Air-Gapped Packer Builds
Using Packer to make AMIs in an air-gapped or firewalled environment
Field notes
Field notes
Practical write-ups from our work in cloud, DevOps, automation, monitoring and operations. Notes from real engagements, not marketing copy.
Browse by topic 64 topics
- access
- air-gapped
- airtags
- ami
- ansible
- architecture
- automation
- aws
- az
- backups
- ble
- bluetooth
- broker
- buckets
- ci
- cloud
- cloud-init
- cloudwatch
- collectd
- confluence
- console
- deprecation
- devops
- disaster recovery
- dns
- domains
- due diligence
- duty of care
- firewall
- firewalls
- fpm
- gcp
- iam
- installation
- ioc
- jira
- lifecycle
- linux
- messaging
- metrics
- monitoring
- mosquitto
- mqtt
- netflow
- networking
- networks
- observability
- oci
- oracle
- ovhcloud
- packer
- parking
- passrole
- passwords
- patching
- permissions
- resources
- security
- setup
- ssh
- sysadmin
- vault
- versions
- wifi
2025 3 notes
Monitoring Versus Observability
What are the differences and similarities between monitoring and observability?
Machine Images and /etc/machine-id
Ensuring you get a unique machine-id when making custom machine images (AMIs)
2024 4 notes
Cloudwatch-collectd Integration
Use collectd to push metrics into Cloudwatch for easy custom metrics on EC2 instances and inside containers
Cloud Resource Deprecation Risks
Cloud providers sometimes withdraw resources they have provided. What do you do then?
Backing up Atlassian Jira and Confluence (Cloud Editions)
How to back up Jira and Confluence Cloud for disaster recovery purposes
Monitoring Application Version Updates
Using your monitoring platform to alert you about available application updates
2023 6 notes
Netflow and Kentik Network Observability
Roll your own Netflow, pipe it into Kentik's Network Observability Platform
Systems Management Automation
Our views on systems management automation and what benefits it brings
Monitoring Philosophy
Our philosophy on monitoring and how to approach it
AWS iam:PassRole Security and Compliance
Using AWS iam:PassRole without creating too many problems
Mosquitto MQTT Broker
A setup journey to getting a Mosquitto MQTT broker running
Bluetooth Low Energy
Figure out distance to a device with BLE broadcasts
2021 9 notes
Hashicorp Vault Setup
How to setup Hashicorp Vault in a simple cluster
OVH Private (vRack) Networks
Some gotchas with OVH private (vRack) networks
Prevent Public Bucket Access in GCP
Battling with GCP to prevent public access to storage buckets
Cloud Control Plane Users
Who should get access to your cloud "control plane"? A tricky question with some equally tricky answers.
The Cheap Webcam Problem
The risks of using cheap webcams and other devices on home networks
The Coffee Shop Problem
The risks of using public wifi and the mitigations that users and security teams can use.
Ansible Self-Apply
Using Ansible to create self-configuring servers
Due Diligence
Your customers ask you questions and you ask your supplier questions. Here's how to do it...
Oracle Cloud: Early Days
We've looked at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) with real-world deployments in mind and found what's good and bad, and compared it to other cloud vendors.
2020 3 notes
Domain Parking and Redirection in Google Cloud (GCP)
How to setup a Domain Parking and Redirection server in Google Cloud (GCP)
Everything in the Cloud is Easy
Everything looks easy, but some forethought can really help you out...
Cloud Availability Zones: 3 is the Magic Number
A common misconception is that you only need 2 AZs in the cloud...
No notes match that search.
Try a different term, or browse the full list by topic above.
Next step
Need a specialist for your next project?
Tell us what you are working on. We will come back with a straight answer on whether we can help — and how we would approach it.