Robert D. Plankers

4902 Marvin Avenue, Madison, WI 53711 - bob@plankers.com

Work Experience

September 1995 - Present

University of Wisconsin - Madison
Division of Information Technology

• Lead systems engineer managing a six member team in all aspects of Linux system administration, from day-to-day activities to system architecture and design. Ultimately responsible for the reliability and operation of 150+ Linux servers acting as application, web, database, mail, directory, and file servers, as well as firewalls for the entire University campus. Responsible for proceduralizing and documenting team operations for use by system operators not necessarily skilled in Linux administration.

• Responsible for redesigning and implementing application hosting environments where diverse applications, including custom-developed, open-source, and commercial applications can be operated and managed reliably and securely. Responsible for ongoing relationships between developers, customers, and system administrators in this environment. Responsible for developing and maintaining procedures, policies, and tools for use by developers and system administrators in the hosting environment.

• Lead systems engineer in a team to design, deploy, and maintain VMware ESX Server and VMware VirtualCenter implementations, supporting 100+ virtual machines running Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Novell Netware on five four-CPU SMP physical servers. Implemented disaster recovery techniques for VMware virtual machines via remote storage mirroring and placement of ESX servers in remote data centers.

• Member of a five person team to implement and maintain storage area networking (SAN) and fibre channel-based storage technologies in the enterprise. Responsible for connections to the hosts (AIX, Solaris, Linux, Windows, and Apple Mac OS X), as well as management of the SAN (Brocade and McData switches) and storage devices (150+ TB of EMC and Apple ATA and fibre channel disk attached to 200+ hosts). Responsible for securing and monitoring the security of the SAN. Responsible for designing and implementing storage-related components of the University's disaster recovery plans, including remote mirroring of data. Responsible for designing, coding (in Perl and PHP), and maintaining software to implement SAN monitoring, storage billing, and to ease routine day-to-day storage operations.

• Founder of the University's three-person Open Source Database Support Team, providing procedural and technical support for open-source databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL to customers and developers wishing to employ them.

• Responsible for developing software, policies, and procedures to automate system administration tasks, improve and monitor security and performance on servers, and enable newly-formed operations groups to perform day to day administration tasks on servers.

• Responsible for designing and maintaining groupware software solutions such as online task management and issue tracking systems, scheduling and calendar systems for specific purposes (outside of the enterprise scheduling systems), and online documentation and publishing tools such as wikis and web logs (blogs).

• Responsible for the configuration, security, and maintenance of 40+ IBM pSeries servers handling the core business of the University of Wisconsin - Madison and the University of Wisconsin System (pSeries 610s through 670s, and System p5 520 through 570s). Handled upgrades to the core operating system software, as well as rapid and thorough hardware and software troubleshooting while working with support vendors and IBM.

• Deployed secure and reliable enterprise-level UNIX email, web server, and Java application server solutions on IBM AIX and Red Hat Linux. Diagnosed problems in existing enterprise solutions and repaired & enhanced enterprise business systems with minimal disruption to customers, including the core email system for the University (70,000 users).

• Developed techniques and software for combating unsolicited bulk email (UCE or spam) for the University of Wisconsin - Madison and WiscNET, the statewide network of most K-12 schools, technical colleges, and some local government agencies. Implemented Sophos PureMessage software for enterprise spam and virus scanning.

• Responsible for evaluating new technologies for inclusion in our own operations. Worked closely with existing vendors and developers to track significant new technologies and upgrades, and established new relationships with vendors whose products were significant to the business of the University or the University of Wisconsin System.

• Developed software, policies, and procedures to automate system administration tasks and improve security and performance on UNIX servers.

• Lead systems engineer in a team to support and improve Tivoli Storage Manager-based backup services for the University, running on IBM pSeries server hardware, using both automated tape libraries and disk storage. Responsible for designing, implementing, and testing disaster recovery related aspects of the backup service.

• Lead systems engineer in a team to implement PeopleSoft Financials and Student Administration packages version 7.x and 8.x for UW-Madison and several other UW System schools. Routinely worked with campus administration, database administrators, developers, and other technical staff to ensure secure, fast, and manageable systems.

• Lead systems engineer in a team to deploy VMware VirtualCenter and ESX server software within the University. Worked closely with network engineers and applications developers to ensure that VMware-based server consolidation was a step forward for our organization.

• Worked extensively with other groups and departments to implement new servers and expediently solve complex cross-technology, cross-platform problems.

• Built, deployed, and maintained servers based on Windows NT Server 4.0, Windows 2000 Server, and Red Hat Linux for University of Wisconsin - Madison departments.

• Developed software to deploy and seamlessly maintain PeopleSoft, Inc. desktop clients on 6000 heterogeneous workstations statewide, for three independent PeopleSoft Student Administration and Financials implementations within the UW System.

• Deployed and maintained UNIX connectivity, anti-virus, remote access, and server management (NT/2000) software.

• Supported and educated customers with varied hardware and software on both Apple and Intel-based platforms. Support was provided for office applications, TCP/IP-based applications, Ethernet or Dial-In network connectivity, Novell Netware, and Microsoft Windows networking.

• Provided second-level support for customers with Internet connectivity problems (Modem Doctor).

• Implemented Web-based communication and collaboration tools. Authored and revised support documentation and training for internal and end-user use. Maintained a web-based staff and appointment scheduling system.

• Maintained hardware and software for approximately forty Help Desk Apple and Intel-based computers, as well as production Linux-based servers providing DHCP, web, FTP, and proxy services.

September 2004 - March 2005

Brainbench, Inc.

• Acted as a cleaner for Brainbench's online exams and certifications, resolving technical errors with exam wording and ensuring proper difficulty level for questions.

October 1996 - Present

Modassai Web Solutions, Inc.

• Provided IT consulting services to clients, ranging from security consulting (firewalls, auditing) to implementing new technology within existing IT infrastructures.

• Created a web hosting and web application development environment from scratch, using modern database and web server technologies.

• Developed web applications using C, C++, Perl, and PHP for clients.

August 2000 - January 2002

BOMAR Corporation

• Served as Chief Technical Officer, responsible for developing and maintaining IT infrastructure for a development team.

• Worked with clients to develop formal software specifications and requirements for new enterprise inventory and warehousing software.

• Assessed technology for use with and included in enterprise warehousing and inventory management software being developed. Worked with developers to implement that technology.

May 1996 - May 1997

University of Wisconsin
Sea Grant Institute

• Provided comprehensive hardware and software support for 30 Windows 3.x, Windows 95, and Windows NT (3.51 and 4.0) workstations, including workstations at geographically dispersed locations around the state of Wisconsin.

• Designed and maintained four Windows NT servers used for file, application, and web server services.

• Developed web-based support documentation.

Volunteer Experience

October 2002 - Present

Information Technology Academy

• Mentor in the University of Wisconsin - Madison's Information Technology Academy. The ITA is a four year program which helps students develop study skills, IT expertise, and general wisdom through the mentors. Mentors are paired with the same student for the term of the program (four years).

April 1996 - July 2003

Students' Information Technology

• Cofounder, executive member, and eventually the staff advisor for a student organization dedicated to giving students access to information technology resources as well as a forum for exploring new technologies.

July 1997 - July 2002

Assistant Scoutmaster
Boy Scout Troop 2

• Assist and advise approximately 40 junior high and high school Boy Scouts pursuing the rank of Eagle.

July 1997 - Present

Open Source Programmer

• Contributed source code and patches to various open source programming projects, including Apache Jakarta Tomcat, Apache httpd, Analog, rhupdate, Python, Ruby, Samba, and tasked (my own to-do list).

Familiar Technologies:

Technologies I am versed in and use on a regular basis include: C, C++, Java, PHP, JavaScript, Perl, Sendmail, Samba, BIND & DNS servers, NFS, NIS, lpd, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache httpd, BEA Web Logic application servers, HTML & XML, RSS & OPML, TCP, IP and related networking phenomena (routers, gateways, NAT), SSL, Linux-based firewalls, NetScreen firewalls, SSH, PPTP, IPSec, Ethernet, ATM, and fibre channel, as well as IBM AIX 4.x and 5.x, Red Hat Linux 4.2 to 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3, and 4, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0/2000/XP/2003, and Apple Mac OS 8.x, 9.x, and 10.[1-4] (X).

I am very familiar with online documentation and publishing tools such as wikis (MediaWiki, PHPwiki) and web logs or blogs (Movable Type, Wordpress).

I am also extremely familiar with system administration practices, and qualify as a SAGE Senior System Administrator (www.usenix.org/sage/)

References:

Available upon request. Just ask!