Rich Lafferty

Current

Network Operations Manager at FreshBooks

Past

Senior System Administrator at Mitel
System Administrator at e-smith
System Administrator/Web Programmer at Concordia University

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Education

McGill University

Connections

149 connections

Industry

Information Technology and Services

Websites

Rich Lafferty’s Summary

SUMMARY

* Senior Unix system administrator with 12 years Linux experience, 6 years Solaris experience, primarily as team lead; also comfortable in Windows
* Internet mail, DNS, and anti-spam expert
* 7 years experience with MySQL performance tuning and high availability in an Apache-based web environment
* Experience writing software including Web applications in Perl and PHP, and debugging software and Unix kernels in C

TECHNICAL SKILLS

* Operating systems: Linux (Red Hat, CentOS; some Debian). Solaris and SunOS Unix. Windows NT, 2000, 2003 Server. Some experience with FreeBSD, NetBSD, HP/UX, Digital Unix, OpenVMS.
* Server software: MySQL including replication and performance tuning. Apache web server. Postfix, qmail, Sendmail, SpamAssassin mail servers. BIND, djbdns, Windows 2003 Server DNS service nameservers. VMware Workstation and Server. NIS and NFS under Linux and Solaris. DHCP under Linux, Solaris, Windows 2000/2003.
* Hardware: x86/AMD64 including Compaq/HP Proliant servers and blades in an HP EVA SAN. Sun SPARC and Apple Macintosh.
* Networking: In-depth understanding of SMTP, HTTP, IMAP, POP3, DNS, FTP, NNTP. Familiar with IP concepts, Internet routing, and debugging network problems. Linux iptables/ipchains firewalls. Some IPsec VPN experience (FreeS/WAN). Security concepts and encryption (OpenSSH, OpenSSL, PGP).
* Computer languages: Shell scripting in sh, csh, bash. Perl for automation, text processing and CGI. PHP, SQL, C, HTML, Make. Recently began learning Ruby and Rails.

Rich Lafferty’s Experience

Network Operations Manager

FreshBooks

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

December 2007 — Present (2 years 1 month)
Senior System Administrator

Mitel

(Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Telecommunications industry)

September 2001 — August 2007 (6 years )

Unix and Windows system administration; HA MySQL database administration and performance tuning. Built corporate anti-spam mail gateway with Postfix and other open-source tools, spearheaded Active Directory migration.
System Administrator

e-smith

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

2001 — 2003 (2 years )

Linux system administration; HA MySQL database administration and performance tuning; top-tier technical support and sales engineering; process and toolchain development.
System Administrator/Web Programmer

Concordia University

(Educational Institution; 501-1000 employees; Higher Education industry)

1998 — 2001 (3 years )

Linux and MacOS system administration; Perl and PHP web development.

Rich Lafferty’s Education

McGill University

B.A. (Hons) , Sociology , 1994 — 2001

B.Mus (incomplete) - 1994 - 1998
B.A. (First Class Honours) - 1998 - 2001

VP External - Music Undergraduate Society, 1995-1997
Councillor - Student Society of McGill University, 1995-1997
Fellow - McGill University Senate, 1995-1996

Activities and Societies:

MUSA, SSMU, QPIRG, Walksafe, Nightline, McGill Symphony