Linux Passionate for over a decade. Started my Linux distro (NimbleX) in 2005 and never looked back since. Worked for various employers in Europe and as a freelancer with customers from all over the world.
I started as a Linux software reviewer, moved on to building devices based on Linux and OpenSource technologies and also got into designing and administrating scalable server infrastructures for high traffic websites.
As a product developer, I was involved with both the x86 and ARM architectures and my experience ranges from streaming platforms, data acquisition, mobile device prototypes, a jukebox running Linux and even made my own brand of networking appliances.
As a DevOps, I greatly enjoy automating, learning about new technologies, optimizing, tuning and pushing the limits of various platforms while keeping the costs under control.
These days I am doing consultancy mostly for web companies who need to handle a lot of traffic and require a very reliable infrastructure. I have experience with all the major cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, Linode, Digital Ocean, Azure, and others.
I am a fan of using the right tool for the job. Teams and use cases are different and I like to implement what works best for a particular scenario. I also like maintaining cost efficiency especially in larger setups where it matters more. During day to day operations, I manage a few hundred servers, of course, with automated tools. Also, a big part of what I do is advise developers and managers with different matters.
I co-founded Fusion Appliances because we identified the need for high performance, easy to use devices that are quick to set up and which should resolve problems for a huge range of customers. Like with any small startup my role was divided into several fields. My responsibilities included developing the Linux distro (firmware) for our 3 devices, communication with the Chinese hardware manufacturer, handling various administrative aspects and creating the website.
The appliances are using a heavily patched kernel, in order to handle routing functionality, network buffers and CPU scheduling differently than the stock kernel and to allow them to be 100% resistant to power cuts.
We had an excellent time to market of just 3 months and managed to deliver a first few units which worked as expect from the first release.
My role was to handle all the infrastructure related affairs.
Initially, there were a few physical machines running VMs and not much automation. These days there are ~200 instances in the cloud serving several projects and environments, managed in a highly automated fashion.
Implemented a continuous integration environment to facilitate a reliable QA process and a rapid deployment to all servers.
Implemented configuration management so provisioning of machines could be done quickly and reliably.
Created custom solutions for solving our unique problems and employed extensive monitoring through various systems.
Assisted developers with various scalability and other technical matters and implement profiling techniques for facilitating code optimizations.
CloudHero was a platform which allowed developers to deploy any application across any cloud. The focus was to provide a very user-friendly experience while still allowing for a great deal of flexibility.
With CloudHero goal was to easily create scalable server setups for your web apps and then make new environments in minutes. On those environments users were able to deploy and rollback code as they please.
During the day, I was the product guy, talking to users and developers. During the night I was implementing some of the technology that was needed by our team.
I really like to teach and spread the knowledge so when the opportunity came I also went on board with this.
Planned and created the curriculum based on LPI, prepared lesson plans according to the curriculum and delivering lectures assisted by laboratory sessions. Finally, I devised testing sessions to evaluate student performance.
I was developing 3 Linux based products for this company with the necessary custom applications they require. The products are in the field of professional audio streaming.
As the lead developer I built the custom Linux distro based on some of my previous work (NimbleX) and integrated a heavily patched kernel with a carefully hand-picked userspace in order to minimize latencies, assure rock-solid stability, improve boot time and provide some custom functionality to the software (icecast, darkice, jack, vlc, mplayer, lcdproc, etc.) used in the products. Additionally, deployment of the units and test cases were automated in order to minimize human error.
At RSC I was outsourced to a large corporation (Petrom) from day one and I was maintaining the Oracle rail traffic control database and improving the PHP application that managed all the paperwork and national petroleum transport process. This application was mission critical and any downtime translated to transport delays for hundreds of tons of product.
My role was to make the deployment and analysis of the test and production servers necessary for a state project. I was also developing customizations for a CMS and tested various security related aspects. In addition to that, I was responsible with preparing some of the contractual papers with the beneficiary. I also was involved with training the CSSPP personnel to use the product that they acquired.
At Softpedia, I initiated the Linux section of the website which contained articles. Wrote Reviews and HOW-TOs about various Linux software from all the areas of interest. This was a very interesting job for me as it facilitated learning lots of new things from a multitude of fields.
