Ryan Starr

Meet Ryan, Junior Systems Administrator at CFMS. Ryan’s journey with CFMS began in 2025, when he joined the Engineering Computing Services team. Since then, he’s taken ownership of core IT infrastructure projects, ensuring our estate is up-to-date and ready for use.

I liked the idea of developing my DevOps skills and getting hands on with hardware. I liked that CFMS has their own on-site data centre. I love getting involved with the hardware as well as the software side and it allows me to get out from behind the desk when new hardware needs installing or inspecting.

When I first joined the team, I was working on developing our CI/CD automation pipeline to deploy virtual machines and deploy software using a single Git commit. My role has now developed into managing the entire IT estate including our system for MacBooks, patching and updating existing software and systems. I’ve also been developing our new Openstack Cluster that will be utilised alongside our new HPC system.

I have enjoyed developing and building our temporary hypervisor cluster from start to finish. This was required as we needed to prove that our backup system works and ensure that our existing backup system is able to be restored successfully. I was tasked with designing, building and testing the system on my own in order to achieve our goal.

I enjoy working with the team, everyone is always happy to communicate any issues they may have and are happy to assist others when needed. We all get along well and are trusted to take our assigned projects from concept to production.