James McOrmond

53 Balsam St., Ottawa ON, K1R 6W8
(613)239-0361 james@mcormond.ca

Dedicated, results-driven IT professional with over 10 years corporate experience and an additional 10 years personal experience. Experience includes building networks from designing, purchasing hardware, cabling, configuring components such as firewalls, switches, gateways and routers all the way up to managing operating systems and writing administration tools in PHP.


Technical Proficiencies


Platforms:                     Debian/Xandros, Red Hat/CentOS, SuSE, FreeBSD, Solaris 2.5/2.7 (x86 and Sparc), Amazon EC2 Cloud, KVM Virtualization 

Server Applications:      Zimbra/Scalix (collaboration), MediaWiki/TWiki (authoring), Sendmail/PostFix/Courier/Exim (email), INN/Cnews (nntp), Bind (DNS), Apache w/PHP/SSL (WWW), MySQL (database), TWIG (Webmail), FreeS/WAN (IPSec), FreeRadius (auth) and OpenLDAP (LDAP Server)

Hardware:                    IBM Blade Systems, HP Proliant, DELL PowerEdge, SUN Fire, Tyan, SuperMicro, Cisco, Sonicwall, Ascend, Dlink, Linksys, and Livingston, Analog, xDSL, ISDN, "Cable Modem", Wireless APs, Bridges & Routers, CAT5/6 Ethernet cabling and LAN installation, Fibre SAN, PC Tower and Rack configuration and assembly

Languages:                   PHP, bash, perl, 6502, 8086 & 68000 Assembly Language, C and C++

Tools:                           Monit, Munin, Nagios, MRTG


Professional Experience

Xandros Corporation, Ottawa, On

Network Administrator                                          October 2002 - Present

Primarily responsible for installation and maintenance of all public and internal production servers including firewalls, DNS, DHCP, web, file and email servers. As Scalix is primarily used in non-Debian environments, the Scalix aquisition required me to get familiar with Red Hat style systems again since Xandros is primarily Debian based.

Key Achievements:

  • Researched, planned and executed migration project moving services previously provided by 10 dedicated & colocated systems into the Amazon EC2 cloud for ease of management and cost savings.
  • Maintained network of 30+ servers consisting of a mix between CentOS, Debian and Xandros Operating Systems.
  • Designed floor plan and coordinated with Management on AC, UPS and Power requirements on new server room.
  • Migrated old IT services provided by desktop and server class tower systems into rack mounted systems.
  • Provided hardware (to Ottawa employees) and provided basic helpdesk support to entire corporation of 200+ employees in 6 different countries.

Xandros Corporation, Ottawa, Ontario                

Quality Assurance Specialist                        October 2001 - July 2007

Performing and creating testing strategies to test Xandros Desktop (a Linux based desktop Operating System, designed to replace Windows in an office environment).  Involved with testing primarily the hardware compatibility and networking aspects.  Logged bugs in Bugzilla database.

Key Achievements:

  • Set up and administered Bugzilla database system
  • Assisted in finding solutions for bugs logged
  • Assisted in feature design such as the Firewall, and Clustering plugins, as well as support issues and product updates.
  • Involved in all OS hardware testing, including determining which hardware to buy based on chipset, cpu and other hardware considerations.
  • Tested all server hardware functionality in environments such as IBM Blade Systems with shared 4Gbs Fibre storage system.

Open Concept Consulting, Ottawa, Ontario

PHP/MySQL Web developer                        July 2001 - December 2001

 

Created the bibliography plugin for the Women’s Learning Partnership website.

Key Achievements

  • Learned PHP Nuke environment and created bibliography frontend and backend plugins.

Rebel.com, Ottawa, Ontario

Quality Assurance Specialist                                May 2000 - July 2001

Performing and creating testing strategies for The NetWinder OfficeServer (a small footprint, low heat, low power, internet server-in-a-box, based on the Linux RedHat OS).  Reporting bugs in Bugzilla database.

Key Achievements

  • Assisted developers with changes in the web based GUI
  • Assisted with overall feature enhancements in components such as DNS, DHCP & Firewall.
  • Taken on managerial duties as the team leader for the QA department (total of 4 staff)

Cyberus Online Inc, Ottawa, Ontario

Unix system administration                         January 1999 - May 2000

Daily maintenance of customer accounts including virtual domain (DNS, web, email and ftp) services, as well as programming, application/system configuration, and installation of ISDN and ADSL equipment for new customers. Operating Systems in use included Solaris, Solaris x86, and FreeBSD.

 

Key Achievements

  • Programmed an IP address allocation tool
  • Programmed the bulk of the user administration tools for the EduNET project providing uniform internet access to Carleton University, Ottawa University, and La Cité Collégiale (using PHP3 and the MySQL database system)

Education

Algonquin College 1992-1998

Rideau Campus, Ottawa, Ontario

 

Computer Systems Technician Diploma

  • Computer Engineering
  • Computer Technology - Computer Science