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Chris Ward
North Hills, California
Email: chris at chrisward.org

Professional Profile
Information Technology manager and Systems Administrator with sixteen years
experience in the computer industry. Excellent problem solving and
communication skills. Experienced with complex, heterogeneous environments.
Technologies
Operating Systems -
Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, Microsoft Windows 2000/2003/XP, IOS

Applications/Services -
IPFilter, IPTables, Checkpoint FW1, LVS load balancing/Linux HA, Apache, IIS,
Apache James, JBoss, OpenSSH/SSL, Bind, MRTG, Nagios, Zabbix, Cacti, Request Tracker, Bugzilla, CVS, Asterisk, Amanda, Snort, Qmail, Sendmail, Postfix, Policyd, Exchange 5.5/2000/2003, Spamassassin, MySQL MSSQL, Oracle, Samba, DHCP, NFS, FTP, LDAP, NTP, PXE, Ghost, VMWare, OpenVPN.

Languages -
Perl, PHP, shell, HTML, SQL, Awk, Expect

Hardware -
PC hardware, Sun Workstation/Enterprise class hardware, Cisco switches and
small routers, WTI/Lantronix/APC Power and console servers.

Experience
Teleflip Inc. (September 2006 - August 2008)
Vice President - Engineering

  • Designed Teleflip's email to SMS service, Telemail, and managed a team of 10 engineers implementing the design. The service checks 30K users email accounts (POP(S), IMAP(S), and some Web mail services) every 15 minutes and sends new mail that matches the users white list to their phone via SMS. The service also has scheduling and an advertisement placement system.
  • Worked directly with our CEO, CTO, and CMO to determine feasibility of features and provided deliverable timelines for technical aspects.
  • Primary DBA, systems, and network administrator.
  • Specified and implemented systems in two colocation facilities (Internap) in Los Angeles and Boston with Los Angeles running as our primary location and Boston used as a failover. The production network consisted of approximately 45 servers with replication through VPN link between the locations
  • Wrote several pieces of key PHP code, including a system API to be used by 3rd party vendors for user sign up and settings display and modification. The mail server discovery system which was used to determine the users email server name, protocol, and port with little or no interaction from the end user. The initial version of most internal administration tools

    • Vidyah Inc. (February 2001 - September 2006)
    Systems Administrator

  • Designed, installed, and manage 2 remote Colo POP's located at AboveNet San Jose and Internap Los Angeles in addition to office LAN systems, composed of approximately 75 servers (Solaris, Redhat, debian, 2000, 2003), and related security, monitoring, remote management, and networking equipment for company online learning products. Responsible for 24/7/365 availability of all production systems.
  • Worked closely with engineering teams to assist in the development of online learning products by customizing systems configurations to suit the development teams needs. Wrote perl and shell scripts to automate tasks and enhance servicesbeing provided.
  • Created trouble ticket system using Request Tracker, Asterisk PBX, and custom scripts to allow telephone trouble ticket creation by customers and ticket manipulation by support personnel. System also has custom scripted new ticket email paging ability to keep open tickets from going unnoticed.
  • Migrated production web and email services for several hundred users from closing IT company to our colo and managed the systems for several years until users migrated to other systems directly generating $600K in revenue.
  • Setup monitoring system using MRTG, Nagios/Netsaint, Zabbix, and Snort to monitor production environments from the switchport level to the application level.

    • iXL (July 1997 - February 2001)
    IS and Systems Administration Manager

  • Managed a group of 6 performing client project system administration and internal IS, handling project stages from development to production.
  • Setup and maintained several multi million hit per day web sites running on Windows and Solaris including hottopic.com, warehousemusic.com.
  • Designed MDF and IDF's for four floor office build-out, including calculating power and cooling requirements using company growth estimates. Consulted directly with the architectural team during the project. Coordinated the move of approximately 200 users from the old to the new location.
  • Created environmental monitoring and alerting system using serial port temperature sensors and Perl scripts to notify the group in case of A/C failure.
  • Setup multi point monitoring system using whats-up gold to cross monitor office and colo facilities and alert staff to system outages.

    • Packard Bell / Reveal Computer Products (1992-1996)
    Technical Support Specialist

  • Worked with quality assurance group monitoring telephone technicians to ensure quality support and troubleshooting accuracy for technicians yearly reviews. Provided feedback to them on how to improve their troubleshooting and customer service skills.
  • Worked with R&D testing new products and providing feedback on user documentation and product usability.
  • Worked senior technician help line assisting other technicians when they were unsure of the troubleshooting path to take for a particular problem.
  • Authorized on-site services and part replacements by reviewing the troubleshooting steps taken by technicians to verify the accuracy of the diagnosis.

    • Education

    Associate of Science in Electronics (1992)
    Pierce College, Woodland Hills, CA

    MCSE - NT 3.51 track (1996)

    A+ Certified Service Technician (1994)

    Interests

    Member: USENIX, Sage.
    Activities: Motorcycle riding. 2 small children, 1 wife.