Transfer completed backup artifacts with rclone, separate S3 and native B2 settings, and evaluate encryption, lifecycle costs and archive recovery before relying on them.
So there I was, staring at a flood of logs on a late Tuesday evening, realizing I had built myself a perfectly functioning email server that nobody trusted yet. The messages were queued neatly, signed with DKIM, the SPF was crisp, DMARC was ready for inspection. But those first few emails still tiptoed into promotion…
So there I was, coffee in hand, scrolling through DMARC aggregate reports like they were morning headlines, when I spotted an IP in a country we’ve never sent email from. It wasn’t dramatic—no alarms blaring—just a quiet little line in an XML file that whispered, “Hey, someone’s trying to be you.” If you’ve ever had…
Technology
I Stopped Dreading DNS: Automating VPS and Zero‑Downtime Deploys with Terraform, Cloudflare, and Proxmox/OpenStack
The Late‑Night Deploy That Made Me a Terraform True Believer There was a Tuesday not long ago when I stared at my terminal, waiting for DNS to catch up with my ambition. You know that feeling, right? The deploy was ready, the VPS was humming, and the only thing between me and a clean handoff…
11 November 2025
From Blank VPS to Ready‑to‑Serve: How I Use cloud‑init + Ansible for Users, Security, and Services on First Boot
So I’m in the office, coffee warming my hands, and a message pings me: “Can you spin up another VPS like that staging one from last month?” I glance at my notes, then at the server list, then back at my notes. Ever had that moment when you’re not sure if the last server had…
11 November 2025
PostgreSQL Backup and PITR with pgBackRest
Configure pgBackRest and WAL archiving for PostgreSQL 17, understand backup dependencies, and practice time-based or named-target recovery on an isolated VM.
11 November 2025
How I Keep WebSockets and gRPC Happy Behind Cloudflare: The Calm Guide to Nginx Timeouts, Keep‑Alive, and Zero‑Downtime
I still remember the first time a client pinged me late on a Friday: “Our dashboards freeze every few minutes… and the mobile app drops calls randomly.” The stack looked clean at first glance—Cloudflare in front, Nginx on the origin, a mix of WebSocket streams and a shiny new gRPC backend. But buried in the…
10 November 2025
The Calm PCI‑DSS Checklist for WooCommerce Hosting: SAQ A or A‑EP, TLS That Sticks, Logs You Can Trust, and Segmentation Without Tears
A few winters ago, I was helping a small artisan coffee shop move their WooCommerce store to a new host. They’d just had that heart‑stopping email from their payment provider: “Please confirm PCI compliance.” You know the one. Their gut reaction was pretty relatable—open thirty tabs, skim three contradictory blog posts, and then decide to…
10 November 2025
PostgreSQL Autovacuum, Bloat and pg_repack Guide
Separate dead-tuple signals from physical bloat. Evaluate PostgreSQL 17 autovacuum settings and pg_repack 1.5.3 with explicit key, version, ownership, disk and lock requirements.
10 November 2025
