Thomas Leavitt

Senior Unix Systems Administrator (SAGE Level IV)

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Short Biography

In August of 1999, I co-founded another start-up, now called TargetFirst, Inc. We raised $6 million through two rounds of funding in 2000. I served as Senior Systems Operations manager, designing the back end infrastructure and helping to maintain it. Unfortunately, the company's business model ("get paid to surf the web") depended on Internet banner advertising, the value of which was about 1% of what it was at the time we started the business by 2001. As a result, the business model became non-functional, and after a brief attempt to re-purpose our assets and re-work the business model, the company was put into hibernation mode so that the founders could move on to the next big thing. This experience taught me a lot (perhaps even more than my first, successful business), and left me much older and wiser than when I started.

In July of 2001, I married Gunilla (see picture above), and after taking some time off, and various experiments, on March 16th, 2004, we incorporated our web design and hosting business as Godmoma's Forge, LLC. Gunilla started designing web sites in 1994 (when I started hosting them), and we'd been pursuing business in this area, in a less focused fashion, for quite a while (as my resume indicates), so it seemed logical to formalize things (incorporation, business license, fictitious business name statement, EIN, etc.). In addition to my primary role as an IT Services consultant (systems and networking) for a variety of companies in Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz, I handle the business end of things, manage our in-house web hosting environment, and do custom implementations of open source applications for our clients. Our offices are currently located at 916 Soquel Ave., #B, in sunny Santa Cruz, CA. We offer high quality, low cost web and graphic design. Give us a call, and see what we can do for you.

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Cover Letter

I am a Senior Linux / Unix Systems administrator (SAGE Level IV) with fifteen-plus years of experience in diverse set of complex, cross-platform environments, including consumer-facing 24/7 production environments ranked in the top 500 by Media Metrix and PC Data. I'm currently engaged as a part-time consultant for a variety of companies in Silicon Valley.

I have dealt with every phase of systems management and integration, from specification, to negotiating purchases, to builds and installs, configuration, and ongoing monitoring, maintenance and upgrades. I've managed large scale/high transaction rate email, DNS/Bind, http/s and Sybase RDBMS systems running on Solaris, HPUX, Linux, and FreeBSD, configured networks, and implemented detailed reporting and monitoring systems, using FOSS solutions such as Xymon and Hyperic, and custom written code in Perl and SQL.

I have managed systems that required 24/7/365 availability, including a web hosting service (WebCom) and a consumer facing online service (ClickDough), where in both cases a single outage meant thousands of dollars in lost revenue and customer good will and have spent endless hours on the phone with vendor technical support, tracking down and resolving network issues, software bugs, hardware failures and security issues.

As an IT Services consultant for most of the last decade, I've worked closely with senior decision makers at every company and organization to modernize their systems and implement core IT infrastructure upgrades such as implementation of network attached storage, network monitoring and virtualization, as well as deploying FOSS and closed-source solutions at the application and server operating system level, for both consumer facing as well as internal usage (often software development and Q/A).

As Senior Systems Operations manager for TargetFirst, I designed and oversaw the construction of a robust and highly scalable system architecture, servicing hundreds of thousands of end-users, and then transferred the core elements to a low cost/low maintenance architecture (at 10% of the previous cost) when the company downscaled to accomodate a vastly changed business environment.

At WebCom (among other projects requiring thousands of lines of code), I wrote a series of daily, weekly and monthly reports (using Perl and SQL queries against our Sybase database) that analyzed and highlighted important business and systems metrics. This allowed management to feel the pulse of business operations on a daily basis and quickly identify any changing trends. These reports also served to highlight any anomalous situations - in one instance, I noticed that a significant number of "active" customers had not had a payment credited to their account in several months; a few SQL queries served to confirm that a database programmer had failed to re-initialize a trigger after modifying and reloading a table. I corrected the situation and prevented a much larger issue from developing.

As VP of Systems Operations for WebCom, I executed several wholesale migrations from one architecture to another as we grew, moving from HPUX on an PA-RISC 9000/835 with internal hard drives, to Solaris on a Sun Sparc 1000E with a Sun SparcStorage Array running Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) with software based RAID, and from there to an Enterprise 4001 and an RSM Storage Array running Veritas Volume Manager that utilized the Veritas File System for greater speed and uptime (bye bye "fsck", hello journaling filesystems with hash-based indexes). I also moved our database from SQL Server on NT4, to Sybase on HPUX 9, and then to Solaris 2.6 on a Sun S1000E - all with near zero downtime; on top of that, I executed several in place upgrades of our Sybase RDBMS server (Sybase 10.x was a bug-ridden disaster requiring constant babysitting).

On top of all this, since these were both start ups, I was the primary source of support for the internal end-user systems both companies, diagnosing hardware, software and networking issues. This has also been a common supplementary requirement for my IT Services consulting clients as well. If there is something technical that needs to be dealt with - network, phone, wiring, PCs, office equipment, I'm ready and willing get the job done.

If you're looking for someone who can tackle almost any technological project with aplomb, is comfortable being given only the most general direction to come up with a solution, and is capable of handling the entire process, from defining the problem, to specifying a solution, to identifying the product(s) and negotiating with the vendor(s), to working out the financing, to unpacking, installing, and configuring the equipment and software, I'm your man.

Thank you for your time and attention, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
Thomas Leavitt

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Resume

• Senior Unix Systems Administrator (SAGE Level 3/4); Text Format (from OpenOffice 3.x Writer)
• Senior Unix Systems Administrator (SAGE Level 3/4); MS Word Format (from OpenOffice 3.x Writer)
• Senior Unix Systems Administrator (SAGE Level 3/4); PDF Format (from OpenOffice 3.x Writer)

Also see my LinkedIn profile.

Summary

Senior Systems Administrator (SAGE Level IV) with fifteen plus years of experience in a diverse set of complex, cross-platform environments, including consumer-facing 24/7 production environments ranked in the top 500 by Media Metrix and PC Data.

Recent Experience

2000 - Present Godmoma's Forge, LLC Santa Cruz, CA
IT Services Consultant/Owner

Manage web site design and IT services business, and provide Linux/Unix, Windows, and network support services to a variety of businesses, organizations and professionals.

Task split: 75% technical/25% management and other

Current IT Services clients:

• WaferGen, Inc. - publicly traded / venture financed biotech startup, manage Samba/Ubuntu based Windows/OS X LAN
• Santa Cruz Public Libary - government agency running mixed Debian and Windows server, initiated and facilitated migration to standardized Ubuntu and Vmware vSphere environment, implemented Xymon system and network monitoring
• MultiGig - venture financed semi-conductor design startup, on call emergency system administration on production RHEL server systems

Recent clients (sampling):

• Dust Networks, Inc. - venture financed startup developing embedded wireless networking, complete responsibility (as sub-contractor) for managing network of development and Intranet servers running RHEL – updated systems and networks to current release levels, implemented Hobbit network monitoring, implemented NAS, CentOS, Ubuntu, and VMware ESXi
• Asterpix, Inc. - series A venture financed company running Ubuntu Linux, maintained (as sub-contractor) and updated company Intranet and multi-stage development and software Q/A environment, integrated all applications into secure LDAP back end, managed VMware Server
• Octant Technologies – aerospace systems integrator/developer in defense segment, sole responsibility (as sub-contractor) for diverse network of server and desktop Solaris systems, introduced NAS, Ubuntu server, use of Live Upgrade and facilitated migration to new Enterprise class server

Have worked as a sub-contractor for the following outsource firms and companies: U'Name IT Solutions, Inc. (2008/09), AboutScan, LLC (2007/08), and Single Point of Contact (2007/08), Serengeti Systems (2006 to present), Stratos Systems (2005/6)

1999–2002 TargetFirst, Inc. San Mateo, CA
Co-Founder/Sr. Systems Operations

Internet Advertising Company pioneered the C2B (Consumer to Business) market by developing technologies and methods that allow delivery of highly targeted marketing messages to opt-in consumers via the Internet – PC Data Top 500 company.

Task split: 75% technical/25% management

• Define, specify and assist in implementing a highly scalable, redundant and secure systems architecture--including Cisco PIX Firewall, F5 Big/IP HA+ load balancer, Network Appliance storage system and Sybase back end, utilizing Intel x86 systems running various flavors of Unix/Linux for data service in outsourced data center environment.
• Migrate services with minimal downtime to low-cost datacenter environment and reconfigure back end systems to maintain adequate levels of service at 5-10% of previous cost without specialized equipment after company “rightsizing” resulted in immediate layoff all systems staff.
• Identify original opportunity, specify product and marketing strategy, join with co-founders to develop prototype, obtain seed funding and assist in recruiting CEO and other staff.
• ClickDough service gained 400,000 plus users in less than one year, ranked among top 500 Internet sites by PC Data, and generated $700,000+ in revenue in face of collapsing Internet advertising market.

1994–1999 Web Communications, LLC Santa Cruz, CA
Co-Founder/VP Systems Operations

Pioneered and defined business model for Self-service Web Hosting segment in 1994 – Media Metrix Top 500 Internet property.

Task split: 75% technical/25% management

• Design, build and maintain entire IT infrastructure: including email, web, and database servers on enterprise class Solaris on Sparce platform, sole systems administrator for most of my tenure; pioneering user of outsourced datacenter servers (reference company in Exodus Networks IPO prospectus)
• Personally wrote 7,000+ lines of code in CGI, SQL and Perl to create end user interfaces allowing self-service account management, automate systems maintenance, and handle monitoring and reporting (for both technical and business purposes).
• Grew company to $3,000,000 in revenue, 25 employees, and 10,000+ customers before sale to Verio (now a unit of NTT).

Education

1993–1994, 2004–Present Cabrillo College Aptos, CA
Finishing G.E. requirements for transfer to CSU

• Courses in Math, Humanities, Communications, Perl Programming and Linux System Administration,Unix, multi-media authoring, C programming, Network Administration

1990–1992 Occidental College Eagle Rock, CA
Majored in Religious Studies

• National Merit Scholar
• Elections Director for ASOC (student government)

Skills

• Experience with systems running Linux (10 years), Solaris (7), HPUX (4), and BSD (2) including specification, installation, configuration, management, and backup using hardware and software RAID systems, tape changers and libraries
• Experience with virtualization (VMware Server and ESXi) in a production environment
• Experience managing enterprise class hardware (Sun Sparc, HP PA-RISC, Dell PowerEdge, NetApp)
• Experience managing datacenter environments, including vendor relations, remote management, monitoring and problem resolution
• Experience with configuring and deployment of Network Monitoring (Xymon/Hobbit, Hyperic HQ, custom in-house solutions)
• Experience managing foundational Internet and network services including Postfix, Sendmail, BIND 8/9, NIS, NFS, Samba, LDAP, Winbind, NTP, iptables, Netscape Server and Apache 1/2, SSH and WU-FTPD
• Production DBA experience managing Sybase and MySQL
• Programming experience using Perl and SQL (including stored procedures) for user-interface design, system management automation, and reporting
• Web content creation and technical writing experience using HTML and PHP
• Experience purchasing over $1 million worth of equipment from various vendors for WebCom, TargetFirst and a variety of consulting clients, from specification, to negotiation, lease/purchase and delivery/installation on site or in datacenter
• Data analysis, including definition and programming of ad-hoc SQL queries to identify trends and patterns in sales and customer turn over, and to expose suspected anomalies in customer management software and billing (WebCom)

Other Activities

• Member, Usenix/SAGE, BayLISA, Santa Cruz area Linux User Groups
• Chair, Living Wage Advisory Commission, City of Santa Cruz, CA
• Extensive leadership experience in local community organizations

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Contact Information

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