Go Container Images and Kubernetes Deployments with .ko.yaml
How ko builds small container images from Go import paths and integrates them directly into Kubernetes manifests through .ko.yaml.
Posts
Notes and articles from operations, homelab work, and infrastructure. The archive is chronological and filterable.
2026
8 posts
AI-assisted DevOps: use cases, potential, and risks
Where AI concretely speeds up DevOps workflows: incident analysis with MCP, production-like prototypes with local Kubernetes, GitOps assistance, code reviews, and the guardrails this requires.
Developing against a prod-like cluster with DevSpace and KinD
Local development against a real Kubernetes instead of mocks: a KinD cluster running the same Helm chart as production, a one-command bootstrap script, and the DevSpace hot-reload loop with file sync across several services. Why prod parity makes development more consistent.
Types, methods, interfaces
Notes on chapter 7 of Learning Go: named types, methods with receivers, embedding instead of inheritance, implicit interfaces, accept interfaces return structs, the nil-interface trap, type assertions and switches.
Pointers in Go, and when they are not needed
Notes on chapter 6 of Learning Go: pointer syntax, pointers as mutability signals, stack and heap, escape analysis, and mechanical sympathy.
Functions, defer, and the error pattern
Notes on chapters 4 and 5 of Learning Go: blocks, shadowing, for, switch, multiple return values, the if err != nil pattern, defer, closures, call by value.
Slices, maps, structs and shared memory
Notes on chapter 3 of Learning Go: arrays, slices, maps, and structs. Focus on shared backing storage in slices and the comma-ok idiom in maps.
Zero values, explicit types, and the compiler
Notes on chapter 2 of Learning Go: built-in types, variable declarations, zero values, explicit type conversion, truthiness, and constants.
2025
12 posts
Self-hosting BigBlueButton
Installing BigBlueButton 3.0 with bbb-install.sh, system requirements and ports, Greenlight as the frontend, your own TLS certificate behind a reverse proxy, handling an internal CA and the full certificate chain.
Backing up and restoring etcd
etcd as the state store of Kubernetes, consistent snapshots with etcdctl, restore with etcdutl, procedures for single-node and multi-node control planes, quorum and downtime.
Velero: filesystem backups and S3 export
Structure of a Velero backup, BackupStorageLocation and VolumeSnapshotLocation, filesystem backups, exporting volume data to S3 with snapshot-move-data, immutability, encryption, RestoreResourceModifiers, migrations, Helm setup and monitoring.
Anomaly detection for Kubernetes logs with OpenSearch
Anomaly detection in logs with OpenSearch and the Random Cut Forest algorithm, setup with Data Prepper and OpenTelemetry, creating a detector, numeric features and count() on Kubernetes logs.
MinIO: versioning, deletion and retention
Deleting versioned S3 objects with the MinIO client, delete markers, deletion variants via version-id and versions, pruning by age, object lock retention and cross-provider observations.
Alerting on logs with the Loki ruler
The Loki ruler, rulerConfig in the Helm chart values, a Kustomize JSON6902 patch to mount a rules ConfigMap into the Loki StatefulSet, a ConfigMap with LogQL alerting rules and the per-tenant rules path layout.
Shell tricks for debugging minimal containers
DNS resolution with getent, tool detection with command -v, TCP connections via /dev/tcp, process and socket inspection via /proc, resolver configuration, recursive globbing and ephemeral debug containers with kubectl debug.
Automated database dumps to S3
Daily PostgreSQL dumps from Kubernetes via CronJob, rolling retention with the MinIO client, S3 Object Lock and the conflict with rotation, hybrid approach with an archive, restrictive bucket policy.
OpenTelemetry Collector: setting custom labels on all signals
Setting a static identifier on logs, metrics and traces, resource processor, environment variables in Kubernetes, attributes processor, transform processor with OTTL.
GitOps with FluxCD: patterns and antipatterns
Repository layout as an organizational decision with examples, bootstrap via the Flux CLI or the Flux Operator, and a set of antipatterns with the better pattern for each: secrets, CRD ordering, cluster duplication and version updates.
Provisioning a Kubernetes cluster with kubespray on Proxmox
Preparing VMs on Proxmox with cloud-init, baking the Kubernetes prerequisites into the image, running kubespray from the official container, inventory and group_vars, fetching the kubeconfig, upgrades and version pinning.
Provisioning Proxmox and ZFS declaratively
Bare-metal Proxmox with Ansible: a preseeded Debian image as the installer, Proxmox VE with IOMMU GPU passthrough, ZFS pools over stable by-id devices, ARC tuning and ZED alerting, Proxmox storage on ZFS, a reproducible flow from the bare machine to VM storage.