Up next in our series, I had the chance to interview Larry Maloney, iXsystems’ new System Administrator and the most recent addition to our team of developers.
Larry started programming computers in 1978 and wrote professionally for small companies at the age of 15. He attended Ohio State University in the Computer Science and Engineering program. He is an early user of open source since the early days of the 80’s when the only accessible open source programs were from BBS (Bulletin Board Systems). Larry happened to stumble across a gem of a CD-ROM called Walnut Creek at the first MicroCenter in Ohio. From that day on, he was hooked and downloaded as many updates and code from ftp.cdrom.com as he could.
Larry has been involved in quite a number of projects. He was on the Stanley Robotics team that helped implement the US Post Office automated mail processing facility in Sacramento. During his time at Cincom Systems, he created one of the first web-based application servers. He was the main architect behind the SSID system for the Department of Education under the No Child Left Behind Act. This $5 million project saves the state of Ohio $330 million per year. He was also involved in the design and implementation of the first smartphone virus scanner for SecureMobileSystems (acquired by Juniper Networks for $70 million) as well as building a custom Linux for mobile Wi-Fi access bridge that was later adapted into Verizon’s MiFi.
I first met Larry at Hacker Dojo at a monthly BAFUG (Bay Area FreeBSD Users Group) meeting. Larry was one of the Dojo’s earliest members. He says the Dojo started in 2009 with 30 members, and grew to 300 members over the next two years. Larry was instrumental in setting up the fiber optic network provided by ViaNet with the servers from iXsystems. The network works so well that when a blackout occurred in a section of Mountain View, all the users at Hacker Dojo were able to stay connected online! More information: here.
Larry has many responsibilities here at iXsystems. On a regular basis, he fixes server OS configurations, helps deploy new websites, upgrades servers, and resolves internal technical issues. His most recent endeavor includes integrating OpenStack into FreeBSD with other members of the team. OpenStack is a popular, open source project that aims to provide cloud computing services running on standard hardware for any organization.
Looking into the future, Larry hopes for a more wide-spread adoption of FreeBSD from Linux admins and users, especially on Amazon AWS. He mentions that people at Hacker Dojo are starting to pick up on the benefits of FreeBSD, taking full advantage of its consistency, and legendary reliability. Running FreeBSD on Amazon, according to him, will give admins and developers much more “bang for their buck”.
Thanks Larry, for taking the time to provide this invaluable insight and feedback. Readers, keep your eyes peeled for the next Developer’s Corner!
Lisa Liang
Marketing Assistant
