Dan Skwire is a veteran in mission-critical computer system
problem resolution, problem prevention, and system recovery.
Hired originally into the IBM z/OS (formerly MVS) Design Project
office (software recovery design group), he joined testing and co-authored a fault-injection tool used very successfully to
test system hardware and software Recovery, Availability and Serviceability features. MVS was designed to recover from
software and hardware faults on their first occurrence, all the while collecting data dynamically to determine the
problem's cause on that first occurrence. Second fault tools were enhanced, modified and added. Dan won an Award for special
testing he anticipated, planned and used to significantly improve a second fault analysis tool. He participated, led and improved
testing of the system, related recovery and reconfiguration features and tools and other MVS RAS features. He started
a long career in documenting problem resolution ideas with early work on the first MVS Diagnostic Techniques manual, and participated
and actively contributed often to the IBM Development labs continuous improvement projects.
Dan then joined customer field Systems Engineering as
an IBM Large Systems Specialist and IBM Availabiilty Management specialist, where he supported very large customer environments,
and initiated local special availability studies at customer sites. Dan worked on urgent system problems, and helped improve
local customer computer system reliability and availability.As a result of his Availability studies, his customers improved
their system availability; he also assisted customer executives meet their management-directed objectives.
Customers implemented Dan's recommendations which included process
and product usage advice (no additional costs), and additional products and services. Dan enjoyed these consulting engagements
and so did his customers.
Dan became a Senior Systems Programmer/System Administrator at one
of his customer's sites, and was continually involved in problem management techniques and processes, and vendor problem
management relationships, then on HP and SUN unix platforms, as well as mainframes running MVS.
Dan was hired as the Encore Computer Corp Mainframe internals problem
resolution specialist for their World-Wide Support Customer Services group. Encore had an innovative multiplatform: mainframe
and open systems storage control (Encore/SP large storage array, to become the SUN A7000). Once Encore was acquired by SUN
Microsystems, Dan further worked in storage array product escalation, product and process improvement. Dan's experiences in
storage support were very valuable: data loss, or extended-duration unavailability, were very real possibilities and
required very timely and accurate problem analysis and resolution, and in a sense, were even far more urgent than server problems.
Dan has had additional recent mainframe field support experiences,
and has worked and improved problem resolution in Linux environments, as well as Windows enviornment crash dump analysis.
No matter what computer platform (Operating System/server) you use,
Dan can help you improve your first fault problem resolution success.
Dan has a passion for seeing that the miracle of problem resolution
on first occurrence can occur, and it does occur, when sufficient planning is performed. He can help you reach this goal.
He will be delighted to work with you on the improvements you choose.
