I am a Systems Architect with 10 years of experience designing and running systems on both Linux and Solaris and a degree in Computer Science and Computer Engineering.
I enjoy designing large UNIX-based infrastructures, as well as systems security and related areas. I'm not currently seeking employment; however, I'm always open to the right opportunity.
I have a strong presence in the open source community, having not only my own software (IPTState, concordance, check_x509, mime_dump), but also contributing to many projects from the Linux kernel to IP Filter. As a systems administrator, I pride myself on always solving problems the right way - not the easiest or quickest way - but the best way possible. Putting forth the effort to do something properly the first time may take a little longer initially, but reduces downtime and cost while increasing manageability, reliability, and scalability in the long run. Lastly, I'm very proactive; I have the drive to seek out projects that need to be done and tackle them.
Thank you for your time,
Phil Dibowitz
+41 (79) 247-2510
phil@ipom.com
WORK EXPERIENCE
Google (2008 - 2010 - Zurich, Switzerland)
Site Reliability Engineer, Gmail
- Planned and tested migration of Gmail to next-generation internal storage infrastructure, including training of other team members
- Oncall duties for Gmail's infrastructure including web frontend, imap/pop frontend, backend, storage, delivery, anti-spam, anti-abuse components
- Worked with developers to productionize next-generation anti-abuse and anti-spam systems
- Near-complete re-write of Gmail-specific machine-management software
- Developed scripts to ensure correct load balancing configurations
- Extended existing configuration management systems for new products and needs
- Developed new procedures for integrating with other teams and core Google infrastructure
- Restructure how new releases get their first production traffic to provide greater flexibility, monitoring, and reliability
- Wrote software to audit and correct file permissions issues
- Wrote and organized documentation for many of Gmail's existing and upcoming systems
- Taught classes for new employees and engineers transferring to SRE
Ticketmaster (2005 - 2008 - Los Angeles, CA)
UNIX Systems Administrator (2005 - 2006)
Senior UNIX Systems Administrator (2006 - present)
- Managed ~3000 Linux systems
- Architected and implemented a large-scale PKI infrastructure using RSA Keon software for more than 60,000 certificates spanning more than than 16 certificate authorities (CAs) including writing policy and training staff
- Co-designed the PKI-based authentication system for web-services project for interfacing with partners
- Developed a plug-in to the preexisting system configuration software to effectively handle Identity, User, and Access management (Perl)
- Developed dynamic pluggable software for provisioning, modifying, and decommissioning DNS, NFS storage, and VMWare (GSX) virtual machines (Perl)
- Developed daemon to report and graph incoming sessions across load-balancing layer (Perl)
- Developed utility to generate utilization reports for on-sale periods (Perl)
- Part of the team that developed and maintained in-house system configuration and other software (Perl, C, Ruby)
- Wrote various scripts such as Netscaler configuration generator, monitoring aggregator, and others to improve team efficiency (Perl and Ruby)
- Rolled out hardware, OS, and configuration for several new projects such as TicketExchange and Web Services
- Worked directly with application developers to debug various production problems (C++)
- Rolled out keepalived to single-point-of-failure systems to ensure redundancy and reliability
- Trained new staff on our systems, software, and policy
- Wrote documentation for various systems, products, and software
Information Services Division - USC (2003-2005 - Los Angeles, CA)
Systems Architect and Administrator
- Managed ~300 Solaris SPARC systems
- Restructured and redesigned the DNS servers to achieve higher reliability, better performance, and easier maintainability
- Rolled out a Shibboleth (shibboleth.internet2.edu) infrastructure, a system for data release approval and implementation, and documentation, as well as provided feedback and documentation to the Internet2 community
- Worked with the portal team to setup Load Balancing and SSL offloading for our uPortal roll out. Found and reported bugs with Apache and Tomcat for SSL offloading issues
- Replaced all console servers with Cyclades and Conserver to give better performance, redundancy, and desired features
- Designed and deployed a key-management system for passphraseless keys that need to be securely distributed, managed, and updated for automated systems
- Helped design next-generation Identity and Rights Management system being developed in-house
- Designed and implemented a system for maintaining Active Directory DNS records on the USC UNIX DNS servers (for 30+ AD domains across campus), which were previously maintained by hand
- Maintained the MIT Kerberos V realm
- Acted as a signer for the USC Certificate Authority, helped in Certificate Policy decisions, created the KCA as a subordinate Certificate Authority
- Deployed Nagios as a group-wide monitoring service, and provided monitoring services to other groups within our organization giving our department better response time to problems, and a better idea of what effect problems have (Nagios monitored 320 hosts and 1175 services)
- Organized PGP education and documentation as well as key signing parties to enable encrypted and/or signed email as appropriate
- Trained various student employees on software installation, UNIX theory, and shell scripting
- Planned and implemented the disabling of telnet and FTP in favor of SSH to increase security
Stream Exchange (2002-2003 - Los Angeles, CA)
Systems Administrator
- Planned and implemented a central user information and authentication database with OpenLDAP, nss_ldap, and pam_ldap
- Setup a secure multi-domain mail server using Qmail, Vpopmail, Qmailadmin, and Courier IMAPd
- Wrote full system documentation for all 14 servers, the network in general, and multiple procedures and services
- Wrote many scripts to automate load balancing, booting, and other procedures
- Authored new, as well as edited and commented existing Perl/CGI scripts for secure transactions using Verisign Payflow Pro for processing
- Installed, configured, supported, and trained staff on Oasis Ad Server
- Installed, configured, and trained staff on RT2 Ticketing for customer support issues
- General maintenance and patching of 14 Linux web servers
MySmart Solutions (2001-2002 - Los Angeles, CA)
Unix and RADIUS Systems Administrator and Network Engineer
Previous positions left off for brevity
EDUCATION
- University of Southern California
B.S. in Computer Engineering Computer Science
SKILLS
- UNIX: Solaris 2.6 - 9, Linux (2.2 - 2.6)
- Services & Firewalls: IP Filter, IP Tables, IP Chains, Apache, MySQL, BIND, MIT Kerberos, Sun Disk Suite, OpenSSH, Linux Software Raid, TCP Wrappers, Cyrus IMAPd, LVM2
- Devices: Netapp, Decru, Foundry, Netscaler
- Languages: Perl, Shell (bash, korn, bourne), Python, C++, C, CGI, (X)HTML, CSS
- Certifications: Sun Security Administrator - Solaris 9
PERSONAL PROJECTS AND PUBLICATIONS
References available on request.
Phil Dibowitz
+41 (79) 247-2510
phil@ipom.com
