Operating Systems

Many flavors of Unix, including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, SunOS, and some IRIX and HP-UX. I am very familiar with Cisco's IOS, Foundry's clone of it, Cisco's CatOS, and various other switching hardware interfaces. I am also familiar with most versions of Microsoft Windows and MacOS.

System Administration

DHCP, HTTPD, DNS, SMTP, SSH, NTP, IMAP, POP, NFS, and virtually anything else that can be done on a Unix box short of database administration. It is impossible to list all of the hundreds of different tools and applications that I use and/or maintain every day.

Networking

TCP/IP, Ethernet, 802.11, Switches, Routers, VLANs, trunking, Spanning Trees, 802.1q, Security Issues. I used to be a CCNA, but my certification has expired.

Languages

C, Perl, Bourne Shell Programming, Regular Expressions, Awk, C++, CGI scripting, and a number of others from my days as a student (Pascal, Ada, Assembly, etc.).

Hardware Platforms

Intel, Sun SPARC, SGI, and HP servers, Cisco routers and switches, Foundry and Alteon load-balancing hardware, Network Appliance filers.

• Senior Administrator on the team supporting all of Apple's Hardware Engineering efforts worldwide.
• Wrote scripts, managed Storage and Operating System issues, mentored junior administrators, reviewed code.

Ariba, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (http://www.ariba.com/)
Unix Administrator
April 2008 through May 2009.

• Manage Ariba's entire production environment, consisting mostly of Red Hat Linux boxes, with a few Solaris machines as well.
• Upgraded Ariba's Network-attached Storage systems to new clustered NetApp servers with zero downtime.
• Wrote numerous Perl scripts to monitor different aspects of Ariba's production network and servers.
• Assist in on-call duties, responding to pages and routing issues to the appropriate personnel.

Remote employee of Yahoo!, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (http://www.yahoo.com/)
DNS Administrator / Unix Administrator
October 2004 through February 2008.

• Managed nearly one thousand worldwide DNS servers, providing growth management, zonefile error-checking and distribution, new DNS server installation tools, failover planning, monitoring, and new domain acquisition & configuration.
• Assisted in deployment of Anycast configuration for Yahoo! authoritative name servers.
• Coded custom modifications to ISC BIND.
• Extended Yahoo!'s hours of live support coverage by bridging the time gap between the mainland United States and India.
• Trained and mentored Yahoo! India system administration personnel.
• Performed other Unix system administration tasks for Yahoo! as needed.
• Provided 24/7 emergency on-call support.

Yahoo!, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (http://www.yahoo.com/)
Independent Consultant -- September 2003 through September 2004.
Technical Yahoo / Unix System Administrator -- May 1999 through February 2003.

• Led a team of System Administrators maintaining Yahoo!'s worldwide collection of FreeBSD, Solaris, and Linux boxes. There were more than seven thousand servers that had to be monitored and maintained at all times. Wrote and maintained a number of scripts to help automate many of these tasks.
• Wrote a custom console-monitoring application in C utilizing the kqueue() kernel interface in FreeBSD. This application monitors the serial console output on all Unix servers in a location, and logs this output to separate files for each host.
• Supported all of Yahoo!'s developers with OS/shell help, problem-solving, trouble-shooting, and general efficiency advice.
• Diagnosed hardware problems, firewall problems, account problems, OS problems, etc., and handed each off to the respective group within Yahoo! to handle, or handled it within my group, when appropriate.
• Served as the second line of defense (after the 24-hour NOC) for nearly any problem within the worldwide Yahoo! production server network.
• Acted as mentor to all of the other System Administrators, giving advice, approving and double-checking work, watching for mistakes and being proactive to prevent problems before they occurred. This also involved a lot of one-on-one training and overseeing, when necessary.
• Configured, installed, upgraded, and diagnosed networking devices, including switches, routers, and load-balancers. Interfaced with vendors of said devices to diagnose and repair software and hardware problems.

GeoCities, Marina del Rey, CA (http://www.geocities.com/)
Sr. System Administrator/Network Administrator
July 1997 through May 1999.

• Performed nearly all System Administration tasks for GeoCities, a large web presence provider with millions of customer-maintained web pages. GeoCities was acquired by Yahoo! in May of 1999.
• Designed, maintained, and tuned nearly all network hardware for GeoCities, including various models of Cisco switches and routers, Foundry switches, and WAN access devices.

Hughes Information & Technology Systems, Fullerton, CA
System Administrator
September 1996 through July 1997.

• Performed numerous System Administration tasks for a small network of Sun workstations running SunOS and Solaris, including DNS server maintenance, account management, user support, compiler/debugger installation and maintenance, NFS and automount maintenance, Operating System installation and upgrading, Ethernet configuration, and hardware and software installation, testing, and maintenance.

Hughes Aircraft Company, El Segundo, CA
C++ Instructor
Summer 1996.

• Taught a group of software developers how to program in the C++ programming language, including some instruction in Object-Oriented (OO) methods.

Hughes Information & Technology Systems, Fullerton, CA
Systems Programmer/System Administrator
November 1995 through September 1996.

• System Administration as part of a team for a large network of HP workstations running HP-UX.

Hughes Aircraft Company, El Segundo, CA
Systems Programmer/System Administrator
October 1994 through November 1995.

• Assisted in System Administration on a small network of Silicon Graphics workstations running IRIX.