hold up for both security and production.
Backups you can restore
A green job in the backup console means something was written somewhere. It does not mean you get your server back.
When the power goes
A UPS buys minutes, not safety. What matters is what happens during those minutes.
AI agents in operations
I build tools with AI agents every week. The skill is not letting them write; it is specifying, constraining and verifying.
vss – an investment tool built with AI
57,000 lines of code in seven weeks, without writing code by hand. The tool measures; I decide.
05 — Outside work
Camera and lab
Photography. I photograph Malmö and the sea around it: the light over the Øresund, the harbour and the concrete. The pictures are on Unsplash, where anyone is free to use them.
The homelab. A segmented network with its own firewall, virtualisation, encrypted backups and an external server. It's where I test things before they go anywhere near production. Read how it's built.
The blog. Notes on technology and other things, on Blogspot.
06 — Profiles
Find me
The easiest way to get in touch is through LinkedIn.