Container on firstfinger

What's Inside My Home Lab?

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 08:45:00 +0000

Picture this: It’s 2 AM, and I’m staring at my AWS bill with a mix of horror and fascination. Another $100 gone, just for experimenting with some Kubernetes deployments and testing a few CI/CD pipelines. As a DevOps engineer, I live and breathe infrastructure, but those cloud costs were eating into my wallet faster than I could learn.

That’s when it hit me – why not bring the cloud home?

Bare Metal Servers vs. Dedicated Host

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 05:00:42 +0000

Let’s imagine you’re the owner of a fastest-growing e-commerce business. Your online store is getting more and more traffic every day, and you need to scale up your server infrastructure to handle the increased load. You’ve decided to move your operations to the cloud, but you’re unsure whether to go with bare metal servers or dedicated hosts. How does it impact your growth of business?

What are Bare Metal Servers & Dedicated Hosts, and what is the main difference?

Bare Metal vs. Dedicated Host

Ansible vs Terraform

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 20:00:50 +0000

Imagine, As your business grows bigger, setting up and configuring things like servers, databases, and networks becomes a real pain if you do it by hand. Spinning up new servers one by one, copying and pasting commands, and keeping track of everything is super time-consuming and mistakes happen easily. Keeping all your servers configured the same way, installing updates, and deploying new code versions is a nightmare without help.

That’s where tools like Terraform and Ansible come to the rescue. Terraform is awesome at setting up your infrastructure like servers, networks, and databases. Instead of doing everything manually, you write code that describes what you want, and Terraform handles it for you. Need 10 new servers? Terraform gets it done with just a few commands.

Self-Host Open-Source Slash Link Shortener on Docker

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 06:17:50 +0000

Sharing links is an integral part of our daily online communication. However, dealing with long, complex URLs can be a hassle, making remembering and sharing links efficiently difficult.

What is Slash?

Slash Link Shortener Dashboard

Slash is an open-source, self-hosted link shortener that simplifies the managing and sharing of links. Slash allows you to create customizable, shortened URLs (called “shortcuts”) for any website or online resource. With Slash, you can say goodbye to the chaos of managing lengthy links and embrace a more organized and streamlined approach to sharing information online.

Deploying WordPress with MySQL, Redis, and NGINX on Docker

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 11:53:41 +0000

WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that powers millions of websites worldwide. However, as your website grows, you may experience performance issues. To improve WordPress performance, you can use object caching, which stores frequently accessed data in memory, reducing the number of database queries.

Prerequisites:

Basic knowledge of Docker and Docker Compose
Docker & Docker Compose installed on your machine
A domain name or IP address pointing to your server

Why do we need better performance in WordPress?

Website performance is crucial for user experience and search engine optimization (SEO). A slow website can lead to a high bounce rate, meaning visitors leave your site without interacting. Additionally, search engines like Google consider website speed as a ranking factor.

Setup Memos Note-Taking App with MySQL on Docker & S3 Storage

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 20:05:09 +0000

What is Memos?

Memos is an open-source, privacy-first, and lightweight note-taking application service that allows you to easily capture and share your thoughts.

Memos features:

Open-source and free forever
Self-hosting with Docker in seconds
Pure text with Markdown support
Customize and share notes effortlessly
RESTful API for third-party integration

Self-Hosting Memos with Docker and MySQL Database

You can self-host Memos quickly using Docker Compose with a MySQL database.

In-Memory Caching vs. In-Memory Data Store

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 15:13:35 +0000

In-memory caching and in-memory data storage are both techniques used to improve the performance of applications by storing frequently accessed data in memory. However, they differ in their approach and purpose.

What is In-Memory Caching?

In-memory caching is a method where data is temporarily stored in the system’s primary memory (RAM). This approach significantly reduces data access time compared to traditional disk-based storage, leading to faster retrieval and improved application performance.

How Companies Are Saving Millions by Migrating Away from AWS to Bare Metal Servers?

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 13:30:46 +0000

These two Companies OneUptime and Prerender are finding that migrating from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to bare metal servers hosted in colocation data centres can lead to substantial cost savings. They have cut costs by over 50% by taking control of their infrastructure while maintaining performance and reliability.

OneUptime was spending $456K+ annually on a 28-node AWS Kubernetes cluster.
Prerender projected over $1M per year on AWS services and data transfer.

📈 The Hidden Costs of Cloud

For many startups and tech companies, AWS seems like an easy choice. It allows you to spin up servers and scale rapidly without investing in your hardware upfront. But as these companies grow, the operating costs on AWS start to add up:

Kubernetes for Noobs

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 16:53:28 +0000

So you keep hearing about this “Kubernetes” thing but have no idea what it is or does? No worries. I’m here to explain Kubernetes to you in simple terms so you have a basic understanding of what all the fuss is about.

Let’s start from the beginning. Kubernetes is an open-source system that helps with deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications. Hmm, containerized applications - that probably sounds like more tech jargon if you’re new to all this stuff.

DevOps vs SRE vs Platform Engineering

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 06:30:56 +0000

Originally, DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering were just new ways of thinking - cultures and philosophies. But over time, they’ve turned into real roles at companies with specific focuses and responsibilities. This profile of job titles can create confusion - What exactly do these roles for? How do they interact and differ?

Of course, all these new job titles can get confusing. DevOps engineer, SRE, and platform engineer - they sound pretty similar, right? But while they’re related in some ways, the work these roles do is also very different.

DevOps vs SRE vs Platform Engineering - Explained

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 05:52:15 +0000

How to Achieve Zero Downtime Deployments with Blue-Green Deployment in Kubernetes?

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 04:21:06 +0000

Being able to update software without stopping it is really important for keeping customers happy and making sure everything keeps running smoothly. That’s where zero downtime deployment comes in. It helps you switch between different versions of a program without any interruptions. One of the best ways to do this is through Blue-Green Deployment.

<b><strong>What is Zero Downtime Deployment?</strong></b>

Zero downtime deployment, also known as zero-downtime release, refers to a deployment strategy that ensures continuous availability of an application during the deployment process. This means that users can continue to access the application without experiencing any disruptions or service interruptions.

AWS ECR vs Docker Hub

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 18:15:35 +0000

AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR) and Docker Hub are two popular options for hosting Docker images in the cloud. At a high level, ECR is managed by Amazon as part of their AWS platform while Docker Hub is Docker’s own registry service.

What is AWS ECR?

Elastic Container Registry

AWS ECR is a fully-managed container registry service that makes it easy to store, manage, and deploy Docker container images. ECR eliminates the need to operate your own container repositories or worry about scaling the underlying infrastructure.

ECS vs Fargate: Which One is Best for Deploying Containers?

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 20:30:55 +0000

If you’re looking to run containers on the AWS Cloud, you have two popular options: Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) with **EC2 **and Fargate. Both services offer powerful features for deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications but differ in several ways. While ECS allows you to run Docker containers, Fargate is a serverless option that does not require managing servers or clusters.

What is Amazon ECS?

Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) is a container management service that allows you to run, stop and manage Docker containers on a cluster of Amazon EC2 instances.

What is MicroCloud?

Sat, 07 Oct 2023 21:27:59 +0000

Deploying and managing private clouds has traditionally been complex, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. Setting up all the required components like virtualization, storage, and networking from scratch. It requires deep technical expertise across multiple domains.

Even for experienced infrastructure engineers, building and operating private clouds can be frustrating. The setup process is manual and tedious. Ongoing maintenance is challenging with so many moving parts. Upgrades and security patching turn into headaches.

The result is private cloud environments that are:

How to Run Linux Docker Containers Natively on Mac with OrbStack?

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 08:59:27 +0000

Docker containers are widely used for developing, testing, and deploying applications in Linux environments. However, many developers work on Macs and still need an easy way to run Docker. Fortunately, there are great options available to run Docker containers natively on macOS.

Docker Desktop is the official app but uses lots of resources, Colima is fast and lightweight yet minimal, and UTM utilizes virtual machines that can be slow. A new alternative called **OrbStack -**combines the best of Docker Desktop with unparalleled speed, efficiency, and ease of use by taking a lightweight yet full-featured approach optimized for Mac.

Top Container Orchestration Platforms: Kubernetes vs. Docker Swarm

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 21:57:10 +0000

Kubernetes and Docker Swarm are both open-source container orchestration platforms that automate container deployment, scaling, and management. However, some critical differences between the two are important to understand when deciding which solution to use.

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes (also known as K8s) was originally designed by Google and is now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It provides a framework to run distributed systems resiliently across clusters of nodes. Kubernetes coordinates containerized applications across multiple hosts, ensuring there is no downtime during maintenance or when scaling.