Rick Jasper

Job Objective: UNIX Systems Administrator, Toolsmith.

Summary: 12 years UNIX Systems Administration experience with emphasis running and automating large web servers on both internal intranets and the Internet. Recognized as the "Fix It" guy, the one to quickly diagnose and fix networking, hardware, and software problems. Worked with both large, multinational companies and start-ups. International experience.

Skills: Unix (Linux, Solaris, & AIX), Perl, Korn Shell Scripts, Apache Web and Tomcat servers, HTML, CGI, DB2, MySQL, SQL, DNS, LDAP, NIS, Kickstart, Jumpstart, NIM, Nagios, AFS, DFS, NFS, CVS. Some Veritas Volume Manager, Java & Java Servlets, Expect, Javascript, C/C++, Eclipse, Subversion.

Experience:

Delphion spun off from IBM in 2000 and despite the dot com bubble burst, became profitable within two years by making the world's patent information searchable via the web. Delphion also provided 5 different national government's patent offices (Canadian, British, Swiss, Dutch, and Japanese) with a turnkey solution to quickly put their patent data on the web. Thomson bought Delphion in 2002.

My job, especially after layoffs reduced 28 people to 12, included primary system administrative responsibilities for our development and production environments, and secondary responsibilities for the international patent office customers.

• Machine builds. Installed AIX and Red Hat Linux using NIM & Kickstart. Installed web, DB2, Verity, Net Commerce server software, shared file system (AFS, DFS, or NFS), common userid environment (AFS, DCE, NIS, or LDAP).
• Built up the www.delphion.com web site from scratch four times over the last 9 years (management-directed moves). Also installed the Japanese patent office systems.
• Latest operating systems were AIX 5.3, RHEL v4 and Solaris 10.
• Latest hardware was IBM 510/550/615, IBM BladeCenter (JS20’s & HS20’s), HP 145/380/585, NetApp 150/270/980, Adaptec NAS Snap Server 4500, Big IP F5.
• Managed 200 machines in 7 different data centers located in 3 continents. Our patent DB2 databases were 1.3 terabytes each with an additional 18 terabytes of shared disk storage.
• Diagnosed and fixed hardware, software, and networking problems.
• Administered the external and internal DNS and Bugzilla servers, the internal AFS, CVS, DHCP, and Tivoli Storage Manager (backup) servers.
• Managed the international team supporting the British, Swiss, Dutch, and Japanese national patent offices web sites.
• Other routine system administrator tasks, userid administration, firefighting, phone switch administration, facilities maintenance, network cabling, etc.

While the day-to-day problems usually occupied most of my time, what I’m most proud of during those years were the benefits gained from these Perl programming projects.

• Improved operational efficiency by completely automating database synchronization between international sites.
• Automated weekly update process, reducing the time required to do the job by two-thirds.
• Eliminated 1500 GB of disk space at Japanese site by implementing an inter-server process that transferred image files from the U.S. site on demand. This project significantly saved the Japanese customer hardware costs and more importantly, the need to continually update their image repository.
• Designed & wrote new program, factoring out logic from 5 different programs into one callable function. When an upcoming site move changed this code's logic, all 5 programs were quickly converted by changing just this one new program.
• Wrote programs to process data and load to databases, implement inter-server communication, deliver active content, and detect and repair problems affecting the site's health.

Unix System Administrator for laboratory infrastructure.

• Wrote critical Change-IP-address script for a weekend Re-Address the Whole Network project. The script allowed machines to change their own IP address at a pre-determined time via cron, or as a tool for people to go around and change each, individual machine. This effort earned me a $1500 Research Division award.
• Installed the Almaden-wide, AIX Network Install Manager (NIM), allowing individuals to install AIX on their own machines rather than requiring a visit from the AIX Support team.
• Initiated, planned and executed multiple hardware projects, coordinating teams of up to 30 people over six months, and saving the IBM Almaden Research laboratory over $2 million.
• I was the System Administrator, part of a 20-person IBM Research team that in 1997, made patent information freely searchable from the web and later, formed Delphion, Inc. I installed and built up the machines, configured the firewalls, load balancers, RAID disks, DNS, web and database servers, fixed hardware problems and kept the servers running.
• Administered Almaden's IBM Research web server (http://almaden.ibm.com).
• Administered Almaden's piece of the IBM-wide, shared disk network (AFS and DFS).

Formal Certifications and College Degree:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Certified Technician (RHCT)
• AIX 5 for IBM eserver pSeries System Administrator Certification
• B.S. in Computer Science from California State University, Chico