Linux and Windows Server Administration, on Contract

Most mid-market shops do not have a server problem so much as a coverage problem. One person knows how the RHEL boxes, the Windows domain controllers, and Active Directory actually fit together, and that person is on vacation, leaving, or buried under tickets. Patches slip, a GPO change breaks something on a Monday, and nobody has time to write down how any of it works.

I am a senior contractor who steps into exactly that gap. Whether you need a clean server build, a backlog of patch cycles cleared, Active Directory tidied up, or steady on-call coverage while you hire, I take it as a bounded engagement with a defined start and finish. I work remote-first from Fort Worth and cover the wider DFW area on-site when a job truly needs someone standing in front of the rack.

What done looks like

Done means servers that are built to a documented standard, patched on a predictable cadence, and backed by instructions a normal admin can follow. For a typical engagement you can expect:

• Provisioned and hardened hosts on RHEL, CentOS, Debian, or Windows Server, built to a baseline you can repeat instead of a one-off snowflake.
• A working patch cycle with a tested order of operations, maintenance windows, and a rollback path, so updates stop being a gamble.
• Active Directory and GPO that make sense — group policy cleaned up, DNS and DHCP correct, file and print services documented rather than mysterious.
• On-call runbooks that tell whoever is holding the pager what to check, what is normal, and when to escalate.
• Automation you own in Bash, PowerShell, and Python, checked into your repository so the work outlives the contract.

How I work it, and why me

I write the runbook before I touch the change. Before a patch window, a domain change, or a decommission, you get a plain-language plan that states what I am doing, how I will know it worked, and how I back it out if it does not. I validate every change against named gates — services up, replication healthy, backups confirmed, users able to log in — instead of declaring victory and walking away. I own the rollback, so if something goes sideways the recovery path is already written and tested, not improvised at two in the morning.

Everything I produce stays with you. The scripts, the runbooks, the build notes, and the lifecycle documentation all live in your repository under your control. When the engagement ends, your team is more capable than when I started, not more dependent on me.

I bring roughly four years of hands-on production experience running mixed Linux and Windows fleets, and I hold the certifications that back it up: RHCSA for Red Hat administration, the Microsoft Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate for Windows Server and Active Directory, and CompTIA Security plus for the security fundamentals that should sit under every server you run. That combination means I can move across a heterogeneous environment without needing a separate specialist for each side of the house.

What is included

• Server lifecycle work from build and hardening through decommission
• Linux administration on RHEL, CentOS, and Debian
• Windows Server and Active Directory administration, including GPO, DNS, DHCP, and file and print
• Patch cycle design and execution with tested rollback
• On-call runbooks and operational documentation
• Automation in Bash, PowerShell, and Python, delivered into your repository