Thomas Dwyer III

Summary

Senior Software Engineer/Architect. Specializing in embedded linux firmware designs, hardware device programming (ASICs, I²C, PROMs, etc) and TCP/IP networking. Skilled at training others on quality, coding style, & flexible design patterns.

Employment

EMC Corporation, Santa Clara, CA

2010 - present

Principal Software Engineer

Added cloud storage as an additional storage tier in a multi-tiered storage array. LUNs are backed by cloud storage attached to the array by iSCSI or Fibre Channel. Modified open-iscsi to support binding outbound connections to specific local IP addresses. Modified QLogic kernel driver to assign deterministic WWNs persistent across hardware upgrades/replacements.
Designed and implemented proof-of-concept facility for synchronizing CIFS ACLs & metadata to the Syncplicity cloud.
Designed and implemented a data encryption module for archiving data to cloud storage (e.g. Amazon S3). Data is encrypted before leaving the datacenter and decrypted when retrieved from the cloud.
Designed network protocol infrastructure to support VAAI as part of a large federated filesystem (FedFS) project targeting VMware datacenters. Features include protocol version negotiation, exactly-once-semantics (EOS), automatic connection management & failover, and interfaces onto which ONC-RPC can be layered.
Designed & implemented proprietary control protocol for use between pNFS metadata servers and corresponding data servers, and between server nodes participating in a FedFS cluster.
Designed distributed quota management solution to enforce user & tree quotas in a pNFS environment with minimal communication required between metadata servers and their corresponding data servers.
Configured & managed lab infrastructure including DNS, DHCP, VMware vCenter Server, ESX, VNX datastores, etc.

Sun Microsystems, Inc., Santa Clara, CA

2003 - 2009

Staff Engineer

Led a team of software engineers to design and implement embedded firmware applications for linux based service processors in multiple generations of enterprise server platforms.
Designed software to power down unnecessary hardware resources, reducing power consumption on the largest servers by almost 50% when idle.
Created mechanism for storing software properties in I²C proms, significantly reducing software incompatibility due to hardware changes.
Reviewed schematics and hardware design documents. Worked directly with ASIC team, board designers, and system engineers to ensure optimal hardware/software compatibility.
Wrote software tools to fully decode proprietary SerDes packets captured by a logic analyzer, significantly simplifying the bringup & troubleshooting process for new hardware.
Managed apache web servers & developed MySQL/PHP applications.
Collaborated with engineers at Maxim, Inc. to design an I²C voltage sensor with software-programmable interrupt thresholds and interrupt alarm capability.

Sun Microsystems, Inc., Menlo Park, CA

1996 - 2003

Member of Technical Staff

Ported VxWorks BSP to custom prototype hardware. Primary technical lead and key contributor to the design and implementation of a Java-based embedded firmware application for the service processor used in the "Sun Fire" enterprise server platform. Application requirements included power management, environmental monitoring via I²C, fault detection, fault isolation, dynamic reconfiguration.
Wrote a STREAMS kernel module and "advise" application to multiplex ttys, allowing engineers to easily share limited hardware resources during software development.
Wrote standalone and Solaris versions of flash-update software to update the firmware in the Ultra-Enterprise product family.
Managed the OS software lab (30+ Ultra-Enterprise, SPARCcenter-2000, and SPARCserver-1000 systems) including networking and NTS remote console support.
Discovered, reported, and contributed fixes for hundreds of bugs in Solaris and other products.

Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI

1990 - 1996

Senior Systems Programmer & Systems Administrator

Conducted day-to-day system administration tasks for the Information Technology department (set up printers, set up new-hire workstations, upgrade operating systems, etc.).
Designed and implemented a generic campus-wide boot process for PC-NFS; wrote a BOOTP client for PC-NFS which substantially reduced the amount of administrative overhead involved in maintaining PCs on the network.
Designed and implemented the MTU campus e-mail system including the development of sendmail configuration files, an automated campus-wide alias distribution system, and an online directory service.
Designed and maintained an Oracle database (including all necessary DBA support) used for creating/managing 10000+ user accounts across the campus.
General programming and end user consultant in FORTRAN, Pascal, assembly, VM/CMS, and various application programs.

Organizations

Your Asian Connection, Inc.

2007 - Present

System Administrator (unpaid position)

Primary system administrator for www.YourAsianConnection.com. Develop & maintain web applications using PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, AJAX, including payment processing, database management, report generation.

Education

BS Computer Science

1993

Michigan Technological University, Houghton MI

Computer Science option with Literary Expression thematic.
Extensive studies in electrical engineering including power, analog & digital signals, and circuit design.

Skills

Technologies: Linux, Solaris, power management, TCP/IP, I²C, JTAG, embedded designs
Languages: C/C++, Java, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, shell scripting (sh, bash, PHP, perl, TCL, etc.)
Applications: Apache, MySQL, Oracle, Subversion, Teamware, VMware, VirtualBox
Equipment: Familiar with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, network sniffers, etc.

Patents Awarded

6,418,442 Method and Apparatus for Providing Thread-Specific Computer System Parameters
6,687,815 Method and Apparatus for Storing Non-Volatile Configuration Information
6,907,484 Method and Apparatus for Atomically Changing Selected Bits Within a Register
8,515,904 Providing file system quota support for a file system having separated data and metadata

Additional Patent Applications Submitted

20040054765 Method and apparatus for accessing multiple system controllers within a computer system
20040054936 Method and apparatus for setting core voltage for a central processing unit