JERALD M. SHEETS, JR 7947 Eureka Rd NW Charleston, TN 37310 jerald.sheets@gmail.com Senior Contributor, Team Lead, and Architectural Expert Profile: Talented Technology Thought-Leader with twenty-nine years progressively responsible IT experience. Puppet Configuration Management architecture, deployment, consulting, and instruction. Linux systems Oak Ridge National Laboratory (UT-Batelle) – Oak Ridge, TN – Remote Sr. HPC Systems Administrator – Puppet Community - 3/2023 – Present Puppet Automation Duties: Perform Puppet Installation, configuration, and management duties for the Digital Archive for atmospheric data systems. Primary customer: NASA for environmental data needed for launch operations. • Install, configure, and maintain Puppet Community installation to include development, archiving, deployment, and other duties as needed to care for an feed the Puppet Environment • Train other staff personnel on the use and management of the Puppet Environment • Develop documentation, best practices, and maintain a relationship with Puppet for management and maintenance of the environment. Penacity, LLC. - Hanover MD - Remote Sr. Automation Solutions Architect - Puppet Enterprise - 3/2022 - 3/2023 Team Lead - Puppet Automation Duties: Perform architectural design and implementation of Puppet Enterprise in on premises and AWS environments both for U.S. Government clients and the corporate office. Act as SME for all Puppet Configuration Management tools and methods, Automation, CI/CD, and Development in regrds to Puppet. • Remote leadership of Puppet Enterprise Infrastructure and cloud envirionments. • Puppet Enterprise and Community development, implementation and deployment in secured government environments with and without network egress. • AWS-Based Puppet build and deployment as well as module design, Roles and Profiles pattern implementation and management, and problem resolution in secure and non-secured environments. PayPal, Inc. – Atlanta, GA - Remote Sr. Continuous Security Strategist – Infrastructure Automation - 8/2016 – 3/2022 Team Lead – Puppet Automation Duties: Perform architectural design and review for PayPal DevOps infrastructure initiatives. Act as SME for Puppet Configuration management tools and methods, Continuous Integration, and DevSecOps techniques. • Remote leadership and management of Puppet automation infrastructure, training, and development of automation engineers for team project work. Set standard and style guide for automation development. • Built and deployed 100% automated CI pipeline for automation platform development using Puppet, Jenkins, GitHub, Docker, Litmus and Onceover RSPEC/ServerSpec testing and other technologies. • Work in AWS, Google Cloud, and other proprietary cloud infrastructures to deliver containerized applications as well as traditional server architectures. Migration and automation of cloud infrastructures with Puppet, Vagrant, and other emerging technologies. Shadow-Soft – Atlanta, GA Sr. Puppet and Solutions Architect – Consultant – 1/2014 – 8/2016 Team Lead – Puppet and DEVOPS Consulting/Implementation and training Duties: Perform professional engagements with clients nationwide on behalf of Puppet Labs. Execute PE Bootstraps, pair module programming, consultation, and engineering. RedHat Professional Services engagements and consultations. • Travel nationwide and implement Puppet Enterprise in both greenfield and brownfield scenarios as a Puppet Labs Certified Consultant. Delivered as a Puppet Labs resource through our partner relationships with Puppet Labs. • Blog instructionally on Puppet topics and for corporate web presence on DEVOPS topics and methodologies. Speak at Puppet Camp Atlanta and provide support on Puppet Labs’ Slack support channel through community engagement. • Train and develop customers on the use of Puppet for their corporate environments. • Lead team of consultants, and train and equip team for Puppet based engagements nationwide. • Automate Cloud infrastructures to include AWS, and OpenStack both with RedHat and Open-Source technologies internally and for clients nationwide. Accelarad, Inc. – Atlanta, GA Sr. Linux Systems Architect – IT Operations – 7/2013 – 1/2014 Senior Linux/Puppet team leader for Accelarad Atlanta Headquarters (now Nuance) Duties: Straight Systems architecture and administration for SAAS Radiology provider. Provisioning, Puppet configuration management, all architectural design and implementation. • Designed, developed, and implemented primary monitoring solution for all hosts, applications, and networking infrastructure. • Conceived, designed, installed, and implemented Puppet Community configuration management system with Passenger and MCollective as well as developed and implemented all modules and manifests. Developed deployment system for development team and implemented “push button” integration system for code deployment. • Conceived, designed, developed, and implemented cohesive provisioning system with transparent configuration management handoff. Apple, Inc. – Maiden, NC Sr. UNIX Systems Engineer – GCS Retail – 7/2011 – 6/2013 Retail Systems Engineer and Puppet SME for worldwide Apple Retail Chain Duties: Perform systems administration, architecture, and engineering tasks for Apple retail stores worldwide to include OSX Server and RHEL 6.2 systems. Provisioning of Mac Pro and Linux systems as POS Production systems in retail stores, troubleshooting various issues in-store as they arise, and working with store staff to resolve issues. • Upgraded all retail stores worldwide from OSX Server 10.5.8 to 10.6.5, deploying new Netboot imaging servers to all retail stores and updating all system images to the latest levels certified by POS Team. Developed Perl “glue” code to automate the procedure from data center servers. • Performed New Store Openings for the 2011/2012 season, executing GCS Retail tasks on an aggressive timeline for opening day. with Retail groups, coordinating across IS&T, GNS, and other groups as necessary. • Architected, developed and deployed Puppet Configuration management system for systems throughout the retail chain worldwide. Deployed Puppet infrastructure to retail stores through staged rollout without unplanned outages. Incomm, Inc. – Atlanta, GA Sr. Linux Systems Administrator – Operations Group – 11/2010 – 7/2011 Industry leader marketer, distributor, and technology innovator of stored-value gift and prepaid products. Duties: Systems administrator and technologist for online pre-paid serving infrastructure at company headquarters in Atlanta, GA. Straight administration and project architecture including full hardware procurement responsibilities, team interaction to guide technical project requirements, servicing of project requirements, and internal business tool creation and administration. Commodity hardware, virtual machines and automated load (Kickstart) environment management. “War room” duties during peak times for incident response. • Developed new inventory system for team, collected inventory, and populated with asset information. • Managed Kickstart environment (plus PXE) and stand-up servers very quickly on an as-needed basis. Intercontinental Hotels Group – Atlanta, GA Sr. Technology Consultant – Contractor, Principal Solutions Group – 8/2010 – 10/2010 The world’s largest Hotels group with over 650,000 rooms over 4500 hotels in 100 countries Internet web presence. Duties: Work on company projects on an “as assigned” basis. Projects include Terracotta, Perl scripting, inventory and asset management, and ActiveMQ. System procurement, implementation, provisioning and deployment including RedHat Enterprise Linux Server 5, HP’s XP24000 storage array. Key Contributions: • Researched, ordered, installed Terracotta & Ehcache system to be leveraged across all production RedHat and Solaris based serving environments. • Provide research and reporting on Puppet Configuration Management system, Xymon monitoring system, and implementing Hyperic clients throughout the environment. CNN News Systems – Atlanta, GA Senior Systems Engineer – CNN BEST – 10/2008 – 8/2010 Cable Television’s premier news source, CNN’s newsroom systems support team. The largest newsgathering, storage, and retrieval infrastructure in the Television News industry. Duties: Primarily responsible for maintenance, configuration, and development of the CNN Library archive. This includes the Sun StorageTek SL8500 Library and the Quantum StorNext Filesystem and supporting RHEL 5.2-5.4 and Solaris 10 systems. Basic Administration duties, design and implementation of new systems and technologies, systems programming in Perl, and storage administration for the Digital Archive. Kickstart server installation and configuration, and LDAP implementation and management. Key Contributions: • Transitioned entire digital media archive over to newly created group’s data center, architected and migrated authentication and monitoring as well as deployed client support at the host level throughout the environment without downtime and under budget. • Managed downtimes, hardware and software upgrades, team coordination of serving software patches and builds. • Performed on-call duties on a bi-weekly basis throughout my tenure at CNN, covering 24x7 call without an operations group or Network Operations Center to triage issues. The Weather Channel Interactive – Atlanta, GA Senior Linux Systems Administrator – Operations – 06/2005 – 10/2008 Cable television’s The Weather Channel’s web-facing Internet presence. The largest non-portal website in the world, serving tens of millions of unique visitors daily Duties: Responsible for the daily maintenance and configuration of the Apache web server, Tomcat servlet container, and SuSE 9 & 10 Linux platform. Optimization and performance tuning of the Sun JVM, memory profiling, and enhanced configuration management in an extremely fast-paced mission critical Internet environment. Implemented VMWare server environment for development and testing systems. Key Contributions: • Worked closely with development team to troubleshoot software issues relating to the server OS and the software build process and environment. • Built and deployed new build environments for new product assets throughout live site with no downtime and easy failover. • Increased serving speed by as much as 30% in some systems by performance tuning of the Sun Java Virtual Machine. • Researched and deployed incremental upgrades for Apache, Tomcat, and the mod_jk connector, compiling each with custom settings to maximize systems efficiency to serve 30-50 million unique page views per day escalating as high as 90 million during special weather events. McKesson, Inc. - Atlanta, GA Senior UNIX/Linux Systems Administrator – TSG -12/2004 – 06/2005 Fortune 16 Pharmaceutical Company specializing in medication delivery hardware and software. Install base throughout the U.S. and abroad in the healthcare industry, built on HP-UX, AIX5L, and RedHat Linux. Duties: Defined, designed, and implemented UNIX software and solutions. Proposed and implemented system enhancements (software and hardware updates) that improved the performance and reliability of the customer UNIX systems. Managed load configuration of UNIX Systems performed telephone support and triage of installed customer systems, and routed calls to appropriate parties when not directly UNIX Administration related. Datatrac, Inc. - Atlanta, GA Sr. UNIX/Linux Systems Administrator, Techops - 5/2004 to 11/2004 Transportation Industry player serving several thousand users, both web-hosted and installed across the continental United States. Custom Software suite built on AIX, RedHat Linux, and SCO OpenServer. Duties: Manage farm of installed AIX, SCO, and RedHat Linux systems (8.x, 9.x, ES3) for an installed user base of over 10,000 customers. Both web hosted and installed user base serving the transportation industry with package shipping, tracking, GPS, and wireless notification systems. Installation of AIX, RedHat Linux, and migration from SCO to one of the other platforms supported. Managed, installed Legato Backup systems, Backup Edge, and AIX mksysb management. Installation and maintenance of Big Brother Network Monitor, both Professional and "Better than Free" versions. Responsible for disaster recovery, internal systems security, log monitoring and systems surveys and administration. Key Contributions: • Tackled disarray of the monitoring system and revamped entire configuration hierarchy. Installed larrd and ntop monitoring, and began to locate errant processes, and offloaded resource hogs to new systems. • Produced instructional documentation for upper management to inform and encourage a direction in preparing for SCO decommissioning and subsequent customer migrations to new platforms. Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center – Baton Rouge, LA Sr. AIX Systems Administrator, IT Department – 5/2001 to 4/2004 Large regional hospital serving a 13 Parish area in Southern Louisiana utilizing the latest in healthcare ERP software such as Cerner and Lawson financials. Duties: Manage large network of enterprise class IBM RS/6000 servers serving over 5,000 users. Implemented Linux servers for DNS and Web tasks, Managed Tivoli Storage Manager, IBM 3494 Tape library, and ESS/SSA Disk storage subsystems. Key Contributions: • Implemented Tomcat server for Lawson Financials system on AIX. Installed web-monitoring tools for Lawson. • Migrated all DNS servers to RedHat Linux appliances to offload non-application related services to outboard gear and centralize primary server management. • Upgraded from ADSM 3.1 to Tivoli 4.2 enterprise wide, coordinated multi-team effort in replacing all client code, rewriting scripts to conform to new version, and generated post-mortem for management review. • Wrote and deployed Systems Management scripts enterprise wide to monitor all UNIX servers, Tivoli Storage Manager, and notify the Systems administration team of system anomalies. Thomson Financial – Rockville, Maryland Sr. UNIX Systems Administrator, IT Department – 2/2001 – 5/2001 World Headquarters of Thomson Financial housing over 200 online systems and 50 internal systems utilizing Solaris, SCO Open Server, RedHat Linux, and HP/UX. Duties: Managed and supported large network of a large array of UNIX servers providing E-Commerce, Financial management, and Education scheduling and planning. Key Contributions: • Implemented wide scale usage of Open-Source tools for development teams for online E-commerce applications. • Evaluated Systems Monitoring Software and implemented various projects for evaluation by management and coworkers. Education & Training: Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70802 Attended: August 1985 to December 1987 January 1989 to December 1989 May 1995 to May 1996 RedHat RHCSA/RHCE Training Atlanta, GA 1 Week Instruction Sun StorageTek Library Administration Denver, Colorado 1 Week Instruction IBM AIX Basic & Advanced Administration Cleveland, Ohio 2 Weeks Instruction Linux Academy AWS Essentials Cloud Essentials DEVOPS Essentials OpenStack Essentials Docker Deep Dive Docker and Elastic Beanstalk Running Container Clusters with Kubernetes St. Stephen-s University St. Stephen, NB Bachelor-s Degree - Theology Vineyard Bible Institute St. Stephen, NB Vineyard School of Ministry - Practical Theology Certificate - Biblical Theology Certificate - Kingdom Theology Certificate Puppet Fundamentals & Advanced Training Atlanta, GA 6 Days Instruction International Technical Institute, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70816 Graduated: May, 1991 2nd in class. 3Com CSO Boot Camp 3Com Worldwide Education Program Quantum StorNext Administration Denver, Colorado 2 Weeks Instruction Computer Expertise: * RHCE/RHCSA/RHSH #140-046-236 * Puppet Certified Professional #PCP-1121385654 * Puppet Enterprise, Community, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, puppet-rspec, and Beaker testing * AWS, Google Cloud, Vagrant, and cloud automation. * VMWare Server, VirtualBox, and Xen Virtualization Technologies * Build Vagrant/Virtualbox environments for Puppet development and maintain as open source projects * Docker, Ansible, and other automation/devops technologies * Perl, BASH, Unix Utilities (awk, sed, expect) * MySQL, PostgreSQL * SMTP, POP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, SNMP, SSH, IMAP, NFS, and LDAP * Network Monitoring with OSS tools such as XyMon, Nagios, ZenOSS, Nmap, and Ntop * AIX – 14 years, Linux – 25 years (RHEL, SuSE, Ubuntu, Slackware), BSD – 8 years Of Note: Chairman of the Board of Directors, CorpsVets, Inc. http://www.atlantacv.org Owner/Operator of home-based PC & Linux Small-Business Server Consulting Company. Staff Author - Linux.com (OSDN Network) - "Kickstarting Linux Client Installs", Internet Website: http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/113526, 2003 - "Making Open Webmail Work", Internet Website http://archive09.linux.com/articles/33550, 2004 Contributing Author – Puppet.com - “Scaling Open-Source Puppet”, Internet Website https://puppet.com/blog/scaling-open-source-puppet/, 2020 LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeraldsheets/ -Jerald is a great asset to this team and PayPal as a whole. Jerald if very knowledgeable in his areas and has quickly become the 'go to' person for Puppet. This coming year we are going to get Jerald involved in more projects which will allow Jerald to expand his skill set and lend a helping hand to the rest of the team. I have no doubt that Jerald will quickly become a strong lead member of this team.- - Thomas Fosbenner Excerpt from 2016 performance Evaluation -Jerald has achieved both RedHat Certifications and reached 64 of 70% goal billability for his first quarter with Shadow Soft- - Kevin O-Neal Excerpt from 2014 90-Day Performance Evaluation -Jerald has restructured the wiki to have better search functionality to the documentation and has created many useful documents in our environment, which was greatly needed. Jerald also has created a great method to efficiently execute NSO-s, which has been very successful.- - Rob Tobias Excerpts from 2012 Performance Evaluation -(Jerald) He is one of the sharpest System Administrators I have ever worked with. His thoroughness and attention to detail is top-notch, as is the depth of his knowledge. - Bob Baker, The Weather Channel Interactive Colleague Endorsement -Jerald displays an overall level of professionalism, is punctual and delivers prompt customer responses-He has worked intently with developers, QA, and Operations to facilitate our build environment.- -Jerald does work with direct attention to customer experience. He focuses on building workflows that minimize customer and developer impact- -Jerald does thoroughly document a process or project. He has an ability to write documentation in a way that readers of all types will understand.- -Joey Reynolds Excerpts from 2005 & 2006 Performance Evaluation Testimonials: Treats co-workers with concern and respect. Communicates with co-workers to provide solutions to problems. Has the highest level of system access and respects its confidentiality. Provides in-line documentation of change, and writes readable code. On a daily basis, researches current technologies and potential operating system security issues. Jerry Stafford Excerpts from 2002 Performance Evaluation Jerald is a mature, focused, talented SysAdmin, always eager for knowledge, and looking to do things the right way. He was extremely pleasant to work with, and I would love to do so again in the future. Travis Dixon, Thomson Financial Colleague Endorsement Jerald follows through on customer commitments. He dedicates to meeting the expectations and requirements of external and internal customers. Jerald does show willingness to negotiate, resolve conflicts and gain agreements. He-s widely trusted as a direct and truthful individual. For the eight months since Jerald joined 3Com, he demonstrates himself as a highly motivated professional. He has established a strong working relationship with his team members and customers. Simon Chan Excerpts from 2000 Performance Evaluation Jerald is one of the most hard working and caring employee's I've ever had. His thirst for knowledge and resourcefulness are his strengths. I'm sure Jerald would be an asset for any company looking for a top notch System Admin. Claude Bethea, Explore Baton Rouge Owner Endorsement I have complete confidence in Jerald’s ability to complete all duties assigned to him-all duties assigned to him with ease and expediency. His facility for comprehension of LAN networks and associated software, coupled with his professionalism, has proven to me that he has the ability to quickly grasp all available information afforded him, assimilate it, and bring that apportioned task to fruition. His expertise and experience-were regarded as an asset to this university.- Michael Moore Manager Network Installation Louisiana State University