Due to vacancies and other personnel issues Matt leads a three person network support staff that meets the needs of ~850 users including the Alaska State Troopers. He supports all the network users at ~70 sites with hundreds of other law enforcement agencies connecting directly to the network. Maintaining more than 80 servers running a variety of OS flavors at multiple sites, he is the lead technical resource for: network security (including Cisco ASAs and CSA VPNs, IDS response etc.), all network management and monitoring tools, Netware to Windows server migration, email migration from Netscape to Exchange/Outlook (which impacted all desktops), AD implementation including migration of all in-house applications from the legacy NT domain, coordination with Alaska Statewide network staff, LANDesk implementation, MS SQL 2000 to 2005 migration, NetApp implementation (including desktop and server storage reconfiguration, and new enterprise switches), mentoring junior staff, supporting an in-house team of ~10 application developers (including test and production platforms), managing a server virtualization project, supporting executives with Blackberry problems, handling bread and butter network printing file services and backups, performing tune-ups of all new sites, technology evaluations, and much more.

Matt is beyond rockstar - there is no ego. He supports everyone from the Troopers in the field to the Commissioner - often in very stressful situations - yet he always handles himself well, taking the time to understand the business requirements and issues at hand. Adding another layer, because we are a law enforcement agency, Matt often has to guide others through unique CJIS requirements. Finally, because this is a government job he is grossly underpaid based on his what his experience and skill could demand otherwise. Despite this, he puts in long hours because he knows better than anyone else how dependent the Alaska law enforcement community is his job being done right. I've worked with dozens of System Administrators in many settings over the years and Matt has an amazing combination of skills and dedication to his users. He deserves much more than we are able to do for him. Thanks for your consideration
Nominator: Lance Ahern IT Manager Alaska Dept. of Public Safety

Hank Arnold spends an ungodly amount of time nurturing and defending the servers for the non-profit agency Hospice Inc. I do consultant work for them and he never ceases to amaze me with his consistent attention to detail, his determined tenacity to protect patient data, and his almost pathological commitment to continuous learning. He single-handedly manages a Citrix farm, Exchange & SQL 2000 servers as well as a couple hundred clients on the Windows domain. When the primary Citrix server fell apart just days before the Christmas break, he came in to work, camped out, ordered equipment, built the replacement drives, migrated data, and set-up mirroring & failover again ....all within 72 hours.

When the Citrix server fails, an office has 93 hours to recover before the farm completely fails. Nothing like a little pressure.....When the former VP of Finance suddenly ordered twenty more laptops and wanted them rolled out 'NOW', Hank came up with a system using Norton Ghost and a series of batch files to automate rolling out an image he'd built. He built the image on a Thursday night, tested it Friday, and worked through the weekend to get the laptops built,labeled and assigned.

What amazes me most about Hank's work is his grace under pressure. For example, while trying to determine if an alarm on the VPN is a real attack or just annoying traffic, he navigates seemingly endless requests for network cables, phone extensions, laptop troubleshooting, email and domain account requests, and password resets. The agency has 40 nurses visiting patients with laptops, six remote locations, and two major office locations, all supported by two SQL 2K databases, a temperamental T1 line between the two major offices, and an aging enterprise email system. With all this to manage and support, the IT 'Department' is Hank and his manager.

When Hank isn't in the office he is always connected remotely to mind the servers and ensure backups are running. Without a reliable backup the hospice have been seriously hurt when a server that had been threatening to die finally gave up the ghost. A new server was only half the solution - getting the account data back online before the Citrix backup controller quit seeking the primary was mission critical. Hank decided to forego scheduled time-off to solve the problem. Needless to say I think Hank is a 'Rock Star' in his work ethic and knowledge.
Nominator: J. Sheehy

I'd like to nominate my friend and former co-worker Wes Craig. At one point this guy ran imap, ldap, smtp, printing, dhcp, samba, netatalk, dns, and a dozen other services for a campus of more than 140,000 users on nothing more than raw skill and chocolate-covered espresso beans. He personally built the University of Michigan's e-mail infrastructure, runs the CoSign (web single sign on) open source project, writes sendmail config files with both hands tied behind his back (though I'd bet he prefers simta - the MTA he designed himself), built the custom Linux distro the University uses internally, wrote Netatalk to allow Unix machines to act as Appleshare servers (back in the day), was responsible for the care and feeding of the OpenLDAP 1.x branch while 2.x was cutting its teeth, and wrote the interactive vi-tutorial vilearn. He's a dedicated open source stalwart and a rock solid programmer but at his roots (the roots of his long, usually braided pony tail) he's a sysadmin's sysadmin.

Most importantly for this contest I think Wes believes system administration is important. I don't mean "important" to an organization (which obviously it is) but *important* as a vocation. He nurtures and trains young sysadmins, chastises systems programmers for thinking they're "too good" for administration (whatever that means), and crucially Wes Craig wrote radmind (http://radmind.org/) which lets any talented sysadmin run an arbitrarily large number of carefully-hardened machines (linux, solaris, whatever) using only their favorite text editor and their hard fought admin skills. This guy rocks so hard you need earplugs just to work in his datacenter.
Nominator: Kevin McGowan, University of Michigan

Ryan Langseth is our IT Administrator Rock Star! He is Rock Solid! Ryan joined InvisiMax from a more structured, academic setting to a real world entrepreneurial network. Ryan took over sysadmin responsibilities from a founding partner who died of cancer and had very little guidance when starting out. The network at that time included over 135 access points and/or network devices which supported over 5,000 user computers. Ryan took responsibility for all of these devices to page him - and him alone - so he could focus on cleaning up a Nagios Paging system that monitored the wireless network and devices.

Here are some of the unique things he has done to excel in his job and exceed expectations. He completed an ARIN application,implementing a plan to change a network of over 3000 private IPs to a static IP network. He moved a complete Network Operations Center and lead the task of upgrading every server. He first located much of this system into a temporary location until finally completing the upgrade in a permanent location with a new provider. Ryan did most of this at night with very minimal customer interruptions. He moved from several bandwidth providers to the current upgraded network located on a fiber link. He laid the ground work for the next step in the network of OSPF (a network of 180 devices, and 6000 customer computers, in a network area 225 miles in length). He climbed grain elevators and water towers to assist in wireless access point and backhaul updates in climates of 30 degrees below zero to 100 degrees above zero. He scaled many a customer roof to fix issues working with 80 year old customers and system administrators of multi-million dollar companies. He educated himself in wireless equipment and frequencies. He has used his network of resources and people to keep projects moving. He made the company a priority day or night to complete what was necessary. He coordinates efforts in settin up BGP configuration for high-end customers and also helps with our billing and backup software. He has spent countless nights and weekends researching and developing the latest Linux distribution for our access points.

s Ryan isn't one to hide in the back room and just develop things. He also spends his time in front of customers understanding their problems and figuring out ways to help them. Along with amount of load he has on his shoulders he also learned how to play golf over the summer, improving his game quite a bit in three months. He works at things until he figures it out. So for these reasons and many more we would like to nominate Ryan Langseth for IT Administrator of the Year. Ryan is a Rock Star!
Nominator: Phil Hebert, InvisiMax

One word: Iraq. That's where our SysAdmin spends months each year (heading over there again on October 20 for 2 months) away from his wife coworkers and safety of his job in Virginia. Jason is one of the most versatile and knowledge administrators I've had the pleasure to work with. Throw anything at him from obscure custom Linux deployments to racks full of Xserves and Xraids and he can get everything humming smoothly. In Iraq he supports the work of our company EchoStorm whose video management software is vastly improving the usefulness of UAVs in surveillance keeping more warfighters out of harms way even if it means putting his own life on the line. Jason is a valuable asset to both our company and the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. SysAdmin of the Year seems almost an understatement!
Nominator: Misha Sakellaropoulo, EchoStorm

As the Lead Analyst/IT Director for the NASA IV&V contract in WV I am nominating Brad Myers for the 2007 Sysadmin of the year. Brad is a very deserving individual because of several reasons. First and foremost his technical skills are unsurpassed. There has never been a problem that Brad is not able to figure out. From Networks (Cisco Alcatel Nortel 3com etc) to SUN (Solaris Linux (all variants) HPUX AIX etc to Windows (Server Exchange Group policy SUS wSUS) to Security (IPS systems Mcafee Symantec) foundstone IS Scanner tripwire TCP wrappers Firewalls Checkpoint VPN Host integrity Symantec host integrity agent) to Database help (Oracle SQL server 2000 2005). Brad is the Operations lead for all Servers (UNIX and windows) Desktops (Windows XP) Databases Security systems (physical access control (HSPD-12 card access and logical (firewall IPS vulnerability scanners VPN 3060 concentrator.)

In todays complicated IT world there are very few engineers/sysadmin that can handle the depth and breath of all these services and understand them all. Brad does. he doesn't just look at a book and does point and click he conceptually understands the products and scripts he writes before he deploys them to an operational environment. This is a rare quality in which many sysadmins lack. Most can do a task told of them but few can look at the inner workings understand the business requirement and translate that into a technical solution. Brad has worked his way up from a Help Desk technician to a UNiX administrator to the Lead Operations specialist underneath me. He is good with people and possess a good attitude even when the going gets tough. He would be a perfect winner for the Sysadmin of the year because of all the qualities that I have mentioned above and the fact that I have never seen a more well rounded sysadmin yet.
Nominator: Rick Cavanaugh, ADNET Systems

Rejected from the 13th layer of hell and trained with the craziest techniques that would make a black hat blush our systems administrator knows how to rock it! I have never met anyone who is as dedicated to his work as this guy. As a developer this guy makes my life easier be ensuring our servers are working BACKED UP kept up to date and hardened. This guy is always the first one in and the last one to go home. Most system administrators jobs stop when they go home... no not this guy! On his vacation not only did he give everyone in the company HIS cell number to call if something went down he also gave HIS GIRLFRIENDS cell number. If that isn't dedication then I don't know what is. We didn't have to call it but still that is beside the point. He has a REVERSE BOFH attitude and is willing to help users and explain what happens when they click on that email he told them not to but they did anyway and cause a virus outbreak in email or instant messenger. If this guy doesn't qualify for a systems administrator of the year I don't know what it would take.
Nominator: Andrew, Digital Ocean Marketing

Jim Schwonek has done for System Administration at the City of St. Petersburg what Jim Morrison did for rock. In just 6 short months Jim has completed 2 full disaster recovery tests both in record time. He changed our system backups from 100Mb --> 1Gb --> 4Gb fiber. He has implemented system monitoring helped troubleshoot application problems down to the process level and even found some free time to make great improvements in system security... much to the shock of our Security Officer. In his "down time" Jim writes scripts to improve monitoring provide more detail and automate alerting. He's on fire! Even more impressive in accomplishing all of this Jim has offended NO ONE complimented EVERY ONE and always has a sense of humor... the paparazzi just can't get enough of this guy! He is truly a rock star around here!
Nominator: Judy Owen, City of St. Petersburg

Jonathan deserves this nomination because he is an educated American missionary system administrator serving in Botswana Africa who has worked tirelessly for an entire two years under extreme circumstances such as consistent power outages limited or no access to new technology and everything that comes along with being in a third world country. For a ministry with various departments he has been the only person representing the IT field. He has done this all with a servant's heart and without complaint never asking for compensation or recognition for the hours put in even when the job required sacrifice of his evenings and weekends which were intended for his rest. We could never ask for a more willing and service minded person to be in our IT department.

His dedication to keeping this mission and its staff connected to each other and to the world is unwavering. All of his service is for the sake of bringing much needed help and aid to the country of Botswana a country devastated by the pandemic of HIV/AIDS. Without his incredible service Love Botswana Outreach Mission would not be nearly as effective in bringing the aid and comfort to this country in need. Jonathan is truly a selfless "SysAdmin" (in your geek terms hehe) and we would love to see him recognized by those in his field as one of the best. Thank you for considering him for this recognition. We hope that you will be able to thank him as much as we want to. Layne
Nominator: Layne Prescott

We call him Yoda for a reaon (and no he's not 200 yrs old!) Randy is not only a SysAdmin - he's our hands-on hands-down great CTO. We have 30 different servers in at least 25 different physical environments around the country. Almost all run Lotus Domino in a Windows environment - double the trouble when things go wrong. He can visually picture the majority of the servers and switches in his mind and has memorized the firewall configuration for every single one.

When it comes to troubleshooting his 20+ years of experience in multiple OS environments swing into full gear. He's been known to outsmart the tech folks at MicroSoft in troubleshooting things like corrupt registry entries on a Win2K machine. He doesn't let a problem go - even if it appears hopeless he pushes the envelope until a solution is found. New technology? He's on it as soon as it comes out - testing tweaking fixing and generally smoothing it out before it's deployed to our end-users. Did I mention he's a glutton for punishment? Hop online some night at midnight and you are liable to see him tweaking servers configuring new equipment possibly even writing some programming in one of at least 3 languages. Add to this that he can - if need be - run our entire help desk by himself and you have an exceptional SysAdmin.
Nominator: Lynn, CresaPartners

This is my opinion and observation - not official NCSA policy (but it should be). Karen was the lead SysAdmin for Tungsten the former lead super-computer cluster at NCSA at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign IL campus. Even now that she has moved onto a new machine it continues to be the most popular cluster in use at the super-computing lab. It is so popular due to it's stability and ability to run a wide variety of code within it's happy frame. Now Karen is the lead SysAdmin for Lincoln NCSAs newest flagship. It has been ranked 8th most powerful supercomputing cluster in the world. Again it is becoming very popular and again it is due not only for its speed but also its stability and flexibility.

It must be noted that Karen is not the ONLY SysAdmin on these projects. Nothing this large and important is left to one person. Of course working on a team can be difficult too! SysAdmins are not known for their social skills or humility - and when something has to get done and done quickly sometimes you need someone who will charge on in there. Karen manages to keep everything humming from the software stack to the network to the hardware - and keep the 'clients' happy too! Karen is your rockstar!
Nominator: Euan Fernsler

This guy is the sysadmin of my company since 1998. Me All employees and client call him Dieu (it's GOD in french) because it's the guy that's solve any problem you can ask him and he make miracle. We live in a small town of 65000 people and some of the people of the town call him GOD after he appear in the journal and are presented with is nickname few years ago when he decide to offer free wifi internet in all park of the town because he decide to get out from is cubicule. He just start a new company that offer cheap wireless internet in rural area where is come from where no high speed is available. He was a volunteer In west africa last year for 6 month to install wifi internet access in cameroon for school for a canadian NGO call Netcorps and VSO (Volunteer Service Overseas from UK) there and train the people to expand the network all across cameroon. We are a small company and we have not a lot of money to paid them at it's real value but he are ever loyal and honest. Sorry for my bad english but i think this guy merit the title
Nominator: Richard Emond, EM Communication

Bradley was the very first sysadmin at YouTube and single-handedly built the YouTube production systems from zero to handling over a hundred million views a day. He did everything from hardware to installs fixing disks automation monitoring capacity planning to clever things done week after week to keep the site growing ahead user demand. Bradley also made the internal office systems go while he was at it. Running the servers that power a website is usually hard work but running the servers that power a website that went from obscurity to top-10 in less than a year is a phenomenal achievement that couldn't have been accomplished with anything less than the magic combination of hard core skills creativity dedication brilliance and an uncanny ability to forgo sleep. The fact that most of the systems and processes that Bradley originally set up are still in use is testament to his getting it right the first time through. Like any great sysadmin Bradley also plays a mean guitar so he can rock on with the best of them.
Nominator: Joe Gross, YouTube

Although he didn't graduate from college for 6 months after he got the job Michael administers a 2000-processor IBM BlueGene/L supercomputer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Sure there's a storage guy and a networking guy and a bunch of graduate students but when it comes down to the wire it's Michael at the console keeping the thing running and the users at bay. This is the guy that the computer scientists go to every time they have a UNIX question. He's surrounded by PhDs but he's the one telling them the way it is. He keeps his systems squeaky clean but is always friendly and helpful. Not only that but he is a font of useless yet interesting facts provides ample lunchtime conversation on a variety of topics and has limitless weightlifting and healthy eating advice. He also vaguely looks like the rock star admin on your site but with less hair and tacky shoes.
Nominator: Matthew Woitaszek, National Center for Atmospheric Research