SAWS is looking for an experienced Linux administrator to assist us in various tasks related to our Linux infrastructure.
A short description of the issues as well as some minimum requirements are provided in the attached document. It is important that candidates are experienced, as the issues will require real-world experience performing tasks outlined in the description.
We expect this project to last 4-6 weeks with 40 hours per week commitment (remote).We will be accepting resumes until Friday, July 14th and, depending on the number and quality of candidates, expect to make a selection shortly thereafter.For each candidate please provide a resume attachment and in the body of the email, please provide a short description and the information as follows: | Company Name | |
| Candidate Name | |
| Candidate Phone | |
| Candidate Email | |
| Hourly Bill Rate (to SAWS) | |
Linux Administration Challenges
1) Upgrades and patches
a. Sometimes patching doesn't address all software. Some software needs to be
patched separately from OS
b. Some software libraries need to be manually removed
c. Sometimes the recommended steps result in inconsistent updates leading to
unstable systems
2) Re-configurations
a. Building new systems and configuring file systems (lot of unknowns)
b. Validation of the systems after configuration changes is a challenge on many
occasions. Sometimes we identify issues and broken dependencies only later
with nowhere to go.
Major issues to address
Linux kernel upgrade issues – There are many CentOS machines which are appearing in report
as due for kernel upgrade. CentOS 7 is the last supported CentOS version and will be ending the
support in 2024. CentOS 8 is not supported anymore. There are several machines having
CentOS 7 & 8 as the OS and the recommendation for these machines in to move to a different
supported flavor of Linux. These servers are hosting applications such as NFS shares, Splunk
forwarders, Rapid 7 scanner, Zabbix etc. After rebuilding the servers these applications need to
be properly configured and tested.
Linux Upgrade issues - There are several machines on Debian 10 which is losing support soon.
We know the process to upgrade them to Debian 11, but this doesn't solve all the issues. There
are still references to old vulnerable libraries and software which need to be cleaned up.
Individual library upgrades - There are libraries such as BIND, Openssl, rubygems , icu, etc.
which are reporting a referencing old libraries or vulnerable software.
Resource skillset requirements
1) Over 5 years of strong experience as a Linux Administrator.
2) Knowledge and experience with various flavors of Linux mainly Oracle Linux, CentOS,
Debian and Redhat . Knowledge on VMWare virtual environment
3) Strong technical background in storage, disk management, Logical volume management
(LVM)
4) Experience with installation and configuration services like NFS, DNS , BIND, OpenSSL
and certificate authority , splunk , rubygems , icu , rapid7 etc
5) Management of user accounts, System security, change management and performance
tuning
6) Experience and proficiency with installation of patches, hardware software and
firmware updates
7) Experience in troubleshooting I/O Errors, Disk errors, package dependency issues
8) Experience with package management
9) Flexibility to work off-hours and weekends as most the maintenance activities happened
outside business hours.