Vendor‑Neutral or Cloud‑Specific for Kubernetes: What’s the Better Path for a New Container Learner?

I have ADHD and I wasn’t taking my medicine like I should have been, so why I started learning containers out of the blue may have something to do with that. However, I started back on my meds and I am still learning and highly interested in building and managing containers. I have only been doing this for two weeks so I’m still very new to it. I still have to look up Git commands and still run into a lot of simplistic issues that I am fixing through troubleshooting. But I have to say, building and managing containers via Docker Desktop on my personal laptop is exciting and fun. I don’t know if I’ll turn this into a career. I am currently in IT, and have been for 10 years but I am 40 years old. I’m sure my age would put a lot of people off no matter how much knowledge I have and skill I can show.

My next step is going to be learning Kubernetes. And this is where I am asking for advice on. Should I continue my learning via the vendor neutral approach or should I move my learning to a cloud platform? There seems to be some advantages to learning a specific cloud platform but if the knowledge I’m building now translates to all of them 1:1, then sticking with vendor neutral learning would be more advantageous in the long run.

Also, if you guys don’t mind answering this question as well, I’d greatly appreciate it. What else should I learn?

https://redd.it/1vmdexs
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Cheapest server for a school project

Hello guys, i have a school project to deploy an app on cloud using ansible, the the servers are not given by the school itself.
What is the cheapest available clouds out there? I only need it to validate the project and then I can cancel.

https://redd.it/1vmgrns
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AI Agent for CI Failure Diagnosis

I'm trying to build an agent that finds the reason why CI run failed

Like, what are the things going on in your head and

Let's imagine. Your brain has something like a belief system that sort of makes you suspect certain things more.

I want to know how practitioners think, like what doubts they are holding the moment they see a CI file, and how they determine what to look for to find the real cause and if it's a real code failure or some flaky test

And finally, At what point do they determine that they're pretty much sure about the cause?

https://redd.it/1vmg4ew
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Deploying docker-compose.yml

Hello all. The circumstance I have working with is the following:
* I have an Apache2 PHP server that gets bundled as a Docker image in a CI process to ECR

* I have an infra repository with a docker-compose.yml that bundles the PHP Docker image to an Nginx image, alongside Nginx config like attaching TLS certs


When the CICD process deploys a release, it deploys a new EC2 with a given user data script to prop up the server. If I only had a Docker image, the user data would generally look like "Pull down ECR image and start image", however in this case I am spinning up a docker-compose.yml file.

How is this typically done? I suppose I *can* add a CI process to zip up the docker-compose.yml and related nginx config, however feels backwards? Is there a consensus with this?

If I am fundamentally misunderstanding something let me know, I'd say my only constraint is I'd like to solve this problem in a relatively cloud agnostic environment (so keeping EC2 as a VM, ECR as a registry, but excluding abstractions like Fargate or ECS)

Thanks!

https://redd.it/1vmjm45
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Has anyone looked at RapidFort's curated libraries as a Chainguard alternative?

We've been evaluating Chainguard libraries as a way to reduce the risk of pulling vulnerable or malicious open-source packages into our builds. It seemed like one of the few established options. That was until I saw that RapidFort recently launched curated libraries as well.



Has anyone had a chance to compare the two yet? I'm interested in how they differ in practice rather than on the marketing pages. Things like package coverage, malware scanning and workflow integration. Also developer experience and ongoing maintenance all matter to us.



Has anyone here evaluated both or decided one was a better fit?

https://redd.it/1vmo871
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Tired of juggling WindTerm / Termius / FinalShell — so I made one Rust app that aims for all three

https://github.com/vesaaa/vsterm

|Capability|VsTerm|WindTerm|Termius|FinalShell|MobaXterm|SecureCRT|Xshell|Tabby|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Implementation language|Rust|C/C++|Electron|Java|C++|C++|C++|Electron|
|Max terminal scrollback lines|100k / 500k (Pro)|unlimited|\-|\-|360,000|128,000|\~2.1B|25,000|
|Command-block folding / outline in terminal output|✅|✅|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|
|Integrated SFTP pane / remote file manager|✅|✅|✅|✅|✅|◐|◐|◐|
|SFTP transfer progress / queue visibility|✅|◐|◐|✅|◐|◐|◐|◐|
|ZMODEM (rz / sz) built in|✅|✅|✗|✅|◐|✅|✅|✅|
|ZMODEM progress surfaced in the app|✅|✅|✗|◐|◐|◐|◐|◐|
|Terminal ↔ file-pane path sync|✅|✗|◐|◐|✗|✗|✗|✗|
|Elevated SFTP that can follow sudo -i / su|✅|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|
|Route diagram / policy-routing topology|✅|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|
|Path trace with geo / ASN enrichment|✅|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|
|Built-in IP quality / reputation checks|✅|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|
|CPU / memory / storage graphical monitor|✅|◐|✗|✅|✗|✗|✗|✗|
|Connection / socket monitoring panel|✅|✗|✗|◐|✗|✗|✗|✗|
|Connect effects / motion polish|✅|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|
|Desk pet|✅|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|✗|

https://redd.it/1vmbzrv
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Looking for feedback on first attempt at setting up hosting and CI/CD for a fullstack .NET and React app with PostgreSQL database, hosted on Github using Github Actions.

Hi,

I'm a Senior Software Engineer with 5YOE. I'm upskilling in DevOps and project setup and have been creating this project to learn over the last few weeks. I've set up the project from scratch. Definining the project structure, creating PR pipelines for linting, formatting, typechecking, unit tests and e2e tests (tests with real database).

Over the last few weeks, I've set up the cloud infrastructure on AWS. I first just created an ec2 instance, uploaded the build files and database docker images, installed neccessary packages and ran it on the barebones ec2 to help me understand the fundamentals.

Then I went about setting up a bit more of a mature setup with RDS for the database on a private subnet, ECS Fargate to host the containerised API, using opentofu for IaaC, setting up a deploy pipeline which uploads the new container images, and runs the migrations and deploys the API service. This was quite a steep learning curve for me and I heavily relied on Gemini for a lot of this, but I have gone back over it to make sure I fully understand it. I'd really appreaciate some feedback on my setup. I'd like to know any best practices I could have followed, any big issues with the setup I've done and how I could have done better.


Also, this is just a simple project that I'm going to switch over to self hosting with Coolify on a Hertzner server soon. But I wanted to try setting up as close to a professional setup as I could, with security and CI/CD in mind.

I've done a write up of the infrastructure here
https://github.com/JackMcBride98/DotnetSpotifyPlaylistSearchTool/blob/main/infrastructure/Infrastructure.md all of the terraform files live in the /infrastructure folder.

Here is a rough overview of the architecture (I didnt draw arrows as it got quite messy)

https://preview.redd.it/e296cv2qq3jh1.png?width=732&format=png&auto=webp&s=6028ba035caf0f7292d6c92f52b1c8d37ddbd877

https://redd.it/1vn4tdm
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Amazon Q is saving me these days otherwise I will be having a hard time using AWS services

Thank god AWS has Amazon Q otherwise I'll still be having a very hard time even finding the environment variables of a project.

https://redd.it/1vn3ypi
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Looking for a good free resource to learn Jenkins properly

I’m new to DevOps and looking for some good free or paid resources to learn Jenkins from the ground up.
I have around 6 years of experience as a Java developer and have used Jenkins at work, but mostly from a user/developer perspective. I’ve triggered jobs and worked with existing pipelines, but I’ve never actually built a pipeline myself or understood what’s happening behind the scenes.
I’d like to learn Jenkins properly, including things like:
How Jenkins works internally
Setting up Jenkins and agents/nodes
Freestyle jobs vs Pipeline
Declarative vs Scripted Pipeline
Jenkinsfile and pipeline stages
How builds are triggered
Credentials and secrets management
Plugins and how they work
Integration with Git, Maven, Docker, etc.
CI/CD concepts and best practices
How Jenkins distributes work to agents
Debugging failed pipelines
What actually happens from a Git commit → Jenkins → build → test → deployment
I’m comfortable with Java and software development, so I’m mainly looking for something that goes beyond a basic “how to install Jenkins” tutorial.
What resources/courses did you find genuinely useful for learning Jenkins end-to-end? Free resources are preferred, but I’m also open to paid courses if they’re really worth it.
Thanks!

https://redd.it/1vna68k
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Where should cross-system infrastructure automation stop?

I’m working through a design where each underlying system remains authoritative for its own resources, rather than putting another source of truth above everything.

The wider runtime only decides whether an operation has enough dependency state, readiness and verification to keep moving.

>The case I’m trying to pressure-test is partial execution. Say an operation spans several systems, three parts succeed and one fails. Each individual system may still be healthy, but the overall operation is incomplete.

Would you let the wider workflow block there, or does that eventually become another control layer operators have to fight with?

Interested in examples where this kind of boundary has worked badly in production.

https://redd.it/1vnaws5
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Devops job security with AI

Recently saw posts about how AI isn't that good in distributed systems and it gave me validation on my own experience.

When the model isn't dealing with a single codebase, when it has to connect the dots between a db, redis, other cloud infra, k8s that each already have a lot of configuration, it starts to hallucinate and could pretty much put your infra at risk.

I'm not saying you can't make it work, it does work especially on a clean slate, but when there's a lot of existing context it needs a more guidance.

Using AI lets me do 10x what a DevOps engineer could do alone but I don't think the job disappears anytime soon.

https://redd.it/1vnacqq
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How would you architect this?

There is a team that wants to develop a user interface so they can deploy resources such as ec2 instances, etc. We already have an automated pipeline that everyone uses and it deploys these resources already. However, they still want their own which is weird. We still have to build it for their new requirement. That's with the approval of the upper management which has already happened. Anyway, we are just devops engineers and we will follow whatever management commands us even if we don't like it.

I was thinking of building an api layer that developers can use(endpoints). They'll call the endpoints on their ui. I haven't decided which to use in the backend api, maybe aws sdk, boto3 or cdk, whatever. Making that work means, we'll have to setup proper IAM role permissions so that those resources they configured in their configuration files will be created. It's almost administrator permission equivalent is what they need.

I don't know if I am being too strict. It's because we've always kept the infra code just within our devops team. This is the first time a developer team would like to deploy their own resources using their own tooling.

How are you doing it? What's your implementation?

https://redd.it/1vnm3qa
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How to learn Linux troubleshooting without working with Linux professionally?

Hi guys! I'm a backend engineer with 6+ yoe, trying to transition into a DevOps role.

I know that having a strong Linux foundation is super important for being a good DevOps engineer, and apparently “Linux troubleshooting” is mandatory in most job postings. But to me, “Linux troubleshooting” sounds so broad, so I’m not really sure how to improve this skill.

Is this something you can learn without working with Linux (professionally) on a daily basis? What do you guys recommend to get hands on experience with it?

Also, what about other important topics, such as Linux logs and networking? I’m building a homelab with Proxmox. Is this a good way to get some hands on experience with these topics?

I’d appreciate any thoughts or advice! Thanks.

https://redd.it/1vnq5qi
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How do you measure if readers actually understood your technical articles?

Been thinking about this for a while —
page views and time-on-page tell you
about reach but nothing about comprehension.

Did anyone else try adding quizzes or
knowledge checks at the end of tutorials?

I experimented with adding a quiz to my
Kubernetes Operators article. First result:
0% of readers answered Q1 correctly
(what is the primary purpose of Operators)
but 100% got the deployment steps right.

Tells me my foundational explanation
failed but my implementation guide worked.

Has anyone else tried measuring
comprehension rather than just traffic?
What approaches worked?

https://redd.it/1vnta8b
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Improving my ci cd flow

Hello all,been working as IT admin, but mostly working around Azure devops. I been enjoying it, this my first job and doing anything related to devops. Studied CS,majored in networking, hate anything with heavy code development.

Rn,the flow at my company is, the devs use 1 branch only, no PR (yes ik). They would push it to our on prem central repo, and from there i will take over. I will do some modification on some files so it can be built in the new agent environment. And then, we have build pipelines,which would produce artifact of the build files, which will be used by another pipeline, i call it the release/installer pipelines, which we wud package them with a software. Then we have the 3rd type, which is zipping installer to our NAS, sends the metadata of the installer to DB, and notification email (formatting done in pipeline too). All via the pipeline. We also have a 2nd agent machine, exclusively for unit testing, but tbh i dont even understand how they work.

Ive been thinking of ways, to incorporate other methods/tools in the flow, but the only one i can fit is"templates". I dont think i can try to include containerization, as our build agent machine, has some software which are licensed.

Any ideas?at some point i want to jump out, as this job is way too comfy, and lacks growth for me

https://redd.it/1vntyvs
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What belongs in a production-readiness gate for a small engineering team?

For a small team with a few services, an enterprise checklist can become ceremony without reducing the main risks. My minimum gate would cover a tested rollback, backups with a restore exercise, health and readiness checks, bounded timeouts and retries, an alert owner, log correlation, secret ownership, and a short incident runbook.



I would add load testing or multi-region recovery only when the service’s traffic and recovery target justify them. Which item has prevented a real incident for a small team, and which common checklist item has mostly created busywork?

https://redd.it/1vnxx4v
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what’s the ops incident that stumped you the longest?

Building a course around real production incidents instead of the usual “here’s what a pod is” stuff. Currently have 19 scenarios, things like a stateful service losing its volume binding on redeploy, a network policy silently breaking service-to-service calls, memory limits causing kills that only show up under real load.

What’s missing?

Drop the ops problem that stumped you the most, if it’s one you never fully cracked, or took way longer than it should’ve to root-cause. those gaps are exactly what I want this to cover.

Also not looking for docs-answers, more like what broke, why it wasn’t obvious at first, what you actually tried before it clicked.

Thanks.

https://redd.it/1vo0s7t
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