Am I an architect?

I had lunch with friends today. I mentioned was my enjoyment of system administration tasks, and my difficulties in listing them on my resume. For example, I managed a small virtualization environment (ten hosts and twenty virtual machines). As virtual machines grew I moved them from one host to another, keeping certain virtual machines on separate hosts for performance or recovery reasons. Virtual machines grew due to growth in the source code size (they built the system and updated their copy of source code daily), compiler updates, Microsoft security updates, and new general-release software like the .NET 3.5 framework.

Moving the virtual machines was a lot like playing 'Tetris' - I could see the open slots, and I could tell when virtual machines were outgrowing their hosts. (I had constructed early-warning systems.) But listing "played Tetris with virtual machines" is not really feasible on a resume, nor is explaining the details.

My friend Larry suggested I use the phrase "managed virtualization environment" which makes sense.

He also suggested that I list the phrase "architect for virtualization environment", since I was the architect for that environment. It was a non-trivial environment and I did pull it together.

It is clear that I had three different roles: developer, system administrator, and architect. Here's what I did for each:

- Developer: I wrote and tested code. Some of this was on the large (2,000,000 LOC) Worldship system but most of it was utilities in the Unix style: small and connectable, useful in shell scripts or DOS batch files.

- System administrator: I installed Windows and Linux, monitored and estimated disk space on servers, managed VMware, installed network equipment, configured Windows and Linux for network access, audited server/directory access, granted and revoked rights for PVCS Version Manager access

- Architect: I designed and implemented the VMware environment. I designed and implemented the job control system which let me run jobs overnight and coordinate dependent jobs across multiple PCs.

The notion of architect is one that I had not thought of. But it makes sense.

It's good to have friends.