A detailed account of building a production-ready GitOps workflow - from containerizing apps to automated deployments with Flux CD, including all the debugging, fixes, and lessons learned. This article documents the complete journey of setting up an automated GitOps pipeline, including every roadblock encountered and how they were resolved. Table of Contents Introduction The Architecture Phase 1: App Containerization Phase 2: Setting Up the GitOps Repo Phase 3: Building the CI/CD Pipeline Phase 4: Debugging and Fixing Phase 5: Flux CD Integration The Complete Workflow Lessons Learned Resources Introduction Modern app deployment requires automation, reliability, and declarative config. GitOps provides all three by treating Git as the single source of truth for infrastructure and app state. This post documents building a complete GitOps pipeline from scratch for a Python study app. ...

Table of Contents Overview The Challenge Architecture Design Final Architecture Network Layout The Implementation Journey Phase 1: Initial Assessment Phase 2: DB Cluster Setup Phase 3: App Cluster Creation Phase 4: Repository Reorganization Phase 5: Security Audit Phase 6: Documentation and Commit Technology Stack Key Decisions Why Separate Clusters? Why Single Control Plane for App Cluster? Why Talos Linux? Final Directory Structure Common Operations Lessons Learned What Worked What Didn’t Work Best Practices Troubleshooting Reference Next Steps References Overview This guide documents building a production-ready four-node Talos Linux Kubernetes lab with multi-cluster architecture. The implementation features immutable infrastructure, GitOps workflows, and proper separation of stateful and stateless workloads across two distinct clusters. ...

Tools used with DevContainers such as, Mise, Chezmoi, and Neovim - including all the troubleshooting, mistakes, and lessons learned along the way. This article documents my journey setting up a portable development environment. Personal references (usernames, repo names, paths) have been generalized to make the content applicable to any reader. Table of Contents Introduction The Initial Goal The Technology Stack The Setup Process Troubleshooting Chronicles Integration with Obsidian Making It Portable Final Architecture Lessons Learned Resources Introduction I wanted to build a portable development environment that I could replicate across any project or machine. What seemed like a simple container setup turned into a deep dive into dotfiles management, tool installation strategies, and the intricacies of containerized development environments. ...

Overview Building this Arch Linux workstation from scratch taught me more about Linux internals than years of using pre-configured distributions. For DevOps engineers, understanding the fundamentals - from bootloaders to network stacks to display servers - isn’t optional. It’s what separates those who can truly troubleshoot production systems from those who just run apt install. This Dell Precision 5540 build uses LUKS2 encryption, LVM for storage flexibility, systemd-networkd for networking, and Hyprland as a Wayland compositor. Every component was chosen deliberately and configured manually. ...

Overview I recently set up a dedicated mini PC firewall running pfSense with Mullvad VPN to route all my home network traffic through an encrypted tunnel. This setup provides network-wide privacy protection, eliminates the need for individual device VPN clients, and gives me granular control over my network security. Bottom line: 937 Mbps download speeds through the VPN with 21ms latency to (XX) servers, all traffic automatically protected, and enterprise-grade firewall features. ...