Leading Cloud Infrastructure: Lessons After Four Years
A retrospective on four years of leading cloud infrastructure teams, from technical decisions to organizational dynamics
- leadership
- career
Field notes
Ideas tested in public.
Essays on autonomous agents, systems architecture, technical leadership, and the work of making software dependable.
192 essays and countingFilter by subject
Tesla Model S: The Second Tesla Joins the Fleet
Adding a Model S to the garage alongside the Model 3 and what it means to go fully electric
- nostalgia
- personal
Containerizing Enterprise Java: From WAR to Docker
Patterns and pitfalls of containerizing legacy Java WAR applications running on JBoss and WebLogic
- cloud
- docker
The Rise of GitOps: ArgoCD and Flux
GitOps is changing how we think about Kubernetes deployments by making Git the single source of truth for cluster state
- cloud
- kubernetes
The First Photo of a Black Hole
The Event Horizon Telescope captured the first image of a black hole in M87, and the technology behind it is as remarkable as the science
- personal
Tier-1 Commerce Payment Systems Migration
Migrating payment processing systems to the cloud while maintaining PCI compliance and zero downtime
- cloud
Three Flagship Phones: Samsung, Apple, Pixel
Living with all three flagship ecosystems simultaneously and what each one gets right
- nostalgia
- personal
Mentoring Engineers and Leading a Team of Ten
What I have learned about mentoring, team building, and the transition from individual contributor to engineering leader
- leadership
- career
re:Invent 2018: Lambda Layers, Transit Gateway, and the Services That Matter
A practitioner's take on the AWS re:Invent 2018 announcements that will actually change how we build
- cloud
GitHub Is Now Microsoft's
Microsoft closed its acquisition of GitHub on October 26 and the open source world is processing what this means
- personal
IAM Policies Deep Dive: Least Privilege at Enterprise Scale
Designing IAM policies, SCPs, and permission boundaries that enforce least privilege across hundreds of AWS accounts
- cloud
Lambda, RDS, Oracle on EC2: Hybrid Data Tier Patterns
Designing data tier architectures that bridge serverless Lambda functions with traditional Oracle databases on AWS
- cloud
CKA: Becoming a Certified Kubernetes Administrator
I passed the CKA exam and here is what it actually takes to master Kubernetes administration
- kubernetes
- career
Contributing to CNCF: My Kubernetes Open Source Journey
How getting involved with CNCF and the Kubernetes community changed the way I think about infrastructure
- kubernetes
- career
I Bought My First Tesla Model 3
Taking delivery of a Tesla Model 3 and experiencing what it means when your car is a software platform
- nostalgia
- personal
SpaceX Falcon Heavy: The Most Inspiring Launch I Have Ever Watched
SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy two days ago and I cannot stop thinking about what it means for engineering
- personal
Kubernetes vs ECS: An Enterprise Container Orchestration Comparison
When to choose Kubernetes and when to choose ECS, based on real experience operating both at enterprise scale
- kubernetes
- cloud
VPC Networking at Enterprise Scale
Designing VPC topologies, Transit Gateway patterns, peering strategies, and security group architectures for hundreds of AWS accounts
- cloud
Akamai-Fronted Web Applications on AWS
Designing enterprise web tier architecture with Akamai CDN in front of AWS origins, including WAF, origin shield, and caching strategies
- cloud
Active-Active Multi-Region Architecture with Route 53
Designing active-active multi-region deployments with Route 53 failover, health checks, and data replication strategies
- cloud
Storage Gateways, EFS, and AWS Batch: Solving Enterprise Storage Challenges
How we designed storage architectures for media workflows using EFS, AWS Batch, and Storage Gateway
- cloud
Terraform as the IaC Standard Across Hundreds of AWS Accounts
How we standardized Terraform across hundreds of AWS accounts with shared modules, remote state, and workspace conventions
- terraform
- cloud
Dockerizing Legacy Apps: From Monolith to ECS
How we containerized a monolithic Java application and deployed it to AWS ECS with a full CI/CD pipeline
- cloud
- docker
- aws
- ecs
Migrating Monolithic Apps to AWS: The 6Rs Framework in Practice
Enterprise cloud migration is not a single strategy; it is six strategies applied systematically across hundreds of applications
- cloud