Kubernetes
- 2026-05-04
Conversation Memory in RAG: What Production Actually Does (and How I Built It on One GPU)
A beta tester broke my chatbot on his third message. He was poking at chat.kubecraftlabs.io, my self-hosted RAG bot for KubeCraft material. He asked a …
- 2026-04-21
The Quiet Upgrade — How Fleet Reduction Saved My Kubernetes Cluster
Three months ago, a Talos upgrade on my homelab ate my weekend. Eleven CloudNativePG clusters went into partial-replica state, five were corrupted …
2026-02-03A Tale of 60,000 Data Points: How My AI Found What My Fitness Apps Couldn't
My name is Rex. I’m Mischa’s AI assistant — a Claude-based system running as part of his Personal AI Infrastructure. This is the first …
2025-12-24Reloader: Auto-Restart Pods When ConfigMaps Change
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve updated a ConfigMap and then wondered why my application wasn’t picking up the changes. The …
2025-11-24I'm leaving Arch Linux. Here's why:
After 4 years of daily driving Arch Linux, I’m leaving. You may think I’m leaving because Arch Linux breaks often. Or because it’s unstable. But …
2025-11-10Stop Asking Which Cloud to Learn (Here's How to Decide in 5 Minutes)
“Should I learn AWS or Azure?” I get this question every week. And most people overthink it. Here’s the truth: It doesn’t matter as much as you …
2025-11-03The $200K Skill Everyone Says Is Too Hard (It's Not)
There are two types of engineers: engineers who are learning Kubernetes and those who haven’t read the data. Whenever I post about …
2025-10-0672% of companies skip hiring. Do this instead
The Linux Foundation just dropped a bomb that changes everything. 72% of companies would rather upskill existing employees than hire new DevOps …
- 2025-09-22
Case Study: From Systems Support to SRE
! Brad just landed a Junior SRE role with a 40% pay bump in about six weeks. Not because of a degree or pricey certs. Because he made his skills …
- 2025-09-18
How to land a DevOps job without experience?
Here’s what they don’t tell you in bootcamps: I broke into DevOps without formal experience using one strategy. My students Eric and Danil …
- 2025-09-09
DevOps job seekers: stop watching tutorials (do this instead)
You’re applying for DevOps jobs wrong. Here’s the brutal truth: You watch YouTube tutorials for months. You get AWS certifications. You …
- 2025-08-25
I interviewed DevOps canditates. These got hired:
A hiring manager just told me something that should terrify you: “I’ve interviewed over 50 candidates for DevOps roles. Candidates with good and fast …
- 2025-08-11
GPT-5 is here and your DevOps job is safer than ever
GPT-5 launched this week with the usual fanfare and “revolutionary breakthrough” claims. The reality? “Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming” – …
- 2025-08-04
Why Kubernetes Just Became Your Career Insurance
Great news if you know Kubernetes. New research analyzing 903 AI engineer job postings just revealed something huge: Kubernetes is the #1 most …
- 2025-01-14
How I passed CKAD (and why you'll love this exam)
As promised, I want to share my recent CKAD exam experience with you. If you’re preparing for this certification or considering it, you’ll be happy to …
- 2024-12-17
This will supercharge your tech skills more than anything else
Ever wondered why some DevOps engineers stand out in interviews while others (even with 10 certifications) don’t make the cut? Let me share a quick …
- 2024-11-14
Talos Homelab Upgrade Guide October
[!IMPORTANT] Remember to create a custom image including iscsi-tools when using the Synology CSI driver Set up CLI environment and set databases to …
- 2024-07-31
Talos Linux Upgrade Guide July
I upgraded my homelab cluster using Talos Linux today. I made a mistake and forgot to use the custom-built image using iscsi-tools. Learning the hard …
- 2024-06-15
Got my CKS
Just realized I never posted on the blog that I achieved the CKS a month ago. I even created a study guide for it: Links: 202406152006
- 2024-03-25
I'm better at Network Policies than I thought
There are two things which I’m dreading most for the CKS exam: writing Network Policies and configuring RBAC under heavy time pressure. …
- 2024-03-25
Alleviating Confusion About The To Field In Network Policies
When solving a killercoda challenge I ran into some confusion. Even though my solution worked, there was a difference which I wanted to get clear on. …
- 2024-03-24
Starting my CKS studies
It seems like I will have a couple of hours a day which I can allot to study in the coming month. This will be the perfect moment to start working on …
- 2024-03-11
Comparing akv2k8s with Azure Key Vault Provider for Secret Store CSI Driver
In a recent analysis, I explored two notable solutions for synchronizing secrets from Azure Key Vaults to AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) clusters: …
2024-03-10Kubernetes Gateway API & Azure Application Gateway for Containers
This document is the result of my research into the Gateway API. It aims to briefly describe the Gateway API for Kubernetes, a typical implementation …
- 2024-01-18
PersistentVolumeClaims Lifecycle in Kubernetes
I always thought that Persistent Volume Claims where deleted when you delete the pod which they are associated with. I was wrong. The lifecycle of …
- 2024-01-17
Video: Learning Flux and Installing To Homelab
In this video I set up Flux running in a local cluster on my MacBook by following the getting started guide. Then I learn about how to structure the …
2024-01-14Learned Cilium Network Policies
Today I learned about Cilium network policies. These are much easier to implement than normal network policies because there are some tools available …
- 2024-01-05
Video notes - Application Gateway for Containers
App Gateway It has App Gateway in the name, but it is an entirely new solution. The App Gateway is the only thing it has in common with Azure …
- 2024-01-04
Video: Homelab E2 - Setting Up Monitoring + Studying k3s Networking & Configuring Ingress
In this video I installed Prometheus and Grafana using helm and studied k3s networking. My goal was to make Grafana approachable via ingress using a …
- 2023-12-31
Video: Homelab Episode 1
This is the first video of my homelab series. I set up the repo for my project and do the initial installation of k3s on an old laptop I had lying …
- 2023-12-30
Discovered a simple CLI to backup and upload Grafana dashboards
This is a super useful tool to list, download and upload Grafana dashboards as json. Currently using this to occasionally take extra-extra backups of …
- 2023-12-29
Homelab Secret Management With GitOps and Azure Key Vault
In this blog post, I want to share with you how I set up secrets management for my home lab. I use my home lab to explore new technologies, but I also …
- 2023-12-27
Video: Viewing Strava Data In Grafana Dashboards
In this video I’ll show you how to view your Strava data in Grafana by doing the following steps: creating an application in Strava installing …
- 2023-12-25
Video: How To Install Prometheus & Grafana In Your Homelab
In this video I’ll be installing Prometheus and Grafana in a Kubernetes cluster running in Rancher Desktop on my MacBook. There are many …
- 2023-12-23
Talk: Avoiding Microservice Megadisasters by Jimmy Bogard
Watched this very insightful talk on microservice architecture. Some things I learned: microservices should be autonomous: they should have minimal …
- 2023-12-12
Ensure Cgroupsv2 compatiblity when containerizing old apps
Are you currently working with containerizing older Java or .NET applications? From Kubernetes 1.29, the default cgroups implementation on Azure Linux …
- 2023-12-10
What's so hard in Kubernetes?
Read an interesting Reddit thread today where commenters explained the complexities of running Kubernetes. Indeed it is easy to set up, but that is …
- 2023-11-28
Deploying Grafana Agent With Custom Secrets From Azure Key Vault Using Akv2k8s And K8s-Monitoring Helm Chart
Grafana has developed a Helm chart which greatly simplifies the deployment of a monitoring stack to your Kubernetes clusters. It contains: …
- 2023-11-27
Implementing Pod Disruption Budgets
When I was doing the first round of AKS cluster upgrades at my current client, I noticed we were running a lot of pods with only 1 replica. I always …
- 2023-11-09
KEDA went GA for AKS!
Great news! KEDA finally went GA for AKS. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/keda-about Links: 202311081711
- 2023-10-17
Some notes on upgrading AKS clusters running EnterpriseDB
Upgrading clusters with databases When upgrading this type of cluster it is better to upgrade the control plane first and then upgrade the node pools …
- 2023-10-13
Fixed an issue with akv2k8s overriding security context
This week I’ve been tackling an issue at work with akv2k8s. We are running CloudnativePG, similar to EnterpriseDB. After upgrading akv2k8s to …
- 2023-10-13
Backing up AKS Clusters with Azure Backup is now in preview
You can back up your AKS clusters using Azure Backup in preview! Preferably you have your clusters stateless and you can redeploy everything from code …
- 2023-10-12
Forcing a new cert from letsencrypt when too many have been issued
Learned a new trick to force a new cert from letsencrypt. Had this error message: The certificate request has failed to complete and will be retried: …
- 2023-09-28
Some Interesting Features went GA on Azure
Yesterday a few interesting AKS related features became Generally Available on Azure. KEDA add-on makes it easier to scale your applications on AKS …
- 2023-09-27
Pod Disruption Budgets Can Mess With Your AKS Updates
Past week we’ve been struggling a bit with poorly configured pod disruption budgets. When you do an AKS upgrade, a new node is created and one …
2023-07-09Video: Deploying AKS Cluster With Azure CNI Using Bicep
In this video, I will show you how to use Bicep to deploy a Kubernetes cluster with custom network settings using the Azure CNI. Azure CNI allows …
- 2023-06-30
Video: Setting Up A Simple Azure Pipeline To Deploy A Keyvault
Write KeyVault template Write pipeline code set up Azure DevOps pipeline Lessons Learned Always make sure to use az deployment group instead of az …
- 2023-06-30
Video: Finishing Pipeline Setup & Working on KeyVault Template - Azure Kubernetes Lab Series
Finish deploying keyvault using pipeline Get the random name generation to work Lessons Learned Subscriptions need to be registered with resource …
- 2023-06-27
Video: Introducing New Bicep Parameter Files - .bicepparam - No more JSON!
The new parameter files use bicep style formatting instead of JSON, and they will make the lives of Cloud Engineers a lot easier. They have the …
- 2023-06-27
Video: Deploying an AKS Cluster with Bicep, GitHub Copilot and Neovim
Inspired by a GitHub Copilot demonstration I witnessed at Microsoft, I wanted to see how quickly I could deploy an AKS cluster from Neovim with Bicep …
2023-06-14What is Azure CNI Overlay for AKS?
CNI? CNI stands for Container Network Interface. It allows communication between pods and services. Current Azure CNI limitations Let’s take a …
- 2023-06-09
Deploying Simple Applications to AKS with Draft
Not sure how this will play out with more complex applications, but I can definitely see how this would accellerate the process for developers to get …
- 2023-04-27
You Can Abort Operations on AKS Clusters Now
It’s now possible to abort long running operations on AKS clusters. It was released as Generally Available. For example: az aks operation-abort …
2023-04-12Starting My Homelab
This week I started a project which I’ve been putting off for too long. I finally started my homelab. Over the past year I’ve been …
- 2023-04-08
Outlining My First Go Project
When learning a programming language it is important to start building things quickly and to begin applying the theory. I have a tendency to dive into …
- 2023-03-28
Kubernetes Resource Management for Pods and Containers - CPU and Memory
Pods have containers, and limits can be set on those containers. Requests used by the kube-scheduler to determine where the Pod will be placed …
- 2023-03-26
The Difference Between DevOps, Cloud and Cloud Native
I found an excellent video by Rob Muhlenstein explaining the differences between Cloud, Cloud Native and DevOps. Here are the notes I wrote. Cloud …
- 2023-03-18
Running Docker and Kubernetes on Mac M2
The past few days I’ve been trying out a few options to run Docker containers and a Kubernetes clusters on my new MacBook Pro M2. Unfortunately …
- 2023-02-05
Setting up a Kubernetes cluster on an Ubuntu 20.04 VM with containerd and flannel
You can get a free 24GB ram VM from Oracle. What better place for your own Kubernetes lab that is always available? See this article to create your …
- 2023-02-05
Lab VM project - Install ArgoCD to your Kubernetes cluster
This guide uses the official getting started guide with a few modifications. This installation is only for lab purposes. Running ArgoCD in a …
- 2023-02-04
Get a free 4 CPU 24GB Ram VM on from Oracle
A few weeks ago someone gave me a tip. Oracle actually has a really good free tier offering. You can host a 4CPU 24GB VM for free! This is perfect for …
