Articles
Notes on cloud architecture, DevOps practice, and building reliable systems.
Monitoring and Observability on Azure with Azure Monitor and Application Insights
KQL queries that answer real incident questions, alert rules tuned to avoid paging on noise, and Application Insights distributed tracing wired into AKS.
Cost Optimization on Azure: Reservations, Spot VMs, and Budgets That Actually Alert
The specific levers that moved our Azure bill the most — Reserved Instances vs. Savings Plans, Spot VM eviction handling, and budget alerts that fire before the invoice does.
Kubernetes on Azure: AKS vs. Self-Managed, and When to Choose Which
Azure Kubernetes Service removes the control-plane burden entirely and charges nothing for it on the free tier — here's when that trade is worth it, and where AKS-specific behavior differs from EKS or GKE.
Building a CI/CD Pipeline to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) with GitHub Actions
A working GitHub Actions pipeline that builds a container, pushes it to Azure Container Registry, and deploys to AKS using OIDC — no long-lived secrets.
Terraform on Azure: Infrastructure as Code with the azurerm Provider
A working VNet + VM + Load Balancer module using the azurerm provider, plus the state backend setup and CI wiring that make it production-safe.
Getting Started with Azure Virtual Machines: A DevOps Engineer's Setup Guide
A production-minded walkthrough of standing up an Azure VM — region and SKU selection, network security groups, and identity, not just the quickstart happy path.
Migrating a Production Workload from AWS to Alibaba Cloud: Lessons Learned
The service-by-service mapping, the parts of the migration that went smoothly, and the three assumptions that turned out wrong.
Monitoring and Observability on Alibaba Cloud with CloudMonitor and ARMS
Setting up alarms that catch real incidents instead of paging on noise — CloudMonitor for infrastructure, ARMS for application-level tracing.
Object Storage Service (OSS) Patterns Every Alibaba Cloud Team Should Know
Lifecycle rules, signed URLs, and cross-region replication on OSS — the patterns that turn a bucket into a properly managed storage layer.
Multi-Cloud Cost Optimization: Where Alibaba Cloud Fits Next to AWS, Azure, and GCP
A practical comparison of compute, storage, and egress pricing across four providers, and the specific workloads where Alibaba Cloud changes the economics.
Kubernetes on Alibaba Cloud: ACK vs. Self-Managed, and When to Choose Which
Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) removes most of the control-plane burden AWS/Azure teams are used to — here's when that trade is worth it, and when it isn't.
Building a CI/CD Pipeline to Alibaba Cloud with GitHub Actions
A working GitHub Actions pipeline that builds a container, pushes it to Alibaba Cloud Container Registry, and deploys to ACK — with the RAM permissions to make it safe.
Terraform on Alibaba Cloud: Infrastructure as Code with the Alicloud Provider
How the official Terraform alicloud provider compares to AWS/Azure workflows, and a working module for a VPC + ECS + SLB stack.
Getting Started with Alibaba Cloud ECS: A DevOps Engineer's Setup Guide
A practical walkthrough for standing up a production-ready Elastic Compute Service instance on Alibaba Cloud, from region choice to hardened access.
A Practical Kubernetes Cost Optimization Checklist
The eight changes that made the biggest dent in our Kubernetes bill, in the order I'd tackle them again.
From Gas Engineering to DevOps: Why I Started Writing
A PhD in Gas Engineering and a career in cloud infrastructure aren't as far apart as they look. Here's why I'm writing this blog, and what to expect from it.