Musings on Devops, Systems, and Infrastructure

Welcome to my blog

For a very long time, I've been keeping notes of how-to's for various things I've been working on as a form of documentation. Often these are cryptic in nature with just a few descriptive words mixed with lots of commands or code.

Lately though I've also been working on more formal documentation for coworkers in the form of wiki pages and repository README.md files. These internal docs help everyone understand not just the "how", but also the "why" I do things a certain way. So I thought it might be worthwhile to put some of this content on a public blog since it's already written.

I realize though that by putting things out there, particularly with technical content, I'm opening myself up to criticism. I understand there will always be someone to tell me my approach is wrong or that there's a better way to do something. And they may very well be right. After all, it's not possible to know everything. I believe good engineers should have some strong ideas about how to solve problems. Being opinionated usually implies experience with things that don't work well.

In that context, articles that I write here will only describe my experiences with tools and configurations I believe work well. I'm merely trying to share what I've learned as a way to help others, so take from it whatever you find helpful. Happy reading.

Find Me

 

Boston, MA

erik "at" erikpatton.com

About Me

 

I'm an old school sysadmin turned Cloud/DevOps/Platform/SRE/whatever still doing systems work since before the dot com crash. Back then I lived in Silicon Valley but am now in Boston.

I've written a lot of code, mostly in Python and Perl (old school remember), although I'm finding Javascript/Node on Astro.js a fun diversion. I'll never admit to knowing how to debug C pointers for fear of someone asking me to do it.

Currently I'm working on a hybrid AWS Kubernetes cluster using OpenShift. Fun with IAM policies, persistent storage, and the like. Underneath it all though is still a Linux OS that even non-gray beards like me can still tinker with.

I do a bit of consulting and contract work, so if you need help with a project please don't be shy about reaching out.