1313 Brook Ridge Ave
Allen, TX 75002
Phone: 972-359-0122
E-mail: jmforbes@linuxtx.org

Justin M. Forbes

Summary:

I am a results-driven professional with a strong technical background and expertise in providing business driven solutions demonstrated by numerous project accomplishments. Extensive experience working with business units and project managers to design and implement solutions which meet the needs of current business objectives and provide future scalability. Possess an in-depth understanding of emerging technologies and their business applications. Over ten years of success engineering and implementing solutions which provide innovative information technology and strong customer service, with lowest possible TCO.

Areas of Expertise:



Work Experience:

September 2004 - January 2009 rPath Inc.
Senior Engineer

Kernel maintainer, distribution release management, security management, package maintainer.

Maintained release kernels for rPath Linux and Foresight Linux.
Performed Release management for rPath Linux 1 and 2.
Worked to package and maintain upstream sources for rPath Linux including managed security releases.
Worked with upstream community and customers to track down and fix bugs in the kernel and across the linux distribution.
Worked with vendor-sec on coordinated releases of security issues in the distribution.
Worked with upstream community to package and maintain Xen userspace and kernel.
Port existing Specifix Linux base to the x86_64 architecture and worked with packaging engineers to ensure that conary could function correctly in a multilib environment.



March 2001 - September 2004 Blockbuster Inc.
Infrastructure Engineer

Cross platform architectures for infrastructure. Solaris, AIX and Linux system planning, documentation, and tuning. Veritas Cluster Server, Foundation Suite, Oracle Edition, IBM HACMP, and Sun Cluster. EMC Symmetrix and IBM ESS storage. Working with systems from IBM X-Series to Sun E10K, and IBM SP.

Architect technical solutions to meet business requirements for several new projects.
Research and develop technical road map and strategy for infrastructure to meet current and projected future business needs. Organization of groups to discuss and road map up and coming technologies ensuring that architectures were moving in a direction to enable those which would be of benefit to the business.
Worked with business and Strategic Outsource partner to develop process and procedures for formalizing the production environment. This included tools and processes for development and test environments, LDAP user security, disaster recovery, and increased availability.
Created and documented standards for Solaris, AIX, and Linux installs. This included base operating systems, system security, and system management utilities. Created Jumpstart, NIM, and Kickstart installation servers to ease installation to company standards. This also included road mapping the Unix environment to take advantage of current assets and future direction in attempt to keep down TCO and achieve better resource utilization.
Worked with business, DBAs, and project manager to engineer, document, and build a production CRM environment. This included a CRM data mart on IBM P690 Regatta externally hosted, and a migration of the in house 3TB Operational Data Store data warehouse from an IBM S80 SP/HACMP environment to Sun E10000 with Veritas Cluster Server.
Engineer, document, and test Business Recovery procedures for mission critical Unix systems.
Research of new technologies and software revisions. Testing, certification, packaging, and documentation of new software revisions and releases for the production environment. Train administrators on new technologies.



October 1998 - March 2001 GTE.net/Verizon Online
Senior System Engineer

Solaris, Linux, and Irix. System planning, installation, tuning, and maintenance. Veritas Cluster Server and Foundation Suite. System architecture for DNS, RADIUS, Messaging, and other projects. Perl, expect, and shell scripting (ksh and csh). Working with systems from x86 Linux and Solaris to clustered Sun Enterprise servers. Some Oracle installation and planning on Solaris and Red Hat Linux.

System architecture and tuning for migration of large scale messaging system (1.1million + mailboxes) from SGI to Sun architecture with EMC storage. Plan and implement Veritas Cluster Server solution for High Availability services on this mission critical system. System tuning for performance and stability of mail application and Oracle 8.0.5.
Architecture and implementation of Radius and DNS system to meet the demands of a quickly growing ISP using load balancing devices and multiple Linux and Solaris servers.
Migration of critical network servers from Solaris to Red Hat Linux to improve performance and decrease TCO.
Plan and implement Linux security procedures including service lock down, custom root kit, and configuration and testing of a custom kernel for production Red Hat Linux based servers.
System tuning and load testing for several Unix based systems including messaging, DNS, Radius, and TFTP services using custom scripting and kernel builds.
System evaluation, documentation, and lab testing for various hardware and software platforms. Evaluation including not only technical, but security, and business case aspects as well.
Perl, expect, and shell scripting to simplify everyday operations, reporting, and maintenance on Unix servers.
Documentation and implementation of procedures for Unix system installation, configuration, and everyday maintenance for multiple platforms and services.



September 1997 - October 1998 IOstream Consulting
Partner

Network Consulting in Linux, Unix, Windows, Back Office, and Open VMS. Computer assembly, break/fix troubleshooting, PERL, JAVA, C programming, Unix and Windows NT security audits, sales, financial/tax management. Network consulting experience includes:

Planning

Migration

Deployment

Upgrading

Converting

Maintaining

Experience setting up Firewalls on Unix based systems.

Proficient in Linux, Solaris, BSD, and SCO.

Implementation of Unix to VMS gateway to implement WAN access to all VMS applications with additional Unix infrastructure for email and firewall services.

Integration of Unix and Windows systems to provide an optimized hybrid network that was both stable and task oriented.



February 1997 - November 1997 NetBlocks LLC.
Senior Programmer

Java, PERL, and C programming for web services on Unix and NT based servers, Windows NT 4.0 Network Administration, Web site Administration, and Web design/layout. Linux and NT work group server administration.


Education:

1994 - 1996 University of North Texas
Denton, TX
Computer Science

2002 Red Hat Certified Engineer #807302743806232


Software Experience:

Programming: C, C++, Python, Perl, shell scripting, x86 Assembler.

Linux: rPath Linux, Foresight, Fedora Core, Red Hat 4.x-9, RHEL 2.1 - 5, Suse Enterprise Linux, Various flavors, architectures, and revisions since 1994 - packaging, installation, configuration, maintenance, programming, customization to meet specific needs, and performance tuning. In depth knowledge and experience down to the kernel level.

Sun Solaris: 2.5-9 on x86 and SPARC Architectures - installation, configuration, maintenance, security, high availability, and advanced performance tuning

Virtualization: VMware, Xen, and KVM.

IBM AIX: 4.3.3-5L - installation, configuration, maintenance, security, high availability, and performance tuning. HACMP and LPAR experience. Training includes IBM's AIX for Solaris Administrators class.

SGI Irix: 6.5x - installation, configuration, and day-to-day maintenance.

SCO Open Server: installation, configuration, maintenance

Veritas: Veritas Cluster Server, Foundation Suite, Quick I/O – architecture, installation, configuration, maintenance. Formal training at Veritas facility.

DNS: Bind 4.9 - 9.x - packaging, installation, configuration, load balancing, maintenance (Test Platforms: Lucent QIP, Nortel/Bay Networks Net-ID, Process Software IP Works)

Radius: Custom solution - installation, configuration, performance tuning, load balancing, high availability, and maintenance

Sendmail: 8.x - installation, configuration, tuning, and maintenance

Firewall: Firewall One, IP Chains - installation, configuration, maintenance

Backup: Storagetek CAM backup, Veritas NetBackup, Legato Networker

Oracle: 8.04 - 9i Installation and planning on Linux, IBM, and Sun platforms.


Hardware Experience:

Sun: SPARCstation 5 - Sunfire 15000 servers both SBUS and PCI systems - plan, build, support, and troubleshooting. Hardware and Software raid on various storage systems.

IBM: F30 - SP Complex and current P-Series servers - plan, build, support, and troubleshooting. LVM and Veritas on various storage systems.

x86: Various configurations up to and including 16-way SMP - plan, build, support, and troubleshooting.

SGI: Indy - Origin 2000 - basic support and troubleshooting.

Cisco: 2948 Switches (basic configuration), Local Director

Storage: IBM, EMC, MTI, Clariion, Storagetek Tape Silos

Load balancers: Cisco Local Director, Web Server Director, Alteon ACE switches




References available upon request