IT & Systems Administrator extraordinaire Shane has been with Veridian for 10 years. We thought it was about time you got to meet him.

Shane has the critical job of provisioning, monitoring, maintaining, and repairing the infrastructure underlying our Veridian collections. He specialises in the cloud environment, file systems, backup systems, automation, virtualization and open source solutions.

He also loves motorbikes.

You’ve worked with the Veridian team for a decade! What’s that been like?

My work history before moving to Veridian Software was anything but stable. The longest I was at any job was two years. Since I’ve been part of the Veridian team I haven’t wanted to take up other opportunities. For me it’s been interesting and compelling work with lots of input at all levels of the company. The regular cake, morning teas and lunches have been significant as well.

Describe your job in three words

Catastrophe Avoidance Engineer.

What is the most rewarding part of your job?

Long periods without emergencies. It means we’ve got things right and everything is running smoothly.

What’s changed in the world of digital storage in the last 10 years?

Everything. Keeping up with the latest developments and how they affect our Veridian deployments is a constant challenge. File systems have been of particular interest for us as the file system underlies everything. They are an integral part of our backup and disaster recovery strategies and affect how and where we can deploy Veridian. The wrong filesystem will create months of unnecessary work and expense so we have to get it right.

Tell us why a Veridian hosted digital collection is in safe hands.

Building a digital collection is a big job and it’s the sort of thing we only want to do once so all parts of a Veridian collection are either backed up or able to be rebuilt quickly. Especially important is the data sent to us by our clients. This data is checked and verified regularly and is backed up to geographically diverse, redundant facilities. The live sites use a different backup system that enables us to quickly recover them in the event of a disaster. Both systems are part of a multi-tiered backup and recovery strategy that enables us to handle everything from the smallest to the largest problems, short of the planet blowing up.

Where would we find you on your ideal Sunday afternoon?

At a racetrack hunting down the bike in front of me. That or kicking back with a book.