James Wenke: Improving disaster recovery, virtually

Name: James Wenke

Age: 45

Organization: Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Keyport

Title: Supervisory IT Specialist

Nominated for: Designing and developing a virtual server environment that made it possible for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center to eliminate more than 300 servers, saving more than $200,000 a year. The system also has improved reliability by providing failover capacity and increased survivability, and it established the foundation for disaster recovery (DR) efforts. Now he is sharing his insights with other warfare centers.

First IT mentor: Gordon Wood, a former IT department head here, taught me to push the envelope and think outside the box.

Latest accomplishment on the job: Remote DR site using server virtualization and storage-area network extension via FCIP.

Career highlight: I get paid to work IT. Every day is a highlight.

Favorite job-related bookmark: Google.

Favorite app: Flight Controller for the iPad. Very addictive.

Dream non-IT related job: Commercial airline pilot.

Read the next Rising Star profile or view the full list of winners.