John Maurer
Operations Technician II
National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)
Associate Scientist II, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental
Sciences (CIRES)
Professional Research Assistant, University of Colorado at Boulder (CU)
Position Held
The Operations Technician II position is responsible for operating data systems at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), assisting in administration of NSIDC's robotic archive systems as well, as for developing and documenting procedures for the entire operations team. This includes operations and archive administration for the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Core System (ECS) as well as NSIDC's Version 0 (V0) systems. The ECS supports data from the Terra, Aqua, and ICESat NASA missions. The V0 system supports heritage and NOAA/NASA Pathfinder datasets. Specific responsibilities are broad and variable.
Duties
- Authors, edits, updates and implements system documentation and operations procedures as required.
- Analyzes operations systems with the intent of streamlining operations, develops operations processes, assesses operations tools needs; designs, implements, and documents tools as necessary as well as training other operators in their use.
- Assists in the planning, installation, and test of software upgrades to robotic archive systems.
- Collaborates in the implementation of media recovery, testing, and refresh plans.
- Trains other operations staff in system operations and archive administration.
- Participates in checkout, testing and troubleshooting of the ECS.
- Performs tasks related to ingest/distribution of polar-orbiting satellite data, station data, and rescued datasets.
- Ensures accuracy and quality of science data by carefully monitoring data production and transfer processes.
- Performs migration of scientific data between mass storage systems.
- Participates, as required, on NSIDC product teams.
Products Supported
- Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E)
- Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR)
- Equal Area Scalable Earth-Grid (EASE-Grid)
- Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS)
- Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)
- NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Core System (ECS)
- NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Data Gathering and Reporting System (EDGRS)
- RADARSAT-1 Antarctic Mapping Project (RAMP)
- Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR)
- Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I)
Technologies Employed
- Perl, SQL, Unix, SSH, RCS
- NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Core System (ECS)
- Advanced Digital Information Corporation (ADIC) AMASS mass storage software
- StorageTek robotic tape libraries
- Rimage Corp. CD-ROM producers
- Digital tape storage: 4-mm, 8-mm, DLT, StorageTek 9940
- Word, Excel, PowerPoint
Career Milestones
- Created and implemented a backup strategy for NSIDC’s StorageTek Timberwolf robotic tape library. Wrote software using Perl and Advanced Digital Information Corporation (ADIC) AMASS mass storage commands to automate backup of over 10 TB of data stored on StorageTek 9940 tape cartridges. The software verified the integrity of data copies using 32-bit cyclic redundancy checksums (CRCs) and archived these checksums for future reference. Backups were stored in a non-proprietary format onto DLT tapes for offsite storage. Software was also written to allow an operator to easily retreive data off of these backup tapes when necessary.
- Wrote and documented over 60 Perl programs to help automate, streamline, and monitor various Operations processes related to ingest, processing, archive, and/or distribution of data products at NSIDC to help improve the efficiency and speed with which tasks could be completed and problems could be remedied. Automation also allowed for many processes to be run during off-business hours, thereby increasing productivity. Practiced configuration control using the Unix Revision Control System (RCS). Made applications user-friendly through clear documentation, crontabs, simple command-line utilities with help messages, log files, e-mail notifications and warnings, etc.
- Managed NSIDC's StorageTek Timberwolf robotic tape library, including daily monitoring and troubleshooting, media refresh and recovery, and coordinating support from an external vendor for occasional hardware and/or software failures.
- Created software using Perl and AMASS to calculate archive statitics for primary datasets contained on NSIDC’s StorageTek Timberwolf robotic tape library. Generated online graphs based on the output of this software, which document the number of files and total volume of data categorized by data set, month, and year for the entire lifetime of the tape library.
- Have served on numerous NSIDC hiring committees and provided many hours of training to new Operations hirees.
- Wrote hundreds of pages of online documentation clearly outlining various Operations procedures related to ingest, processing, archive, and/or distribution of data products where little to no documentation existed before. Also provided Perl programming standards and documentation for the Operations group.
- Kept the AVHRR Level 1B data set current via daily ingest, processing, and archival of data from the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Data Center (EDC), NOAA Satellite Active Archive (SAA), and Scripps Institution of Oceanography Arctic and Antarctic Research Center (AARC). Archived over 2 TB of this dataset and automated daily upkeep where possible.
- Managed production of DMSP SSM/I Pathfinder Daily EASE-Grid Brightness Temperature data onto CD-ROM, including hardware and software maintenance and troubleshooting, ordering CD-ROM covers from an external vendor, and overseeing activity of two other Operations Technicians. Made the necessary software ammendments for incorporation of Nimbus-7 SMMR Pathfinder Daily EASE-Grid Brightness Temperature data into CD production. Responsible for the production of over 9,400 CD-ROMs.
- Manually filled over 50 distribution requests via ftp or media (CD-ROM, DVD, 8-mm digital tape) on behalf of NSIDC users for a total of more than 70 GB of data.
Résumé
John Maurer <>