I am responsible for managing any incoming, reported issues as they relate to Ubuntu Linux, OpenStack, MAAS, Juju, Landscape and related products, projects and technologies.

My current role as Dedicated onsite Support Engineer (DSE) for Bloomberg in NYC has me supporting their existing and net-new Ubuntu OpenStack clusters as well as Ubuntu Desktop and Server infrastructure.

The work is very broad across a number of disciplines, deeply engaging and always technically challenging.

• Designed and deployed a highly-resilient, cross-datacenter infrastructure to support Dodd-Frank/Swap Trades in compliance with SEC data retention guidelines (17a4) using immutable (WORM) storage based on EMC Centera (CAS). Redundancy at all layers from fDNS/DNS, database, application, OS and hardware was assured and fully tested with automatic and manual failover at the appropriate levels to satisfy the Tier levels.
• Created a stopgap solution to address a high-risk, acellerated timeframe audit item to archive unstructured data across several dozen NAS storage frames within the environment. The solution stayed in place for almost 2 years and was replaced by a self-service unstructured data archival service (UDAS).
• Most-recently focused on delivering high-performance, scalable architectural solutions to broad, complex infrastructure and data management problems and ensuring there exists a very tight coupling and integration with the various Design, Platform and Engineering teams. I'm comfortable wearing any of these hats and participating in discussions ranging from theoretical design straight through to triage trouble shooting live with Operational teams.
• Acted as proactive conduit between various functional teams within our organization, as well as many blended teams outside of our organization. Interfacing Business with IT, creating and translating complex requirements, designing technology solutions around those requirements, performing technology reviews and vendor dress-downs as needed to solve our current and upcoming, future problems.
• Responsible for engineering, building, installing and maintaining over 1,200 separate Open Source and third-party/vendor software packages within a single, intelligently managed, global, enterprise-wide NFS namespace (EFS). This work includes over 900 individual Perl modules, hundreds of Open Source libraries, several DBMS engines, development language engines (PHP, Python, Java, Perl, TCL), Java artifacts and other applications and solutions in several architectures and bit types.
• Produced numerous pieces of written and video collateral for the purpose of training the existing associates and staff how to use the tools and automation provided by my team for maximum efficiency. This includes weekly, live training courses as well as time-shifted pre-recorded training “modules” for helping teams integrate the information.
• Developed several custom tools and utilities to leverage the reduction of duplicate effort maintaining and building software into the namespace. These tools have reduced the overall package build and maintenance effort by a minimum of 75%, down from hours to mere minutes.
• Managing a globally dispersed Operations team in India and the US, for maintaining the global filesystem powering the internal EFS environment. This includes storage upkeep, maintenance, ongoing upgrades and facilitating scalable growth across the globe as the environment continues to grow in use and adoption.
• Participating liaison of the Open Source Services Group (FOSS), with the responsibility of intercepting new incoming requests for Open Source packages and recommending possible existing alternatives or pushing requests through EA/FOSS for further legal review as necessary, keeping strategic compliance and security concerns in mind.
• Responsible for maintaining ties and liaising with other internal and external groups as required, to maintain ongoing operation of the EFS namespace from hardware, storage, network and infrastructure perspective. This includes data consolidation, C&R failovers and hardware migrations between EFS “cells”.
• Initially contracted through “Starpoint Solutions, LLC”; converted to full-time associate in September 2008.

• Responsible for helping design, manage and deliver the IBM Linux on POWER effort, focusing primarily on Open Source and Linux developer resources for the IBM Systems & Technology Group (STG) in several global communities; The role is roughly 80% developer-centric in the Open Source community, 20% ISV and customer-facing relationships.
• Designed or assisted in the logistics and layout for the IBM presence at many Open Source industry conferences such as SCALE, Linux Conference Australia (LCA), Ottawa Linux Symposium (OLS) and others to include Birds-of-a-Feather talks, IBM vendors/partners, giveaways and prizes, collateral and other marketable to attendees.
• Deployed high-end OpenPower/PPC64 server-based hardware to several key universities around the world in an effort to provide free, unrestricted access to the platform for interested developers and hobbyists. These resources were placed in the US, Brazil, India, Russia, China and Australia and are publically accessible to thousands of developers and users who wish to utilize them.
• Delivered PPC64 hardware into the hands of many Open Source projects and key Linux contributors and projects such as Andrew Morton, Linus Torvalds, Debian, the Fedora Project, Gentoo Linux and many others.
• Authored or prepared custom collateral for publishing in several dozen online and printed Linux-based magazines. These articles were distributed to the magazines on a monthly basis in an attempt to continue to provide information and resources to the developer communities.
• Authored internal strategy documents, collateral, presentations and other materials in an effort to continue to promote Linux and POWER from within, as well as externally to the community, vendors and industry ISVs.

• Responsible for performing routine system administration tasks (builds, installs, patching, break-fix) on Solaris 8 and 9 machines for a major pharmaceutical company in Southeastern CT.
• Tasked with heading up the Linux builds and maintenance on the IBM JS20 Bladecenter and other related clusters for CSDG clients and partners.
• Fill-in as needed as a technical resource for tech-support, sales, engineering, and other departments as required.

• On contracted retainer to support kernel, Apache, and firewall issues for a company in California who supports firewalls and websites for hundreds of banking and financial institutions. Aggressive response and turnaround time is required. Interfacing with the customer on weekly conference calls helps to facilitate the speed of solving the reported issues as they occur. Web-based incident tracking is used to provide accountability and control over issue management.
• Trained a small group of research scientists in Paramus, NJ describing how to use their new 26-node cluster effectively for batch job submission and management. Technologies utilized included IBM xCat, Maui, Torque, IBM BladeCenter hardware, RHAS 2.1, and other components.
• Deployed a high-volume NFS cluster running on Red Hat 2.1 Advanced Server and a Microsoft SQL Server cluster running on Windows 2003 for a customer using HP's SecurePath and SteelEye's LifeKeeper product for cluster failover and reliability. The single 4 node cluster spoke to one storage array and was deployed utilizing multi-path failover for reliability.
• Developed a custom zip code search engine using Perl/ASP to do a great-circle search for customer locations (retail stores) within the given zip code range (25, 50, 100 miles). Also wrote a keyword search engine (in ASP) for their website's pages, running on Windows 2000 with IIS. All development and server administration was performed remotely over VNC to the client site, as no local access was available.
• Ongoing consultant for various companies migrating, deploying, developing, and utilizing Linux in their operations. Much of the work is focused on higher-end server hardware, IBM BladeCenter, Linux-based clusters, and other "highly-available" configurations.

• Survived 5 rounds of layoffs before resigning in December of 2001 to relocate back to the East Coast.
• Responsible for researching, designing, and developing of solutions to solve vendor, customer, and user-level problems utilizing Free Software and Open Source solutions where possible, utilizing Linux and FreeBSD. This included onsite research, Internet data harvesting, and developing custom applications. Target customers included Sun, HP, IBM, Dell, Gateway, Tricord, the National Security Agency, and others.
• Partnered directly with customer development groups to design, test, develop, execute, and document development of drivers, file systems, applications and other key components of customer equipment and solutions solving various hardware and software issues as contracted externally.
• Designed and managed a server-based architecture for building a single "business-card-sized" bootable Linux distribution called the "Bootable Business Card" (BBC), later re-branded as the "Linuxcare Bootable Toolbox" (LBT). Roughly 5,000 to 7,000 copies are given away at annual trade shows such as Linuxworld Expo. Utilized full revision source control (CVS), 100% Open Source software, and bleeding edge compression algorithms to achieve 170 megabytes and over 400 tools and utilities on a 47-megabyte disk image slightly larger than a standard business card.
• Designed and authored a 200+ page Embedded Linux Development course for a 3-day onsite delivery in the Asia Pacific rim for an external customer. Very aggressive 5-week timeline and included core code examples.
• Participated in an internal 4-day working group with company senior management to design and develop a completely new product direction for the company, utilizing my development and architecture skills and talents. I developed 11 new company ideas as possible avenues for a new company direction.
• Partnered with our internal Labs group to help solve many complex IBM-related solutions using Linux on unreleased and prototype IBM ThinkPad laptops. Many issues involved unreleased chipsets, and required writing small test applications to help identify and isolate the problems to efficiently and accurately communicate them to IBM's ThinkPad development group.
• Coupled tightly with our Sales force and participated in onsite development discussions at client sites and with customers as a Development and Sales Engineer to help architect solutions to address their issues. Some customers included Compaq, the California Masons, and the National Security Agency.
• Partnered with all internal groups, including our University, Sales, Business Development, Technical Support, and Labs group assisting in tasks and high-level development duties as necessary to speed solutions and develop customer relations.

• Designed, architected, and successfully deployed Microsoft Windows NT on new desktop machines to a 257-person department, which included manual backup, build, and restorations of each workstation. I successfully managed a team of three colleagues to assist in this project, who were all hired on full time after the deployment's completion.
• Designed a solution, including the deployment and ongoing maintenance and administration of the leading chromatography application used within Central Research. This is the largest install the vendor has done to date. Assisted in the Chromatography deployment and application-performance configuration issues onsite at the Pfizer U.K. Sandwich facility. After changes were made, application performance achieved a six fold increase in processing speed.
• Tested and designed solutions for handheld connectivity to the enterprise, which included Windows CE devices as well as Palm and various other wireless/handheld embedded thin client PDA and various other tablet units from Fujitsu, Cruise Technologies, and other vendors.
• Performed on-site system and security audits of external partner facilities in an effort to deploy a future VPN solution to those organizations.
• Participated in the development of "Web User's Group" (W.U.G., 230 members) inside Pfizer, Inc. Using Perl and HTML, I designed a custom web-based threaded discussion forum for use between WUG subcommittees.
• Promoted and relocated from AR&D to DIS to better support Groton Central Research (now PGRD) with solutions involving emerging technologies under the leadership of a new manager to the department.
• Pioneered and created a group, 'Emerging Solutions', with two other colleagues to further develop and deploy advanced solutions. This group eventually grew to a total of five (5) people to develop new solutions for Pfizer Global Research.

• On-Site service technician, training supervisor, technical services representative, customer service representative, lead field technician, and vendor-to-customer warranty support liaison.
• Generated and fulfilled end-user contracts at Pfizer Central Research and Production Groton, CT with over 450 clients on an ongoing basis.
• Supported systems include Compaq, HP, Gateway, Zeos, Toshiba and IBM, as well as internally built component-level systems (clones) to fit custom business requirements and needs.
• Created and implemented training and indoctrination matrices for new hires and technical training policies.