Hi, I'm
Sagar Kandel
Network & Systems Engineer
5+ years building enterprise-grade infrastructure for VFX production at Blockhead VFX in Sydney. I work at the intersection of high-speed networking, hypervisor clusters, and self-hosted AI — the infrastructure that keeps creative studios running without a frame dropped.
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AWS Certified
Solutions Architect
Based in
Sydney 🇦🇺
About me
Who I am
I'm Sagar Kandel — a senior Systems and Network Engineer with 5+ years specialising in VFX production infrastructure at Blockhead VFX in Sydney, Australia.
My work lives at the intersection of high-performance networking and production systems: 100Gig fabrics, dark fibre, ISP-level BGP routing, and the infrastructure that keeps render farms and live VFX pipelines running without a frame dropped.
I hold a Bachelor of IT from Victoria University, am AWS Certified Solutions Architect, and strongly advocate for open-source tooling — from TrueNAS and Proxmox to self-hosted AI with Ollama and vLLM.
Enterprise & ISP-Level Networking
BGP, OSPF, dark fibre, CWDM/DWDM wavelengths, direct leased lines, cross-connects, L2 provider management.
Security & Firewall Engineering
Fortigate firewall design and deployment, network segmentation, VPN architectures, zero-trust access.
Datacenter & Hypervisor Infrastructure
Proxmox VE clustering, Hyper-V, high-availability design, and bare-metal server management.
Storage & NAS Engineering
TrueNAS SCALE/CORE, ZFS pool design, replication, snapshots, and iSCSI/NFS/SMB for VFX render pipelines.
Containerisation & Self-Hosted AI
Docker, Portainer, container orchestration, and self-hosted LLM inference with Ollama and vLLM.
VFX Pipeline & Studio Systems
AYON pipeline, NIM Studio Management, RMM tooling, and endpoint management across mixed OS environments.
Career
Experience
Senior Systems & Network Engineer
Current2019 — Present
Full-time · 5+ years
- ▸Designed and operate 100Gbps studio network backbone — spine-leaf architecture serving render farms, on-set DIT, and remote production pipelines simultaneously
- ▸Engineered dark fibre WAN links with CWDM/DWDM wavelength multiplexing between studio facilities, eliminating ISP dependency for inter-site traffic
- ▸Advanced BGP and OSPF-wrapped BGP configurations at ISP interconnect level — full routing table handling, route policy, AS path manipulation
- ▸Full Fortigate firewall estate — design, deployment, HA clustering, DPI policies, SSL VPN and IPsec site-to-site tunnels
- ▸Built and maintains Proxmox VE hypervisor clusters — HA node configuration, live migration, Ceph storage integration
- ▸Deployed TrueNAS SCALE NAS infrastructure — ZFS pool design, replication, multi-protocol serving (iSCSI, NFS, SMB)
- ▸Self-hosted AI inference: Ollama and vLLM on local GPU nodes, cutting reliance on external AI APIs
- ▸Manages AYON pipeline and NIM Studio Management alongside RMM-based endpoint management across Windows/Linux/macOS fleets
Bachelor of Information Technology
2016 — 2019
Education
- ▸Majored in Network and System Computing with strong academic performance
- ▸Capstone project on high-availability network architecture for media production environments
- ▸Developed foundations in routing protocols, enterprise network design, and systems administration
Technical skills
What I work with
AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Associate (SAA-C03)
Amazon Web Services
Bachelor of Information Technology
Network & System Computing
Victoria University · Melbourne
Network Engineering
Systems & Virtualisation
Cloud, AI & Automation
Projects
Things I've built
100Gbps VFX Studio Network Fabric
Designed and deployed a full spine-leaf 100GbE switching fabric for a major VFX studio — supporting concurrent render farm traffic, on-set DIT feeds, and inter-facility WAN. Included LACP bonding, ECMP load balancing, and sub-millisecond failover.
Dark Fibre WAN with CWDM/DWDM Multiplexing
Engineered multi-site dark fibre connectivity between studio facilities using CWDM wavelength multiplexing — delivering dedicated 10G/100G inter-site bandwidth completely off ISP infrastructure.
ISP-Level BGP & Leased Line Architecture
Managed full BGP peering at ISP interconnect points — handling full routing table, route policy, AS-path manipulation, and community tagging. Provisioned cross-connects and managed L2 provider relationships end-to-end.
Other projects
Fortigate HA Firewall Estate
Active-passive HA cluster across studio perimeter and DMZ — DPI, IPS/IDS, SSL inspection, IPsec site-to-site VPN, and SSL VPN for remote artists.
Proxmox VE Hypervisor Cluster
Proxmox cluster with HA node configuration, live VM migration, Ceph-based distributed storage, and automated backup policies.
TrueNAS SCALE Production Storage
TrueNAS SCALE NAS with RAIDZ2 ZFS pools, automated snapshot policies, multi-protocol serving, and encrypted offsite cloud backup.
Self-Hosted LLM Inference Stack
On-premise AI inference using Ollama and vLLM on local GPU nodes — serving internal LLM tooling without sending data to external APIs.
AYON + NIM VFX Pipeline
Deployed and maintains AYON open-source VFX pipeline and NIM Studio Management across a full production studio — integrating workstations, render farms, storage, and project tracking.
Testimonials
What people say
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Senior Engineer · Blockhead VFX
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IT Manager · Partner Company
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Writing
Thoughts & articles
Building Zero-Trust Networks in VFX Environments
How we implemented identity-aware network segmentation in a high-throughput VFX studio without disrupting creative workflows.
AWS VPC Design Patterns for Media Workloads
Key architectural decisions when building AWS VPCs for render farm workloads — multi-AZ, placement groups, and enhanced networking.
Python for Network Engineers: Real-World Automation
Moving beyond basic scripts — using Netmiko, NAPALM, and Ansible to build production-grade network automation pipelines.
Contact
Get in touch
Open to interesting conversations — job opportunities, cool projects, or just connecting with people in the industry.