I build and run Linux and cloud infrastructure that stays up, ships often and doesn't quietly double the bill. Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, AWS, Google Cloud and Azure, plus a lot of plain old Linux underneath all of it.
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I've spent 14 years on Linux systems, DevOps and cloud infrastructure.
It started with open source. You could open something up, see how it worked and fix it yourself, and I never really got over that. The curiosity became a career, and the career took me through a handful of industries. Building Linux environments. Running them in production. Nudging teams toward DevOps before most of them were convinced it was worth the trouble.
The work I like best is the unglamorous kind:
- Systems that stay up at 3am without anyone watching them
- Deployments that don't need a maintenance window
- Infrastructure the next engineer can understand six months later without calling me
I also write about all of this at Linux Pathfinder, where I've published 82 hands-on guides on Linux administration, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform and cloud. Most of them started as a problem I hit at work. So they include the parts that broke, not just the tidy version.
Cloud and system architecture. Highly available, scalable systems built for real traffic, on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and smaller providers like DigitalOcean and Linode. Designed around the failure modes, because availability is the easy word and the outage is the real test.
Kubernetes and containers. Clusters built with kubeadm, Minikube and managed services (EKS, GKE). Ingress, ConfigMaps, Secrets, persistent storage and stateful workloads. Helm for repeatable releases.
Infrastructure as Code. Terraform first, with CloudFormation and Azure ARM when the platform calls for it. Versioned providers, locked dependencies and changes that go through review like any other code.
CI/CD and automation. Pipelines in Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Bitbucket Pipelines and AWS CodePipeline. Multi-stage builds, environment-driven config and zero-downtime releases. If a task happens twice, it gets scripted.
Security and reliability. Server hardening, IAM and least-privilege access, TLS done properly, and security checks inside the pipeline rather than bolted on at the end. Monitoring and alerting that tell you something useful.
Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Red Hat (RHEL), Fedora and Oracle Linux.
Day to day that means systemd services, LVM and disk management, file permissions and attributes, performance tuning, memory and cache troubleshooting, root password recovery, cron scheduling, and Bash scripting for whatever needs automating.
AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr and IONOS.
On AWS: EC2, RDS, ECS, EKS, Fargate, CloudWatch, CodePipeline, Application Load Balancer, IAM and Security Groups. On Google Cloud: GKE and the Cloud SDK.
Terraform, AWS CloudFormation and Azure ARM templates.
VPC networking, cluster provisioning, ingress controllers, Helm deployments and RBAC, all as code with pinned provider versions.
Docker, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes and KVM.
Image and container lifecycle, cluster setup with kubeadm and Minikube, managed clusters on EKS and GKE, Helm charts, ingress, ConfigMaps, Secrets, persistent volumes and stateful apps.
Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Bitbucket Pipelines and AWS CodePipeline.
Jenkinsfile and .gitlab-ci.yml pipeline design, multi-stage build and deploy, Docker Compose for local and production parity, variable-driven environments, self-hosted runners and zero-downtime deployment strategies.
Ansible, Chef and SaltStack.
MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis and AWS RDS.
Performance tuning, replication setup and repair, and migrations. Including the ones nobody wants to run on a Friday.
Nginx, Apache, Apache Tomcat, HAProxy and PHP-FPM.
Node.js, Next.js, Java, PHP, Elasticsearch, PM2, Laravel, and WordPress at scale with custom themes, plugins and multisite.
Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Nagios, Zabbix, AWS CloudWatch, New Relic, PRTG, Monit, Cacti, Munin and Cockpit.
Metrics, logs and alerting, plus the ongoing argument about what actually deserves to wake someone up.
BIND DNS, SSH key-based authentication, nmap, ss and netstat, IP addressing and subnetting, rsync and scp.
SSL/TLS with Let's Encrypt automation and CSR generation, Linux server hardening, firewalls, and DevSecOps practices built into CI/CD.
Postfix, Dovecot, SMTP, and DKIM, SPF and DMARC so the mail actually lands in the inbox.
Project management and process improvement. Technical documentation and training that people actually use. IT operations and service management. Capacity planning and cloud cost control. And talking to stakeholders in plain language, without vanishing into jargon.
A few of the 82 guides on linuxpathfinder.com, grouped by topic.
Kubernetes and containers
- How to Set Up a Kubernetes Cluster on Ubuntu 20.04 with kubeadm
- Let's Encrypt, Certbot, Nginx and cert-manager on Kubernetes
- How to Set Up WordPress with MySQL on Kubernetes
- Working Effectively with Docker Images
- Installing Minikube on AWS EC2
Cloud, Terraform and CI/CD
- Create a GKE Cluster and Deploy WordPress Using Terraform
- The Ultimate Guide to Installing and Using Terraform
- Setting Up a Self-Hosted GitHub Actions Runner on Linux
- How to Set Up an AWS Application Load Balancer for a Laravel App on EC2
- Organizing Ansible: Standard Directory Structure
Linux administration and security
- Linux Server Hardening Checklist for Ubuntu and RHEL
- Understanding systemd Service Management
- journalctl: The Commands You'll Actually Use
- Linux System Monitoring: CPU, Memory, Disk and Network
- How to Recover a Linux Root Password
Networking and deployments
- How to Set Up Nginx as a Load Balancer
- How to Install the BIND DNS Server on Linux
- How to Use and Master the Nmap Command
- Deploying a Production-Ready Next.js App on a Linux VPS
- Zero-Downtime Deployments for Node.js and React with PM2
I help teams with:
- DevOps adoption and transformation
- Cloud migration and architecture on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure
- Kubernetes platforms and container strategy
- CI/CD pipeline design and automation
- Site reliability, monitoring and incident readiness
- Performance tuning, security hardening and cloud cost reviews
The easiest way to reach me is on LinkedIn or through the contact page.
Written and maintained in Markdown · Updated October 2026