Blog

BTRFS Inside Proxmox VMs: Smart Flexibility or a CoW-on-CoW Trap Waiting to Happen?

Using BTRFS inside Proxmox VMs can be great for snapshots and subvolumes, but stacking CoW on CoW (especially on ZFS hosts) can introduce serious IO overhead and fragmentation risks.

I’m a Machinist, Not IT: The Raw, Frustrated, Brilliant Reality of Wiring CNCs Into a Proxmox Server

A real-world shop-floor story of moving CNC workflows off a single fragile PC by using Proxmox, practical network design, and low-friction file transfer choices that actually work.

Your 25GbE Dream Is Slamming Into a Wall: The Brutal Truth About My 3-Node Ceph Cluster

A 3-node Proxmox + Ceph lab with enterprise NVMe and 25GbE looked perfect on paper, but benchmark ceilings exposed the practical bottlenecks that matter most in small clusters.

Can We Let It Lapse - The Risky VMware Renewal Question No One Wants to Answer Too Late

A practical view of VMware support lapse risk, perpetual rights, and timing decisions around VVF subscription moves.

From PVE 5 to 9: What Happens When Legacy Infrastructure Refuses to Let Go

A real-world look at moving fragile, business-critical workloads from Proxmox VE 5 to 9, including NAS bottlenecks, i440FX-to-Q35 risk, and practical migration tactics that prioritize survival over speed.

Evaluating HPE Morpheus for VMware Exit Strategies

Why teams evaluating HPE Morpheus as a VMware exit are split between promising lab results and production trust gaps.

It Shows Up But Won't Pass Through - The ESXi USB WiFi Trap That Catches Everyone

Why USB WiFi passthrough on ESXi often fails even when devices appear in lsusb and quirks are configured.

It Works... But It Feels Wrong - The Real Way to Run a Java Monolith on Kubernetes Without Breaking Your Brain

A practical production guide to running a Java monolith on Kubernetes without fragile NodePort duct tape.

Kubernetes Isn’t Your Load Balancer — It’s the Puppet Master Pulling the Strings

Kubernetes orchestrates load balancers, but does not replace them; this post explains what actually handles production traffic.

The Invisible Expired Certificate in vCenter - And Why You Can't See It in Certificate Management

Why the data-encipherment cert alert appears in vCenter even when Certificate Management looks healthy.

Should You Use CPU Limits in Kubernetes Production?

A grounded take on when CPU limits help, when they hurt, and how to choose based on workload behavior.

This Is Usually a Resolution Scaling Mismatch, Not a Fullscreen Bug

A quick troubleshooting sequence for VMware fullscreen corner gaps caused by display scaling mismatch.

We Have 2,000+ Service Accounts and No One Knows Who Owns Them - The Multi-Cloud IAM Crisis Nobody Wants to Admit

Why unmanaged machine identities across AWS, Azure, and GCP become a security and governance crisis at scale.

We Thought Kubernetes Would Save Us - The Production Failures No One Puts on the Conference Slides

A field report on real Kubernetes production failures and the human factors that trigger them.

Gallium, XCP-ng, and the Edge Shift: VMware Alternatives Gaining Real Traction

VMware is no longer the automatic default. XCP-ng and Gallium are gaining traction among teams optimizing for distributed edge infrastructure, cost control, and architectural simplicity.

Two-Node Clusters, Fibre Channel, and a Leap of Faith: Inside a VMware-to-Proxmox Migration

An IT team managing 10 clusters and 21 hosts across global sites is migrating its entire VMware infrastructure to Proxmox, navigating architectural constraints and storage complexities that don't appear in vendor documentation.

S3, B2, or Wasabi? The Real Cost of "Cheap" Cloud Storage Is Getting Files Back

Storage is cheap. Retrieval isn't. A breakdown of S3, B2, and Wasabi for media teams pushing 15TB+ per month — and why egress fees, archive tiers, and restore frequency matter more than price per terabyte.

Zabbix vs. LibreNMS: The Open-Source Showdown for K-12 Network Monitoring

Zabbix is powerful but demands time. LibreNMS is simple but network-focused. For K-12 districts with 3,500+ devices and one overworked admin, the right choice depends on staffing reality — not feature lists.

Microsoft Is Forcing MFA on 365 Admins, and Breaking Old Workflows in the Process

Microsoft's mandatory MFA enforcement for 365 admin accounts is catching teams off guard, breaking legacy workflows, and forcing overdue security cleanups across organizations of every size.

When Broadcom Controls the Exit: How Partial VMware Renewals Became a Trap

Broadcom's refusal to allow partial VMware renewals is forcing customers into all-or-nothing decisions—renew everything for years upfront, or accelerate risky migrations. The exit is no longer yours to control.

Someone Built the Traefik Provider Proxmox Users Have Been Waiting For

A new Traefik provider plugin brings Docker-style automatic service discovery to Proxmox VMs and containers, eliminating manual routing config and changing how homelabs handle reverse proxy setup.

From ESXi to AHV: What It's Like to Rebuild a Homelab on Nutanix CE

A real-world homelab migration from aging VMware 6.7 to Nutanix Community Edition—covering the surprisingly smooth install, AHV's mindset shift, and why walking away from ESXi felt less like loss and more like relief.

From NAS Access to Watching Hockey Abroad: What People Actually Use Tailscale For

Beyond the marketing, Tailscale solves real problems: NAS access from anywhere, bypassing sports blackouts, secure media streaming, and connecting homelabs without port forwarding headaches.

Immich in Proxmox LXC: A Stability Gamble Worth Taking?

Running Immich in a Proxmox LXC container sounds elegant, but real-world experience reveals stability challenges. Here's what the community learned about LXC vs VM approaches.

Top 5 Zabbix Alternatives: Moving From 'Free Monitoring' to Enterprise Management

Zabbix is great for metrics, but modern infrastructure needs more than alerting. Here are five platforms that add visibility, automation, and control beyond what Zabbix offers.

Losing the Root Password on VMware ESXi Isn't a Bug — It's a One-Way Door

On modern ESXi, there's no recovery path for a lost root password. That's not an oversight — it's a deliberate security design that forces reinstallation over rescue.

Escaping VMware Isn't the Hard Part — Making Windows Boot on Proxmox VE Is

VMware licensing chaos made leaving easy. But Windows VMs don't migrate quietly — they blue screen. Here's what actually fixes the INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE nightmare.

Deduplication Nightmares: What to Use When TAR Slows You Down

TAR archives and deduplication don't always play nice. Here's why your backup strategy might be underperforming and what alternatives exist for dedup-aware archiving.

Rancher Was the Perfect Kubernetes Dashboard — Until the Price Changed

Rancher gave platform teams calm — one login, twenty clusters, all understandable. Then the rancher price changed. Not by a little. Here's why there's still no obvious replacement.

What It's Really Like to Jump from VMware to Nutanix: Lessons from the Field

Real-world experiences from IT pros who've migrated from VMware to Nutanix—covering Move tool performance, licensing costs, support quality, and the cultural shift between platforms.

Your VMware vSphere License Just Expired—Now What?

When your vSphere subscription expires, VMs keep running—but you lose the ability to fix anything. Here's what really happens, from technical lockouts to legal letters.

Hitting the Ceiling: When it's Time to Consider a Commercial Zabbix Upgrade for Data Center Operations

Zabbix excels at metric gathering, but enterprise data centers often hit a ceiling where passive monitoring isn't enough. Learn when it's time to consider a commercial Zabbix alternative that offers active infrastructure management.

Docker in LXC vs VMs on Proxmox: Why This Debate Refuses to Die in 2026

Docker in LXC or VM on Proxmox? Compare security, performance, backup behavior, and operational risk so you can pick the right model.

Yes, You Can Mix RAM Sizes on a Proxmox Server — Finally Settled It

The definitive answer to whether you can mix RAM sizes and speeds on a Proxmox server. Spoiler: yes, but there's a right way to do it.

Ceph, StarWind, Synology: How I Accidentally Tried Every Storage Idea at Once

A story about running Ceph, StarWind VSAN, and Synology simultaneously—not by design, but because every attempt to simplify storage somehow added another layer instead.

Running Clawdbot on Proxmox: A Practical Guide for Real Humans

A New Proxmox Tool Launched With Big Promises—and Immediate Skepticism

PveSphere launched as a production-ready multi-cluster management platform for Proxmox VE. The community's reaction? Cautious optimism mixed with hard-earned skepticism about what 'production ready' really means.

Why Your Proxmox Migration Failed (Hint: It Wasn't Proxmox)

Most failed Proxmox migrations aren't Proxmox failures at all. They're the result of assumptions VMware spent 15 years teaching us to make — and infrastructure that stopped hiding its complexity.

From $3K to $21K Overnight: How Broadcom Turned VMware Into a Breaking Point for Small IT Teams

VMware renewals are hitting small IT teams with 7x price increases. For many, the math no longer works — and the exodus to Proxmox and Hyper-V is accelerating.

The Fastest Way to Fix a Slow CI Pipeline Isn't More Hardware — It's Fixing QA

When your CI pipeline takes an hour, throwing hardware at it rarely helps. The real gains come from rethinking QA — tiering tests, fixing flakiness, and rebuilding trust in feedback loops.

Ceph, StarWind, or Something Else? The Awkward Middle Ground of HA Storage in Proxmox

When you want your Proxmox storage to 'just stay up' during node failures, you hit the awkward middle ground between Ceph, StarWind VSAN, clustered filesystems, and DIY NAS solutions. Here's why none of them feel quite right.

Put Your Cluster on Ice: The One Step You Can't Forget in Proxmox HA

A routine hardware upgrade turned into a cluster-wide reboot storm because someone forgot to put HA into maintenance mode. Here's what went wrong, how to prevent it, and why Proxmox still doesn't have a GUI button for this critical step.

Blackwell Meets Proxmox: When 'Open' Nvidia Drivers Still Refuse to Load

Nvidia's new Blackwell GPUs and their 'open' kernel modules should make Linux life easier. But Proxmox 9.1 users are hitting a frustrating wall where drivers compile fine but refuse to load—and the usual fixes don't help.

S3, Storage Boxes, or Cheap VPSes: How Proxmox Users Are Really Backing Up in 2026

Proxmox backup options in 2026: S3-compatible object storage, storage boxes, and cheap VPS + PBS setups with cost and reliability tradeoffs.

Proxmox Clusters and SANs: The VMware Exit Problem Nobody Warned You About

Leaving VMware for Proxmox? Your SAN-backed cluster won't behave the same way—and that gap in expectations catches many teams flat-footed.

Windows 11 on Proxmox Is Broken for Some Power Users — And the Community Can't Agree Why

High-end Proxmox builds with modern Intel CPUs are seeing mysterious Windows 11 performance issues. The community is divided on whether it's a configuration problem, a QEMU issue, or a Windows 24H2 regression.

Proxmox, Power Failures, and the One Time initramfs Quietly Ruined My Week

A power outage turned into a week-long debugging session when initramfs refused to mount the root filesystem. Here's what went wrong and how to fix it.

10 Proxmox Mistakes You Don't Want to Make (and What to Do Instead)

Migrating 200+ VMs to Proxmox Isn't a Compute Problem — It's a Networking One

Why large-scale VMware to Proxmox migrations succeed or fail based on networking archaeology, not hypervisor mechanics.

How a Single Proxmox Node Became a Multi-Tenant Self-Service Cloud (Without Giving Anyone Root)

A deep dive into turning one Proxmox node into isolated per-project labs where teams self-manage VMs through the GUI—without root access and without seeing each other's resources.

When a Three-Node Proxmox Cluster Becomes a Small Data Center

A three-node Proxmox cluster with 4.5TB of RAM and hundreds of CPU cores drew major attention once readers realized it was serious production infrastructure.

Proxmox Update Strategies: Automation Patterns from Real Operators

A look at how homelabbers actually keep Proxmox, LXCs, and VMs updated, from elegant automation to hopeful reboots.

Don't Forget Your Running Sessions: A Quick Shell Hack for Proxmox and SSH Users

A simple .bashrc trick to remind you about running screen and tmux sessions when working on remote Proxmox systems via SSH.

Moving a Midsize Business to Proxmox: The Good, the Rough Edges, and the Savings

A real-world account of migrating a 500-employee business from VMware to Proxmox—six months in, the results are mostly positive, occasionally frustrating, and financially hard to ignore.

AI Didn't Kill DevOps — But It Made the Stakes Way Higher

AI hasn't replaced DevOps — it's made the consequences of bad decisions faster and bigger. Here's why velocity without understanding is a recipe for expensive lessons.

Why Many VMware Professionals Are Migrating in 2025

2025 is shaping up as a major VMware migration year, with many long-time operators evaluating alternatives for cost and control.

From Citrix to Proxmox: One Engineer's Accidental Upgrade That Just Worked

What started as an unplanned escape from internal politics became a deep dive into a hypervisor he now swears by. One engineer's story about accidentally switching from Citrix to Proxmox—and never looking back.

VirtIOFS Is the Best Thing You're Not Using in Proxmox

VirtIOFS has quietly become the go-to way to bridge the gap between host and guest operating systems. If you've been sticking to Samba or NFS, you might be missing out on one of the simplest and fastest ways to get shared folders in your VMs.

Proxmox PVE Subscriptions: Worth It or Just a Paywall for Stability?

Is Proxmox subscription worth it? Breakdown of enterprise repo benefits, socket pricing, support value, and when no-subscription is still enough.

Ditch Citrix? Exploring Kasm Workspaces on Proxmox for a Scalable VDI Setup

Explore how Kasm Workspaces paired with Proxmox VE offers a browser-based, scalable, and free VDI alternative to Citrix and VMware Horizon.

Real Stories from Kubernetes Admins Keeping Production Stable

Managing Kubernetes at scale is challenging. Real stories from admins navigating YAML complexity, vendor differences, and leadership pressure.

Zabbix Server's Running, But No Login? The Common Mistakes Wrecking Your Setup

Your Zabbix server is running, the frontend loads, but login fails. Here's the checklist of common culprits—from Docker networking to SELinux—that keep wrecking setups.

Five Years or Nothing: How Broadcom's Licensing Shift Is Reshaping the Virtualization Market

Broadcom's push for five-year VMware contracts is accelerating migration planning and long-term budgeting decisions across the virtualization market.

From $3K to $47K: How VMware Licensing Changes Are Reshaping Infrastructure Choices

A VMware Essentials customer went from $3K to $47K overnight. This article explores how licensing changes are pushing teams to evaluate Proxmox, Hyper-V, and other alternatives.

MinIO is in Maintenance Mode—Now What? Exploring the Best Self-Hosted S3 Alternatives

MinIO's open-source version is now in maintenance mode. Here's what happened, why the community is frustrated, and which S3-compatible alternatives like Garage, SeaweedFS, and Ceph are rising to take its place.

From 16 to 72 to 96 Cores: Inside the Licensing Maze VMware Shops Are Trying to Navigate

VMware's core minimums have become a puzzle: 16 cores per socket in the docs, 72 cores minimum in practice, and now 96 for vSphere 8. Here's how IT teams are navigating the confusion.

apt upgrade vs dist-upgrade: The Silent Proxmox Trap Everyone Walks Into

A single misplaced apt upgrade command can quietly break your Proxmox host. Here's why the command you trust most is actually the dangerous one, and how to avoid the partial upgrade nightmare that catches everyone eventually.

Why Kubernetes 1.35 Feels Like a Security-First Release

Kubernetes 1.35 isn't your typical incremental update. With cgroup v1 dropped, hardened certificate validation, constrained impersonation, and user namespaces enabled by default, this release reads like the security overhaul the platform has needed for years.

Broadcom's CNCF Donation: Community Reactions and Open-Source Trust

Broadcom donated a Kubernetes tool to CNCF, but community response remains mixed due to recent platform and licensing changes.

Proxmox in the Enterprise: The Gotchas VMware Admins Don't See Coming

VMware admins migrating to Proxmox face unexpected challenges that go beyond technical specs. From storage design to NUMA tuning and Windows licensing, here are the real-world gotchas experienced engineers wish they'd known before starting their migration.

The State of AI in 2025: From Pilots to Transformation—What Separates the High Performers?

Three years into the generative AI era, 88% of organizations are using AI, but only one-third have begun scaling it. This deep dive reveals what separates high performers from the rest: transformative ambition, workflow redesign, and strategic investment in AI agents.

Zero-Downtime Deployments Without Kubernetes: Proven Approaches

Kubernetes is not the only way to achieve zero-downtime deployments. This article covers proven alternatives such as load balancers, blue-green rollout patterns, and graceful shutdown strategies.

The Surprisingly Messy Art of Running a Remote Proxmox Server With Zero Inbound Access

Running a Proxmox host at a friend's place with no inbound access? Here's how homelabbers solve the networking puzzle with WireGuard, Tailscale, Cloudflare Tunnel, and creative routing — plus the one piece of hardware you absolutely need.

Why Home Labs Drift into Complexity (and How to Fix It)

Home labs start clean but quickly become chaotic. From mystery LXCs to forgotten VMs, learn why documentation, naming conventions, and infrastructure-as-code are essential for taming the spaghetti monster.

The Unraid Manager App Went Public — and iOS Users Are Living the Good Life

A solo developer quietly released Unraid Manager for iOS, and the community went wild. Here's why this free app is a game-changer for iPhone users — and why Android folks are left waiting.

ECC vs. Non-ECC RAM for Proxmox: What Home Labbers and Small Biz Owners Say

Should you invest in ECC RAM for your Proxmox setup? Home labbers and small business owners weigh in on the real-world tradeoffs between data integrity and budget constraints.

Proxmox 9.1 Upgrade Reports: Kernel, Network, and GPU Issues

Proxmox 9.1 brings new features but also kernel panics, network crashes, and GPU issues. Users report instability with Mellanox NICs, iGPU passthrough, and Frigate setups—raising questions about upgrade readiness.

Manufacturing IT vs. the Full VCF Stack: How to Do More With Less (and Still Sleep at Night)

Mid-sized manufacturers face a tough choice with VCF 9: deploy the full stack or find a minimal viable path. Here's how to stay compliant without rebuilding your entire infrastructure.

The Great AHV Backup Meltdown: Why Veeam Just Wouldn't Register the Cluster

A chaotic journey through trying to connect Veeam to a Nutanix AHV cluster, where the proxy deploys perfectly but refuses to register—featuring port checks, certificate mysteries, and Reddit support group therapy.

From ECS to EKS: Practical Migration Lessons

Moving from ECS to EKS is a common progression with real complexity. This guide covers common migration issues and how teams handle them.

Do I Need More RAM or Do I Just Need to Stop Installing Linux Mint on Everything?

A journey through realizing that maxing out RAM in a Proxmox cluster isn't always a hardware problem—sometimes it's just too many desktop OSs and not enough containers.

LXC Meets Docker? And Other Questions About Proxmox 9.1

Proxmox VE 9.1 introduces OCI image support for LXC containers and more. We answer the biggest questions about this release, from Docker-in-LXC fixes to TPM changes and upgrade stability.

Proxmox 9.1 Can 'Run Docker Containers'… but Not the Way You Think

Proxmox 9.1's new OCI container feature promises Docker-like functionality, but the reality is more nuanced. We dive into what actually works, what doesn't, and why this isn't the Docker replacement many hoped for.

Inside Cloudflare's Worst Outage Since 2019: How One Feature File Took Down Half the Internet

A database permissions change triggered a chain reaction that caused Cloudflare's biggest outage in six years. Here's how a doubled feature file brought down a massive portion of global Internet traffic.

Proxmox VE 9.1 is Here: What's New, What's Better, and What to Watch Out For

Proxmox VE 9.1 brings meaningful improvements including OCI image support for LXC, virtual TPM in qcow2 format, smarter nested virtualization, enhanced SDN visibility, and kernel 6.17—but watch out for compatibility issues.

What's the Most Cost-Effective Way to Run Ceph at Home?

From mini-PCs to pizza box servers, homelab enthusiasts share their real-world Ceph builds. Here's what actually works without breaking the bank.

USB vs SATA: The Unexpected Debate Behind Virtualized PBS Storage

When downsizing forces you to virtualize PBS, choosing between USB and SATA storage becomes more than a technical decision—it's a philosophy about reliability, convenience, and what 'good enough' really means.

Oracle Linux vs. VMware: What Enterprises Discover When They Actually Test the Switch

When a major enterprise tested Oracle Linux as a VMware replacement after Broadcom's 300% price increase, they discovered the truth isn't about features—it's about everything VMware built around them over two decades.

Redundant DNS at Home? Here's How This Setup Delivers VPN, Privacy, and Peace of Mind

A deep dive into building a highly available, privacy-focused DNS infrastructure at home using Pi-hole, Unbound, Keepalived, and VPN routing—delivering enterprise-grade reliability in your home network.

Kubecost vs. OpenCost: When Cost Monitoring Becomes More Painful Than the Bill

Teams adopt Kubecost or OpenCost hoping for clarity on K8s spending. Instead, they often face timeouts, scaling issues, and workarounds that make cost monitoring more painful than the actual bill.

The VCF Takeover: Is VMware Pricing Itself Out of the Market?

VMware VCF pricing shift explained: why costs jumped, which customers are most affected, and how teams are evaluating migration options.

Why Some Enterprises Still Ban Docker (and What Devs Are Doing About It)

While containers are mainstream, many large regulated organizations still ban Docker on developer machines. Here's why the restrictions exist and how dev teams work around them.

Are You Stuck with Outdated Alerting Tools? Here's What DevOps Teams Are Switching To

Opsgenie is losing ground as DevOps teams migrate to modern alerting platforms. Discover why engineers are tired of outdated workflows and which tools they're choosing instead—from Incident.io to Datadog On-Call.

VMware's AI Integration Is Here—But Do Sysadmins Actually Want It?

VMware AI launches with Intelligent Assist in vDefend, but sysadmins are skeptical. Discover why the community is cautious about AI in production environments and what VMware needs to do to win their trust.

Ingress-NGINX Is Retiring. The Kubernetes Crowd Already Has Favorites Lined Up.

Ingress-NGINX is retiring in March 2026, but the Kubernetes community isn't panicking. Operators have already shifted to alternatives like Traefik, Envoy Gateway, and Cilium—here's what's replacing the decade-old workhorse.

From Essentials to Expensive: The Harsh Reality of VMware Licensing in 2026

VMware licensing in 2026 explained: per-core pricing impact, budget math for small IT teams, and practical alternatives after Broadcom changes.

From Scripts to Simplicity: AWS Backup's Native Support for Amazon EKS

AWS Backup now natively supports Amazon EKS, eliminating the need for custom scripts and third-party tools. Here's why this changes everything for Kubernetes disaster recovery.

Docker in LXC on Proxmox: Risks, Tradeoffs, and Lessons

Running Docker inside LXC containers on Proxmox seems efficient, but is it safe? Community insights reveal the real risks and rewards of containers-in-containers.

HYCU vs. Veeam vs. Cohesity vs. Catalogic: What Small Nutanix Shops Really Use for Backup

HYCU vs Veeam vs Cohesity vs Catalogic for Nutanix backup: real operator feedback on restore speed, complexity, and total cost for smaller teams.

How One Bad API Call Took Down an Entire Ceph Cluster

A single malformed curl request crashed every monitor in a Ceph cluster, freezing VMs and bringing down an entire homelab. Here's how one admin rebuilt from scratch — and what we can all learn about API validation in distributed systems.

Cloud First, Regret Later: IT Pros Share What Really Happens After Migration

Behind the glossy cloud promises lies a harder truth: IT professionals share their real experiences with cloud migrations, unexpected costs, and why 'cloud first' doesn't always mean 'cloud best.'

Goodbye VMware: How Kubernetes and KubeVirt Became the New Virtualization Power Duo

After Broadcom's aggressive licensing changes, enterprises are saying goodbye to VMware and embracing Kubernetes with KubeVirt—a migration story about freedom, control, and the future of virtualization.

No Budget for Enterprise Drives? Here's How Proxmox Users Are Fighting SSD Wearout Anyway

Proxmox SSD wearout guide: reduce write amplification, tune ZFS, and extend consumer drive life when enterprise SSDs are out of budget.

VVF to VCF Transition: What It Means for VMware Customers

The transition from vSphere Foundation to VMware Cloud Foundation isn't just a technical change—it's a fundamental shift in who VMware serves. Small to mid-sized organizations are being priced out of an ecosystem they helped build.

Velero After Acquisition: Community Risk and Contingency Plans

When Broadcom acquired Velero, the Kubernetes community didn't panic—they prepared to fork. Here's why open-source backup tools are becoming trust exercises, and what engineers are doing about it.

The Proxmox DC Migration Saga: How Proxmox Community Untangled One Company's Active Directory Mess

When a company migrated their domain controllers from VMware to Proxmox, the NIC vanished and chaos ensued. Here's how the community debugged the restore nightmare and why you should never restore a DC.

Six Grand, Twelve Drives, and One Dream: How a 200TB Server Became a Portfolio

One engineer built a 200TB Proxmox and TrueNAS system from scratch—not for work, but as proof of skill. This is the story of how a homelab became a living resume.

Claude, Copilot, and Chaos: How AI Is Hollowing Out Tech Teams

A trial AI integration meant to boost productivity quietly became a cost-cutting weapon, gutting hiring pipelines and leaving junior engineers staring into an uncertain future.

IBM Layoffs and AI Messaging: What IT Teams Are Discussing

A critical look at IBM layoffs, AI transformation messaging, and how cost pressure is affecting technology teams.

Podman vs. Docker: Better on Paper, Losing in Practice

Podman is objectively better in many ways—rootless, daemonless, secure. So why does Docker still dominate? Turns out, being better on paper isn't enough when the real world runs on docs, support, and stability.

Tailscale Was Down—Again. Here's What the Internet Had to Say

When Tailscale's admin console went dark, it triggered more than frustration—it sparked a wave of interest in self-hosted alternatives like Headscale and raised questions about trusting cloud-based VPN infrastructure.

Ceph, HA, and the Minimum Viable Cluster for SMBs

Exploring the smallest Proxmox cluster setup that makes sense for high availability with Ceph—from 2-node setups with QDevices to the community's recommended 3-5 node configurations.

Proxmox SSD Disappearing After Reboot: Troubleshooting Guide

A deep dive into troubleshooting disappearing NVMe SSDs in Proxmox servers, from PCIe quirks to power delivery issues, with real solutions from the community.

RDP into Linux Like a Pro: How Beginners Are Ditching Windows for Debian, Ubuntu, and More

Discover how beginners are successfully switching from Windows to Linux in their home labs by setting up RDP access on Debian, Ubuntu, and other distros—making remote desktop as smooth as Windows without the resource drain.

Helper Scripts or Hidden Risks? The Ongoing Debate in the Proxmox Community

The Proxmox community is divided: are helper scripts the ultimate efficiency tool or a security risk waiting to happen? We explore both sides of the automation debate.

Old CPUs, New Tricks: Squeezing Performance from Legacy Hardware with Proxmox

Can a 14-year-old dual Xeon system still run Windows 11? The homelab community shows how Proxmox turns aging hardware into a learning playground—even when performance isn't the primary goal.

Why MariaDB Operator 25.10 Is a Big Deal for Stateful Workloads on Kubernetes

MariaDB Operator 25.10 brings production-ready async replication, automated failover, and snapshot-based replica recovery to Kubernetes—making stateful workloads finally feel like first-class citizens.

P2V for AHV Without Move? Here's What IT Pros Are Doing in 2025

Nutanix Move doesn't handle physical-to-virtual conversions for AHV. Here's the community-tested playbook IT pros are using in 2025 to migrate physical servers to AHV—VirtIO drivers, Veeam, and a little improvisation.

Mobile-First, API-Driven, and RAIDZ-Ready: Why Unraid 7.2.0 Is a Game-Changer

Unraid 7.2.0 brings a responsive mobile UI, ZFS RAIDZ expansion, and a built-in API. Here's why the community is calling this update a game-changer.

Broadcom Just Killed vSphere Standard. Here's What SMBs Are Doing Instead

Broadcom discontinued vSphere Standard, leaving SMBs scrambling. Real IT pros share their migration stories and why Proxmox and Hyper-V are winning the day.

Why Kubernetes Still Doesn't Natively Support Live Container Migration (And Why It Should)

Kubernetes has mastered orchestration, but still lacks native live container migration. Explore why this feature is missing, how CAST AI is changing the game with CRIU, and why it's time for K8s to catch up.

Running PBS on the Same Host? Here's Why Your Backups Might Crawl

High-end hardware but slow backups? Learn why running Proxmox Backup Server in a VM on the same host creates bottlenecks—and what you can do about it.

Is Proxmox Support Worth It? Here's What Real Users Are Saying

Deep dive into real experiences with Proxmox official support—from engineers managing massive clusters to MSPs weighing the value. Find out if paid support is worth it for your deployment.

Windows VMs Crawling in Proxmox? Changing This One Setting Might Be the Fix

Slow Windows VMs in Proxmox? The CPU type setting might be killing your performance. Learn why 'Host' isn't always best and how switching to emulated models can deliver 15x speed improvements.

Ephemeral Kubernetes Namespaces: Smart Dev Environments or a Scaling Nightmare?

Exploring the benefits and challenges of using ephemeral Kubernetes namespaces for development environments, from automated cleanup to state management complexities.

TrueNAS, Ubuntu, or Unraid: What's the Best OS for Your Offsite Backup Server?

TrueNAS vs Ubuntu vs Unraid for offsite backups: compare cost, setup complexity, ransomware resilience, and long-term maintenance for homelab storage.

AWS GovCloud vs Commercial Cloud: A Breakdown After the East Coast Meltdown

When us-east-1 went down, GovCloud stayed up. We explore why AWS's isolated government cloud survived the outage, and what it reveals about architecture, dependencies, and real resilience.

Cloud vs. Couch: Is VPS the Better Way to Self-Host in 2025?

The self-hosting community is shifting from home servers to VPS. We explore why public cloud self-hosting is gaining ground, where home servers still win, and how hybrid setups offer the best of both worlds.

VMware vs Hyper-V: The Unexpected Nuances of Making the Leap

Switching from VMware to Hyper-V isn't just about installing a new hypervisor—it's a complete mindset shift. Explore the real-world nuances of making the leap.

Grafana Still Wins: What a $40K Monitoring Failure Taught One DevOps Team About Tool Adoption

How a DevOps team spent $40K on a new monitoring platform, only to keep using Grafana. A cautionary tale about tool adoption, culture, and the real cost of shiny new software.

Inside AWS's October Outage and What Went Wrong

For over 14 hours, AWS's us-east-1 region buckled under a DNS bug. Here's the full breakdown of what went wrong, how automation backfired, and what AWS is doing to prevent it from happening again.

Running Proxmox in Production? Here's What Dell Won't Tell You

Teams are ditching VMware and asking whether Proxmox can hold its own on Dell PowerEdge servers. Here's what Dell won't tell you about support, compatibility, and running Proxmox in production.

The Sneaky Problem of Full Storage: How Proxmox Users Are Beating LVM-Thin Bloat

Proxmox LVM-thin filling up? Learn practical fixes to reclaim space, prevent pool bloat, and stop backup or VM failures before they happen.

Broadcom's Big VCF Shakeup: The Calm Guide Through the Chaos

Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation licensing changes are here. Here's the clear, calm guide to understanding what changed, what it means for your infrastructure, and how to respond strategically.

Multi-Region Failover: Why It Is Harder Than Most Diagrams

When AWS US-East-1 went down, engineers worldwide frantically Googled multi-region failover. But the reality is much harder than the diagrams suggest—here's why building true resilience is expensive, complex, and often left underfunded.

When Your Firewall Won't Listen: The Frustration of Locking Down Proxmox's Port 8006

A deep dive into why blocking Proxmox's port 8006 is harder than it looks, exploring the layers of virtual firewalls, VLANs, and the architecture that makes management port control so tricky.

AWS us-east-1 Outage: Why Concentration Risk Still Matters

When AWS US-EAST-1 went down due to DNS failure, it exposed the painful irony of cloud resilience. 82 services crashed, including Slack, DockerHub, and Ring. Here's why the cloud's most popular region became its biggest single point of failure.

When GitOps Meets Emergency Fixes: ArgoCD Operational Lessons

GitOps can be clean in theory but difficult under production pressure. A practical look at ArgoCD emergency-fix workflows and operational tradeoffs.

When the Cloud Breaks: How One AWS Outage Took Down Half the Internet

At midnight Pacific Time on October 20th, the internet started acting weird. Amazon, Duolingo, Fortnite, and Slack all went dark. The culprit? Another AWS US-EAST-1 outage that exposed how centralized—and fragile—the modern internet really is.

Ceph Is a Beast, ZFS Just Works: Inside the Storage Wars of the Proxmox Community

Ceph vs ZFS in Proxmox homelabs: a practical comparison of complexity, failure handling, and performance for real-world self-hosted clusters.

Ceph vs ZFS vs NAS: The Truth About High Availability Storage in Proxmox

Ceph vs ZFS vs NAS for Proxmox HA: tradeoffs, failure patterns, and architecture choices that improve reliability without overengineering.

Wait, Where's the UPS Support in Proxmox 9?

If you've upgraded to Proxmox 9 and can't find UPS configuration in the WebGUI, you're not alone. Here's what happened to UPS support and how the community is handling it.

When Proxmox and iSCSI Just Don't Click: What Ex-VMware Users Need to Know

Migrating from VMware to Proxmox? If your Proxmox iSCSI storage performance is a nightmare, you're not alone. Here's what's wrong—and what to fix.

Tailmox 1.2.0: A Cleaner Way to Connect Proxmox Clusters Across the Globe

Tailmox 1.2.0 uses Tailscale to connect Proxmox hosts across any distance, bypassing VPN headaches and NAT traversal. Here's why it matters for distributed homelabs.

Editing in Prod: A Love Letter to Every SRE Who's Ever Broken Glass

GitOps promises pristine, repeatable deployments — until it's 2AM and your cluster is on fire. Here's why kubectl edit in prod isn't always a sin.

From Enterprise Bloat to OSS Brilliance: A Kubernetes Cost-Cutting Story

A team saved $100,000 by swapping an overpriced enterprise API gateway for Kong OSS. Here's why more teams should ask: do we actually still need this?

Open Source Is Free—Until It's Not: The CNCF and the Cost of 'Free' Infrastructure

The internet runs on open source tools maintained by volunteers who might burn out or walk away at any time. What happens when 'free' stops being free?

Who Needs Blue-Green? Tales from the Trench of Live Cluster Upgrades

Blue-green deployments are the gold standard — but in the real world, plenty of teams are upgrading clusters in-place and living to tell the tale. Here's what the trenches actually look like.

Zabbix vs CheckMK vs Prometheus: What's the Real Deal for Lightweight Monitoring?

Zabbix vs CheckMK vs Prometheus for lightweight monitoring: compare setup effort, visibility, and long-term maintainability for small teams.

Kubernetes Docs: Surprisingly Good or Just the Best of a Bad Bunch?

In a world of cryptic PDFs and half-baked API references, Kubernetes documentation might just be... good? Or maybe it's just less bad than the rest.

Maintainers, Martyrs, and Myths: Inside the Labor Economy of Kubernetes

Kubernetes powers the modern internet, but peek under the hood and you'll find unpaid volunteers, burnout, and a labor model running on fumes. Time to rethink the deal.

CUE, Kyaml, and the Battle to Fix YAML: Devs Are Over It

YAML is everywhere in Kubernetes land, but engineers are over it. Enter CUE, Kyaml, Jsonnet, and a wave of tools trying to fix configuration without throwing it all out.

Getting Started with Proxmox VE 8

A comprehensive guide to installing and configuring Proxmox Virtual Environment for your homelab.

Setting Up a Kubernetes Cluster in Your Homelab

Learn how to deploy a production-grade K3s cluster on Proxmox with high availability.

ZFS Configuration Guide for Optimal Performance

Master ZFS pool creation, tuning, and best practices for data integrity and speed.