DD

Systems Engineer · Syracuse University

Darryl Davis

I keep servers, networks and cloud environments running, and I build the tooling that keeps me from getting paged at 2 a.m. Fifteen-plus years across energy, healthcare, legal and small business.

By day I'm a systems engineer at Syracuse University. I also run ServerGuys, a managed IT company for small businesses.

Years in IT
15+
Largest estate
100 physical servers, 300 VMs, 130 cloud servers
Machines deployed
5,000+

Experience

  1. May 2026 – Present

    Systems Engineer

    Syracuse University

  2. Present

    Founder & Owner

    ServerGuys, Houston, TX

    Managed IT, cybersecurity, cloud and support for small businesses. I built and run the company's infrastructure and internal systems, and design and ship websites and web apps for clients. Some of that work is listed under Projects.

  3. Dec 2022 – Feb 2026

    Senior System Administrator

    Lexitas

    Ran a mixed estate of 100 Dell physical servers, 300 virtual machines, 80 Azure servers and 50 AWS servers. Patched Linux and ESXi hosts and kept Dell firmware current. Helped stand up a data center in Las Vegas: a vCenter cluster on an iSCSI SAN, plus new database servers. Maintained the Azure VDI and Azure Virtual Desktop environment, and deployed servers to remote offices across the United States.

  4. Sep 2021 – Nov 2022

    Cybersecurity Systems Engineer

    Red Trident

    Built and secured client Azure environments: VPNs, VMs, Azure AD accounts, MFA, compliance reporting and just-in-time access. Provisioned servers and network gear with Ansible, and managed ESXi hosts, VPN tunnels and FortiGate firewalls for clients. Developed Cyber-ECP, an application that lets users connect securely to OT devices at remote sites across the US.

  5. Nov 2017 – Sep 2021

    IS System Administrator, NOC

    Ochsner Health

    Owned network monitoring for a large health system: upgraded and maintained SolarWinds NPM, NCM and SAM, built real-time network maps and dashboards, and wrote alerts that restart services on their own to cut down on call-outs. Wrote the NOC's hurricane response plan and set up SolarWinds outage maps for major incidents. Sat on the Change Advisory Board, managed VPNs on Palo Alto and Cisco ASA, and troubleshot Cisco ISE.

  6. Jan 2015 – Nov 2017

    IS Support Analyst

    mumms Software

    Automated away late-night call-outs with process watch daemons that flag stuck jobs. Upgraded the network backbone from 1 Gb to 10 Gb on Cisco gear. Ran Windows Server backups, patching, Active Directory and Jira Server. Monitored Veeam backups of ESXi, replaced legacy systems with Docker containers, moved physical servers to VMs, and built an IPsec VPN from Google Compute Engine to the main office on pfSense.

  7. Nov 2009 – Jan 2015

    DCS IT System Administrator

    Marathon Petroleum Company

    Managed Windows servers across two data centers, with compliance reporting, Backup Exec and tape libraries. Deployed ESXi, moved critical servers from physical to virtual, and patched more than 200 Windows servers. Maintained Symantec Endpoint Protection, upgraded Solaris and Windows systems, monitored VPNs and deployed Check Point firewalls.

  8. Feb 2009 – Nov 2009

    Deployment Technician

    U.S. Department of Energy

    Led the hardware deployment team that replaced more than 5,000 machines. Wrote Tech123 (PHP, MySQL, Apache) for asset tracking, user data backup and restore, and remote software installs.

ServerGuys projects

Sites and systems I've built through ServerGuys. Client sites link to the live site.

Client sites and apps

Web app

We the People of the United States

A civic and political social network with live Town Halls.

wtpotus.com Website

NETCORE, Inc.

Company site for a managed IT, consulting and AI services firm with offices around the globe.

netcoreinc.com Website

Netcore Industrial Solutions

Catalog site for an industrial and MRO supplier serving oil and gas.

netcoreindustrial.com Website

Dr. Tiffany Parker

Site for a Houston publicist and event producer, covering her PR firm, events and network.

drtiffanyparker.com Booking site

PTO Mobile Experience

Party bus rentals in Houston, with package pricing and booking.

ptomobile.com Booking site

PTO Mobile Hookah

Mobile hookah service booked to parties and venues across the Houston metro.

ptohookahexpress.com Website

Boots & Suits

Site and booking page for a four-piece early Beatles tribute band.

thebootsandsuits.com Hosting

Respawn Games

Game server hosting out of Houston. A ServerGuys company.

respawn.games Website

ServerGuys

The company site for ServerGuys managed IT.

serverguys.us

Internal systems

Support

Service desk

The helpdesk and automation behind ServerGuys support, from first email to final invoice.

Security

Identity and access

Single sign-on and access control across the company's internal tools.

Operations

Asset and configuration management

One inventory for every server and device, tied into automated configuration.

Web app

Property Gate

A property management portal for work orders and contractors.

Infrastructure

Private cloud

Self-hosted, virtualized infrastructure with scheduled backups.

Skills

Infrastructure

VMware ESXi & vCenter, Proxmox, Linux, Windows Server, macOS, Active Directory, Docker, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes

Cloud

Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop, AWS, GCP, Cloudflare

Network & security

Cisco, Palo Alto, FortiGate, Check Point, pfSense, VPN and IPsec, MFA, OAuth2, SolarWinds

Automation

Ansible, Terraform, Puppet, Chef, SaltStack, Jenkins, n8n, Git

Code & data

Python, PHP, Node.js, TypeScript, React, Next.js, Go, Java, C#, Ruby, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ

Web & tools

Nginx, Apache, IIS, Swagger, Jira

Education

  • South Central Louisiana Technical College, Petrochemical Process Technology, 2013 – 2015
  • Hahnville High School, High School Diploma, 2004 – 2008

Contact

The fastest way to reach me is email: ddavis@serverguys.us. I'm also on LinkedIn.