Expert Witness
Available as a Legal Expert Witness
With 35+ years in enterprise systems and distributed storage, I translate highly technical failures into clear, defensible findings. I help counsel understand what failed, why it failed, whether it was preventable, and how the evidence supports or challenges the claims at issue.
Expert Witness Services
Case Review & Technical Analysis
- Case merit review and early technical assessment.
- Review of logs, incident records, architecture, and operational evidence.
- Timeline reconstruction and causation analysis.
Reports, Rebuttal, and Testimony
- Expert reports and rebuttal opinions.
- Deposition preparation and testimony.
- Trial support, including explanation of complex systems for non-technical audiences.
Technical Subject Areas
- Enterprise storage failures, RAID, SAN, NAS, and distributed storage systems.
- Linux / UNIX system failures, performance disputes, and outage investigation.
- Data loss, disaster recovery, filesystem integrity, and backup-related disputes.
Representative Experience
Tintri – Senior Member of Technical Staff
Enterprise storage failures, filesystem integrity, kernel crash analysis, executive-facing root cause reports.
Harmonic – Sr. Staff Escalation Engineer
Distributed storage, disaster recovery, metadata reconstruction, RAID and performance investigations.
Isilon (EMC) – Sr. Escalations Engineer
Severity 1 NAS incidents, kernel dump analysis, interoperability, and filesystem recovery.
Earlier Roles
Hitachi Data Systems, IBM Global Services, Lucent Technologies, and other enterprise technology organizations.
Types of Matters I Can Support
Analysis of whether loss was preventable, whether recovery options were reasonable, and whether safeguards met accepted practices.
Review of SAN, NAS, RAID, distributed storage, and virtualization environments to assess failure modes, operational decisions, and root cause.
Assessment of downtime events, latency, degraded performance, resiliency gaps, and disputed infrastructure decisions.
Technical review of whether products, services, changes, or support actions aligned with reasonable enterprise standards and documented behavior.
Why Attorneys Hire Me
- 35+ years of hands-on enterprise systems and storage experience
- Real-world outage, failure, and data-loss investigations
- Ability to explain complex evidence clearly to non-technical audiences
- Independent, practical, evidence-driven opinions
- BS in Information Technology
- Isilon Certified Storage Professional (ICSP)
- Isilon Certified Support Engineer (ICSE)
- C++ Certification (2022)
- Published technical writer and OpenZFS Summit contributor
Areas of Expertise
Publications & Professional Background
- Published in ADMIN Magazine, Linux User & Developer, Maximum Linux, and ADA News.
- Contributor to the 2024 OpenZFS User & Developer Summit.
- Extensive history preparing executive-level technical reports and explaining complex failures clearly.
Prior Testimony: Available upon request as engagements develop.
Compensation: Available upon request. Retainer required for new matters.
Request Expert Review
If you are an attorney, firm, insurer, or organization evaluating a systems, storage, outage, or data-loss matter, contact me for a confidential preliminary discussion. I can quickly assess technical merit, likely causes, and where the evidence may lead.
Email: ben@datastorageguy.com
Location: Beaverton, Oregon | Available for remote matters nationwide