// Topics / Infrastructure

Infrastructure

53 entries tagged “Infrastructure”

    AI Build vs. Buy in 2026: An Operational Cost Question · 3 min AI build vs. buy in 2026 turns on operational cost: who owns telemetry, fallbacks, and data residency. When to buy, when to build, and the hybrid default. strategy ai architecture Why AI Agents Fail on Legacy Network Infrastructure · 7 min Many AI agent failures trace to the network: stale DNS, flat trust, retry storms, shallow queues. Zero-trust identity and per-step reliability fix them. agents infrastructure security Local-First AI Agents: Why Cloud-Heavy Architecture Fails · 7 min Agents that chain dozens of cloud hops pay in latency variance, cost, and failure surface. How to move routine inference local without a rewrite. agents infrastructure cost AI Data Pipelines for RAG: ETL With a Retrieval Layer · 5 min AI data pipelines are ETL with a retrieval layer bolted on. The discipline is the same as always: detect change, chunk intelligently, keep indexes fresh. data ai infrastructure AI Infrastructure at Scale Is Just Infrastructure · 4 min AI infrastructure at scale is just infrastructure. Gateways, caching, workload separation, budgets, and circuit breakers solve the same old problems. ai infrastructure architecture Scaling AI Features: GPUs, Rate Limits, and Backpressure · 4 min GPUs are scarce, rate limits are hard ceilings, and AI demos collapse under real traffic. The distributed systems patterns that keep AI features up. ai infrastructure architecture Vector Databases Explained: What They Are, When You Need One · 6 min What vector databases store, how similarity search and ANN indexes work, and when pgvector is enough versus a dedicated vector database. llm ai go Cloud Cost Optimization Starts With Visibility · 3 min Most cloud cost problems are visibility problems. Fix tagging, kill idle resources, right-size the rest, and make cost a regular engineering conversation. cost cloud infrastructure Platform Engineering: DevOps Grew Up · 4 min Platform engineering is what happens when you realize 'you build it, you run it' does not scale past a handful of teams. platform-engineering devops developer-experience Cloud Cost Management: You Do Not Need a FinOps Team · 4 min Most cloud cost work is deleting unused resources, tagging, right-sizing, and committing to the baseline. Engineering teams should own it. cloud cost infrastructure Kubernetes Requests and Limits: Lessons From an Outage · 5 min CPU is compressible and memory is not. How to set Kubernetes requests and limits from real usage, when to skip CPU limits, and which guardrails to add. kubernetes infrastructure devops Platform Engineering Maturity: Why Teams Stall at Level 2 · 6 min Most platform teams build tools nobody asked for while developers wait in ticket queues. Lessons from platform teams at large companies. platform-engineering devops developer-experience Kubernetes Cost Optimization: Right-Size Requests First · 5 min Most clusters I review run at 20-40% utilization. How I help teams cut Kubernetes bills: honest requests, better bin packing, spot nodes, and ownership. kubernetes cost infrastructure Zero Trust Architecture: Identity First, Then Segmentation · 6 min Zero trust from cyber-defense exercises and a large telecom: identity first, default-deny segmentation, device posture, and common mistakes. security architecture infrastructure Postgres Reliability: Restores, Failover, Safe Migrations · 8 min Practical database reliability from running Postgres in production: configs, safe migration patterns, and the operational habits that prevent outages. databases reliability infrastructure WebAssembly Beyond the Browser: A 2021 Progress Report · 5 min Server-side Wasm in mid-2021: edge platforms and Envoy plugins are real, WASI still lacks networking, and containers aren't going anywhere. infrastructure cloud go Data Engineering Patterns: Batch vs. CDC vs. Streaming · 6 min Batch vs. CDC vs. streaming ingestion, compared from building financial data pipelines at a fintech startup, and how to pick by real latency needs. data metrics architecture Multi-Cloud Is Mostly a Marketing Strategy · 4 min Multi-cloud sounds great in vendor pitches. In practice, it doubles your operational burden for benefits most teams will never need. cloud architecture infrastructure 2020 in Review: The Year That Broke the Playbook · 5 min My company survived its first real crisis, I led teams at two larger platforms, and the industry learned what remote work looks like. A strange year. year-in-review infrastructure remote-work Apple M1 and ARM Servers: What Changes for Infrastructure · 3 min The M1 is impressive hardware. The 'ARM everywhere in the data center' takes are not. What it changes for infrastructure: multi-arch builds, now. infrastructure Zero Trust vs VPN: How to Migrate Off the Perimeter · 6 min VPNs trust the network; zero trust checks every request. Lessons from cyber-defense exercises and my infrastructure startup, plus a six-step migration path off the VPN. security infrastructure Platform Engineering vs DevOps: Mostly a Rebrand · 3 min The industry loves renaming things. Platform teams and internal developer platforms are DevOps done properly, and most companies still won't do it right. platform-engineering devops infrastructure Kubernetes Operators in Go: Lessons From Six in Production · 9 min Lessons from building production operators at a cloud infrastructure startup: the reconciliation loop, controller-runtime patterns, and the mistakes that cost us sleep. kubernetes go infrastructure Kubernetes Requests and Limits: How I Size Resources · 5 min Most K8s clusters I audit are either wildly overprovisioned or one bad deploy away from eviction storms. Here's how I set requests, limits, and guardrails. kubernetes devops infrastructure gRPC in Production with Go: Protos, Deadlines, Errors · 11 min gRPC patterns from moving a startup's internal APIs off REST: proto design, Go servers and clients, status codes, testing, and mistakes that cost weekends. api go microservices VPN Overload in 2020: Why Scaling the VPN Is the Wrong Fix · 4 min COVID broke everyone's VPN. More licenses stop the bleeding and split tunneling buys time. The real fix is moving apps behind identity-based access. infrastructure security remote-work AWS Security While Scaling Fast: Make Secure the Default · 7 min Scaling AWS overnight? Manual security review collapses under that pressure. Secure defaults hold: IAM boundaries, private Terraform modules, GuardDuty. security cloud infrastructure Scaling WebRTC Video: SFUs, Simulcast, and TURN Costs · 6 min Most companies building video calling are making the same architecture mistakes. What I keep seeing, and how to fix it before your SFUs fall over. infrastructure architecture WebAssembly Outside the Browser: Real Promise, Real Gaps · 3 min WebAssembly outside the browser is interesting for edge, plugins, and sandboxing. But WASI and the tooling gaps are bigger than the hype admits. infrastructure go Terraform Testing: Static Checks, Policy, and Integration · 6 min I tested Terraform modules with static checks, policy engines, and integration runs side by side: what each layer catches, what it misses, when to run it. infrastructure testing infrastructure-as-code 2019 in Review: The Year I Quit, Built, and Started Over · 5 min Leaving the fintech startup, joining a founder program, starting a cloud infrastructure company, and every lesson the year threw at me. year-in-review startups reflection Edge Computing Is Usually Premature Optimization · 3 min Edge computing is real, but most teams adopting it don't have an edge problem. They have an architecture problem they're solving with geography. infrastructure architecture distributed-systems Terraform at Scale: Splitting the State Monolith · 6 min How to split a monolithic Terraform state into something teams can work with: state layout by domain, small pinned modules, plan review, and drift checks. infrastructure-as-code infrastructure devops Kubernetes Security Hardening: Fixing Insecure Defaults · 5 min Kubernetes defaults optimize for fast adoption, not safety. A hardening checklist from running production clusters at three startups. kubernetes security infrastructure Cloud Cost Optimization: Cut Waste Before Buying Discounts · 5 min Cloud cost optimization strategies ranked by effort and savings: tagging, idle resources, right-sizing, reserved and spot instances, and data transfer. cloud cost infrastructure GitOps with Flux and Argo CD: Stop Deploying From a Laptop · 9 min How to move a team off ad-hoc kubectl deploys to Git-driven Kubernetes with Flux and Argo CD: repo layout, secrets, rollbacks, and my mistakes. ci-cd devops kubernetes Kubernetes Production Checklist: The Boring Basics · 5 min Most Kubernetes outages come from skipped basics: limits, probes, network policies, RBAC, upgrades, etcd restores. The checklist I run on every cluster. kubernetes devops infrastructure Istio 1.0 in Practice: Powerful, Painful, Often Overkill · 5 min Evaluating Istio 1.0 at a fintech startup: what it gives you, what it costs in overhead and complexity, and why most teams should think twice. kubernetes microservices infrastructure Terraform in Production: Repo Layout, Modules, and State · 4 min Opinionated Terraform patterns from a fintech startup: repo layout, small modules, per-environment state, CI plans, drift detection, and secrets. infrastructure infrastructure-as-code devops Kubernetes Operators: Powerful, but Overhyped · 3 min Kubernetes operators are useful for Day 2 operations, but writing a good one is hard. When to adopt an existing operator, when to build your own. kubernetes devops infrastructure Zero Trust Architecture: Building It at a Fintech Startup · 5 min How I replaced castle-and-moat security at a fintech startup with zero trust: identity-first access, an access proxy, and micro-segmentation. security architecture infrastructure Two Years of Kubernetes in Production: The Boring Parts · 6 min Year two of running Kubernetes in production: network policies, DNS, resource requests, PodDisruptionBudgets, upgrades, and RBAC. kubernetes containers devops Spectre and Meltdown: What We Patched in the First Five Days · 4 min Five days after the Spectre and Meltdown disclosure: what we patched at a fintech startup, what KPTI costs, and what it means for shared infrastructure. security infrastructure Container Security Beyond the Basics: What We Hardened · 5 min Containers share the host kernel, so they aren't a security boundary. How we hardened images, runtimes, network policies, and RBAC at a fintech startup. containers kubernetes security Multi-Region Architecture: What I Wish Someone Had Told Me · 6 min What I learned evaluating multi-region at the fintech startup: the patterns that work, the ones that burn you, and when you should even bother. architecture distributed-systems cloud The Business Case for Infrastructure: Pitch It in Money · 3 min Boards fund money, risk, and speed. How I pitched infrastructure investment at a fintech startup: business framing, rough ROI, and a skimmable proposal. infrastructure leadership business Hidden AWS Costs: Why the Bill Doesn't Match the Calculator · 4 min Our AWS bill came in near double the calculator. Where the money went (transfer, storage, zombies, RDS) and what cut it: tags, weekly reviews, RIs, spot. cloud cost infrastructure Kubernetes in Production: What Paid Off and What Bit Us · 6 min Running Kubernetes in production: what paid off, what bit us (networking, secrets, YAML sprawl), and who should adopt it. kubernetes containers devops Why Every Developer Should Understand Networking · 3 min Three production bugs (DNS caching, TIME_WAIT port exhaustion, shallow health checks) that basic networking knowledge prevents, and where to start. infrastructure engineering Log Aggregation at Scale: ELK vs Alternatives · 4 min ELK is powerful and a second full-time job. What running it at a mobility startup taught me, and the hosted or simpler options I'd pick instead. observability databases devops Cloud vs Colocation for Startups: The Real Cost in 2016 · 3 min Colocated servers look cheaper than EC2 until you add rack space, gear, and the engineer to run them. For a 2016 startup the cloud wins by a wide margin. cloud infrastructure startups Ansible vs Puppet vs Chef: Why Ansible Won for Us · 2 min Puppet, Chef, and Ansible compared from production use. Ansible wins on least ceremony; Puppet and Chef still fit large or Ruby-fluent infra teams. infrastructure-as-code devops infrastructure Docker in Production: Lessons from Running Containers · 8 min What running Docker in production at a mobility startup taught us about image builds, tagging, networking, logs, resource limits, and non-root security. containers devops infrastructure
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