Projects
On this page, I will be listing the many technology projects I have been privileged to be involved with over the last 20 years or so. I have tried to include links to resources both here and on my resources page. Please feel free to contact me via email if you have any questions!
~Pat
NEW! Deploying a WIKI Server (2010)
In our effort to continue building our documentation and sharing information between my engineers and technical staff, we are implementing the first WIKI for the County. We will be using a Mac Mini running OSX Server and the built-in WIKI tools.
Some 2009/10 Project Samples:
- Virtualizing the County Data Center
- Deploying the iSCSI San
- The County ERP Project
- Hardening the Sheriff’s Office Network
- Countywide Network Backbone Upgrade
- Upgrading VOIP System
- Exchange 2003 to 2007 Migration
- NOC Remodel
Moodle Deployment
At the County, we deployed the open source learning framework “Moodle” as a way to present classes on-line. We are calling it Cochise County Online University and hope to drive a good deal more employee education in that direction over the next couple of years. Check it out [HERE]
Evergreen Thin Client/Windows Deployment
In 2001 I led a team to engineer, deploy and administer a technology deployment of approximately seven-thousand network nodes across thirty two sites in Clark County Washington. Key elements of this project involved a deployment of nearly three thousand thin client terminals using Citrix 1.8x which was migrated during the twenty-four month implementation to XPe. This project was intended to migrate the district from an aged Macintosh & Windows 98 infrastructure to a commercial Windows Xp/2000 deployment with the intent of providing ubiquitous access to technology resources for staff and students, lower cost, improve the overall user experience, and standardize support. The change effected every level of the organization and was hugely successful resulting in the deployment of more than a hundred servers in a new centralized data center.
- 70 Terminal Servers in the Racks (to the Left)
- Overall View of the Data Center – 1 Terabyte NAS (Near the Center)
- Backup Systems including DVD Archival Tower (Lower Right)
HEC Email System
In Spring of 2006, we undertook a project to move our email service from our existing ISP to our own servers at the Collaborative. After extensive research and planning, we decided to construct the email system entirely out of readily available Open Source software using POSTFIX as its base. My estimated cost savings on this project in lieu of using commercial email software was approximately $5600 ( Not including yearly licence fees.).
HEC Website/CMS
In summer of 2006 in anticipation of recovering resources from the Collaborative’s old ISP, we constructed a brand new website for HEC again using Open Source software rather than commercial software. Our estimated savings here was approximately $1000 in the first year using Joomla, Apache, and MySQL software.
One-Off Websites
While in New England I worked with several grant programs (Federal and State) which require the recipients to post some of the work they are doing on a website. In order to create a easily supportable framework and allow the grants to maintain their own content, I chose to use WordPress as sort of a mini-content management system. Here are a couple of good examples.
- Teaching American History Grant (These folks were still wrangling style ideas 2/14/07)
- SPIFFY ( Conversion from old HTML based Site)
- Center for English Language Education (CELE)
More to come!!