Kathy Allen
XXXX California Street
Berkeley, CA 94703
(510) xxx-xxxx
kallen at groknaut dot com
Skills
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OS: Linux (RedHat, Debian, Mandrake), Solaris 8/9/10, FreeBSD, Netapp ONTAP,
Windows XP
Languages: bourne and bash shell, perl, some SQL
Networking: TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, familiar with Foundry and Cisco switches and
load balancer
Hardware: Netapp Filers and shelves, Sun (Netra/SunFire/Enterprise), x86
hardware (Compaq/HP, Rackables), Cyclades
Applications: Apache web server, tomcat, Solaris Jumpstart, Linux Kickstart,
RPM and Solaris package building, NFS, BIND, OpenLDAP, MIT Kerberos,
CFengine, email (SMTP, POP, IMAP4, MTA: qmail, postfix), monitoring
(SNMP, Cricket, Big Brother), databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL), iptables,
openssh, openssl, CVS/RCS and a little SVN.
Work Experience
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(Nov 07 - present) Sr UNIX Operations Engineer, Six Apart, San Francisco, CA
(Jun 04 - Jun 06) Sr UNIX Systems Engineer, Shopping.com (an Ebay company), Brisbane, CA
* As part of the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance effort, I designed and implemented
a central authentication and authorization system using MIT Kerberos and
OpenLDAP for both UNIX systems (Solaris and Linux) and in-house applications.
Access for a given individual could be finely controlled, including giving
such access to one host, or a group of hosts. Given that user management was
previously done by hand using local files, central auth provided greater
efficiency, far less errors, and an audit trail when managing user accounts
and their access and privilege level. Also advised engineering staff on
designing their applications to use this centralized auth system. Wrote
various scripts to simplify LDAP and Kerberos data management, as well as
automate batch conversions of user data into the new system.
* Designed and implemented a remote network OS install system using kickstart,
pxelinux, and serial console. This greatly increased the ease and output
rate of installing the OS on hosts, having the department stop installing OS
on hosts by hand using a CD-ROM, and instead remotely installing the OS over
the network using standardized, revision-controlled install profiles.
* Administered and documented the central configuration tool, CFengine.
Planned and executed a controlled cutover of about 1300 clients from old
legacy CFengine servers to new ones.
* Instrumental as operations lead for the Merchant Account Center, a new
application using apache and tomcat. Advised engineering during the design
phase of the new application regarding production environment requirements,
including ease of management, scalability, redundancy, user account management
and privilege level, security, monitoring, etc. Continued to advise through
QA cycles, and executed rollout of the new application. This close pairing of
operations lead and application engineering was regarded as exemplary as it
led to the most successful new application rollout the company had yet seen.
Future projects coming from engineering followed this model I helped provide.
During subsequent projects, I continued working closely with engineering staff
helping them to produce applications that are more manageable in general in QA
and production environments. Advised on the organization of application
configuration files and better parameterization. Trained staff on methods of
package management (RPM and Solaris packages), ultimately improving
application deployment in both QA and production environments.
(Sep 00 - Jun 04) Sr UNIX system administrator, CollabNet, Brisbane, CA
* Designed and maintained systems in a 24x7 production operations
infrastructure with other team members. Used tools such as Jumpstart,
Kickstart, and autoinst to automate the deployment and maintenance of hosted
application environment which serves online collaborative software development
and project management.
* Implemented, maintained, and documented nameservers, mailservers, system
monitoring, remote console, Kickstart and Jumpstart servers, RPM and Solaris
package build systems.
* Advanced production, development, QA, and corporate network and server
infrustructures from undocumented, unreliable, systems with high
administration overhead to robust, reliable, repeatable systems. Examples
include, but not limited to: a) Deployed clustered Netapp Filers for customer
production data; designed and implemented disaster recovery with two
cross-country datacenters, using a second Netapp cluster mirroring over one
terabyte of customer data in near real-time. As a result, we achieved
near-zero downtime (99.99+%) for production systems using this design b)
Separated dev and QA environments into isolated subnets, provided NFS shared
home directory access for systems all under either Kickstart or Jumpstart
control. c) To prevent dev/QA abuse of the corporate mailserver (abuse which
severely degraded corporate mail availability), I composed a spec based on
dev/QA requirements for an internal mailserver, and deployed said server,
greatly improving corporate mail access.
* Script writing in bourne shell and perl. Purposes include, but not limited
to: log rotation, archiving, and expiration; automated nightly RPM and
Solaris package build system; dynamic DNS cgi tool for QA's use; locating
cvs repository files of particular size, obtaining cvs ownership, last
modification time, and parsing results as requested; simple user account
management both on a system and application level.
* Implemented a documentation repository for operations, maintained docs, and
always encouraged other operations personnel to participate.
* Assessed datacenters for hosting production systems. Helped plan and execute
datacenter installations of network components, NAS, and servers. In June
2002, my team planned and executed a massive datacenter move from San
Francisco to San Jose given only two weeks notice. Expanded same datacenter
in Spring 2004, planned rack layout for maximum server density to achieve
the best cost benefit, and deployed third Netapp Filer cluster.
* Researched and presented proposals for a new data storage purchase for our
rapidly growing customer data. Attention given to planning the actual data
migration, giving minimal downtime for customers. Also researched proposal
for similar data storage system for QA and development environments.
* Much system and application troubleshooting and bug hunting, including, but
not limited to, the following: cvs usage causing excessive server load,
swapping; finding and fixing MySQL database corruption; diagnosed spindle
contention on backend datastore, migrated data across more spindles.
(Feb 00 - Aug 00) UNIX System Administrator, Critical Path Inc., San Francisco
Responsible for the installation, configuration, and management of 1000+
Solaris and FreeBSD systems in 6 datacenters about the globe. Included
performance tuning of SMTP, POP and IMAP servers in an environment hosting
more than 18 million accounts. Duties include but not limited to jumpstarting
hosts, maintaining DNS, remote console servers. Very fast-paced 24x7
production environment, with firefighting and oncall duties. Paid particular
attention to issues of scalability, automation, performance, and redundancy.
(Aug 99 - Feb 00) Network Operations Center Specialist, Critical Path Inc., San
Francisco
Monitored all production systems including network, email, calendar, and
directory services in an environment that hosts over 18 million user accounts.
Identified and corrected problems before they became customer affecting.
Performed troubleshooting on all UNIX hosts (running Solaris and FreeBSD) to
prevent escalating to the overburdened UNIX operations staff. Duties include
but not limited to: updating DNS, restarting services, moving redundant
clustered hosts in and out of service on the NFS backend data store,
installing RPMs, writing shell scripts. Maintained documentation of
production and monitoring environment. Trained incoming NOC specialists.
(Mar 99 - Aug 99) Sr Technical Analyst, Oracle Corporation, Redwood Shores, CA.
Managed communication between support and development groups during escalation
of bug reports on Oracle's internet software (email, web, and LDAP servers).
Built test servers on Solaris to reproduce bug behavior to help developers
solve problems. Upgraded and configured Sendmail to run with Oracle's
Internet Messaging software. Installed and configured Oracle8 databases.
Administered Sun Ultra workstations, including applying packages and system
patches, managing system resources, adding hard drives, and creating user
accounts.
(Dec 98 - Feb 99) UNIX System Administrator, Taos Mountain, Santa Clara, CA.
Consultant for Critical Path, a company that provides outsourced email
services. Monitored system processes and log files to locate potential errors
and service problems. Solved service problems as they arose including killing
and restarting processes. Solved DNS problems with new customers advised them
on the configuration of their DNS records. Updated system operations staff on
system performance and any service outages or problems. Tested various
services including POP, HTTP, and SMTP during system maintenance windows.
Systems ran Solaris 2.6 and FreeBSD in a clustered configuration in a very
large networked environment.
(Feb 97 - Dec 98) Systems Specialist, Genentech Inc., S. San Francisco, CA
through a contract from Interim Technologies.
Provided primary email technical support for 3000+ users. Email client was
Zmail using POP operating on Windows, Mac, UNIX, and X Windows clients.
Solved problems on both client and server side. Assisted system admins in
locating the source of the problems on the server (Digital UNIX) referencing
log files and client and OS error codes. Wrote simple shell scripts (csh) to
streamline the troubleshooting process. Other duties included testing a new
IMAP email client, writing documentation, providing Windows and Mac desktop
support.
Personal skills
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- Excellent analytical and problem solving skills
- Superb communication and organization skills
- Proven ability and flexibility to learn new tasks quickly
- Highly effective as a team player and self-motivated working alone
Education
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- Yale University, New Haven, CT, B. A. Film Studies, GPA: 3.4 (Aug 90-May 94)
References available upon request
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