Seeking Advice

I have a network administrator degree and want to get into devops. I've been looking at videos on YouTube and getting some experience with my homelab, but it is only taking me so far. I would like to find a bootcamp that has either live instruction or at least will be able to answer questions if I get stuck on a question. If any one in the community can point me in the right direction, that would be great.

https://redd.it/1p8wb9i
@r_devops

Black Friday Deals ?? join the thread !!

Hey there,

I found some interesting deals:

https://kodekloud.com/black-friday-sale

https://labs.iximiuz.com

https://codewithmosh.com/p/all-access

https://tryhackme.com/pricing

https://neetcode.io/pro

https://www.algoexpert.io/purchase



https://redd.it/1p8vmmr
@r_devops

Nexus choked to death

A funny incident happened today at my workplace. For context, our company enforced pulling from public repo strictly through Nexus proxy.

I had finish with hardening AL2023 minimal with Nexus proxy configured. Who would've thought DNF 3 packages during build stage would brought down our Nexus server which never happened until today. The platform guy thought "Huh guess it's time to scale up". He did with 16 vCPU and 64 GB of memory. Same thing happened. He couldn't believe it and like "Aight imma get Sonatype support for this".

Not long after a devops guy called me just want to see it live + trying to blame my dockerfile. He noticed there's a for-loop though it only disables repo lists except for Nexus's. I build the image to prove it to him and lo and behold, Nexus server died in front of his eyes. He laughed in disbelief for a good minute there.

In the end, he asked me to rebuild again so he can record and show to support.

Not sure what happened tbh but it's pretty funny ngl.

https://redd.it/1p8zgrd
@r_devops

Anyone here taken the CNPE (Cloud Native Platform Engineer) certification?

Hey all,


The CNPE certification is now available, and I’m curious, has anyone here taken it yet?
What was your experience? Difficulty level? Worth it for platform engineers?

Would love to hear your thoughts before I go for it.

https://redd.it/1p918pk
@r_devops

What is costing you money, sleep or sanity?

As the noscript suggests, I’m looking for “hair on fire” problem that you guys experience when dealing with the cloud or your hosting provider.

I’m not looking to make a startup of the problems you share. You see I am a SRE/DevOps Engineer with a YouTube channel around playing with infra. And I’m looking for ideas… I hope that wasn’t promotion btw !

https://redd.it/1p96q2k
@r_devops

Our AI coding workflow is creating tech debt faster than we can ship

Our team's been dealing with the usual AI coding mess, works fine in isolation, but the overall architecture is held together with duct tape. Nobody understands the systems we're building anymore.

Started trying something different: use AI to generate architecture plans first (been testing socratesai.dev), then feed those to Cursor/Claude for actual code. Idea is to separate the "what should this look like" from the "write the code." Too early to tell if it actually works or if I'm just adding extra steps.

But at least the Terraform modules are following some kind of pattern now instead of each PR being a creative interpretation of our standards. Anyone else trying to wrangle AI tools into following actual architecture? Or have you just accepted everything needs heavy refactoring anyway?

https://redd.it/1p9axg4
@r_devops

How did your team handle the Bitnami paid changes?

Joined a company earlier this year without knowing that they had been kicking the can down the road RE: how to handle Bitnami's change to paid for images.

The guy who hired me left and now I need to come up with an opinion on what to do.

How did you end up approaching?

https://redd.it/1p9cfoz
@r_devops

Hardcoded API Keys: The Rookie Mistake That Costs Millions 💎

https://instatunnel.my/blog/hardcoded-api-keys-the-rookie-mistake-that-costs-millions

https://redd.it/1p9eqld
@r_devops

how to find good open source projects?

Hello beautiful people,

Recently I got fired as a Cloud Support Engineer, I have only one year of experience and wanna boost my resume doing open source projects. As far as I've heard it's a good way to showcase your skills. I'll still do separate projects.

How to find good beginner-friendly projects and how to participate? What should I search for? Already asked GPT but thought it's a cool idea to ask here as well. Thank you in advance.

https://redd.it/1p9gwxf
@r_devops

Advent of DevOps?

..is there such a thing, that anyone can recommend? Kubernetes, Docker, containerization, etc would be great. Linux, networking, noscripting, etc too.

https://redd.it/1p9lw5e
@r_devops

Ephemeral Infrastructure: Why Short-Lived is a Good Thing

https://lukasniessen.medium.com/ephemeral-infrastructure-why-short-lived-is-a-good-thing-2cf26afd75ef

https://redd.it/1p9rzfs
@r_devops

Hardware for build agents

I'm considering whether it will be better to get multiple small low powered machines or a single high spec machine to run builds. I'm currently using Teamcity community so limited to 3 build agents. The build artifacts will all be docker images. I was thinking of a quad core i3 with 8gb ram for each agent which I can get for quite cheap. Alternatively will have to spend a bit more to build a higher spec machine with maybe an i5 with 32gb ram. Which do you think is better?

https://redd.it/1p9uj0l
@r_devops

Built a tiny chat tool that runs over SSH because I kept getting distracted using normal messaging apps

I’ve been working on a small side project called Shello, and I figured some folks here might appreciate the idea.

The whole thing started because I have ADHD and I kept breaking focus every time I needed to message my boss or teammate. I’d grab my phone “just to send one quick message,” and suddenly I’m looking at random notifications, DMs, memes, whatever. Total flow killer.

Recently I saw ThePrimeagen demo that you could literally buy his coffee from the terminal, and that pushed me down the rabbit hole of “why am I leaving the terminal just to communicate in the first place?”

So I built a minimal chat app you can access entirely over SSH:

ssh ssh.shello.dev

You enter your passkey and you’re in. No browser, no Electron, no extra UI. Just a quiet little chat room that lives inside the terminal where I’m already working.

To be clear, this isn’t meant to replace iMessage/Discord/Slack for your whole life. You’ll still use your phone for your mom or whatever. It’s specifically for work mode quick communication without yanking your brain out of the codebase.

If anyone wants to check out the landing page or hop on the waitlist, it’s here:
https://www.shello.dev

Not trying to sell anything, just sharing because I figured other devops/sysadmin folks might enjoy the simplicity.

Happy to answer questions or take roasting if the idea is dumb.

https://redd.it/1p9yo0u
@r_devops

What's a good starting point?

Hi

Its my first post please be gentle.

So I'm a software developer for the past 10 years, and worked in the same company with 5 other developers we always just had 2 servers (1 for the db and 1 for php)
Recently I've looked a bit into operations and systems for more in-depth knowledge of how servers are supposed to scale.

This year we migrated to aws, it did not go well we had 2 months of prod downtime, because we were ehh well not prepared..

We have good uptime by now, and since I played a big role in this, he's moving the cto to an advisory role. And wants me to set me up as a DevOps role in the company.
He doesn't mind if he has to pay for a few courses for me.

with that said, since I all I find about the DevOps role is for ones in relatively big companies.
We just have 5 developers, no cto or even lead.
Do you guys have any recommendations for my situation?
Maybe advice on where to start, or even paid courses are fine.
It would be a tremendous help me for, to hear your opinions

https://redd.it/1p9yjkx
@r_devops

Building an AI agent that automatically investigates pipeline failures

I've been working as a DevOps consultant for about 2 years. Recently I started experimenting with adding agentic capabilities to CI/CD pipelines. What if you our your team can understand pipeline failure better

Here's the full post: https://muhammadraza.me/2025/building-ai-agents-devops-automation/

Would love to hear how everyone is using AI within in their DevOps Workflows?

https://redd.it/1p9yb6n
@r_devops

I Built a Free Cloudflare Worker to Block 2,000+ Weekly Bot Sessions (Open Source)

My site was getting hammered by bot traffic—over 2,000 sessions per week from China and Tencent's network, completely polluting my Google Analytics. I built a Cloudflare Worker to fix it, and it's been running in production for months with zero issues.

# The Problem

* 800+ sessions/week from Lanzhou, China
* 500+ from Tencent's network (ASN 13220/132203)
* AI scrapers ignoring robots.txt
* Analytics showing 60% bot traffic
* Impossible to see real user metrics

# The Solution

A multi-layer Cloudflare Worker that blocks bots at the edge before they hit your server:

**Layer 1: Geographic + ASN Blocking**
Block specific countries (e.g., China) and networks/hosting providers (e.g., Tencent).

**Layer 2: AI Scraper Blocking**
Blocks 14+ known AI training bots (GPTBot, Claude, CCBot, etc.) while still allowing legitimate search engines.

**Layer 3: Rate Limiting**
Prevents aggressive scraping with customizable limits per IP.

# Results After Deployment

* Blocked 2,000+ bot sessions/week
* Analytics pollution dropped 60%
* Server bandwidth reduced 40%
* Zero false positives
* Runs on Cloudflare free tier ($0/month)
* <1ms execution time (no performance impact)

# Open Source

I've cleaned up the code and open-sourced it: [**github.com/AbdusM/cloudflare-bot-blocker**](https://github.com/AbdusM/cloudflare-bot-blocker)

Includes production-ready worker code, three configurations (minimal, standard, strict), complete setup guide, monitoring instructions, real-world ASN/country lists, and MIT license.

# Quick Start

# Clone and deploy
git clone https://github.com/AbdusM/cloudflare-bot-blocker
cd cloudflare-bot-blocker

# Customize blocking rules in worker.js
# Edit BLOCKED_COUNTRIES, BLOCKED_ASNS, AI_SCRAPERS

# Deploy
wrangler deploy


# Who Should Use This

* Sites getting bot traffic from China/Tencent
* Anyone tired of AI scrapers ignoring robots.txt
* GA4 showing suspicious traffic patterns
* Sites wanting to protect bandwidth/server resources
* Anyone on Cloudflare (free tier works)

# Configuration Examples

|Mode|Use Case|What It Does|
|:-|:-|:-|
|**Minimal**|Global audience|Block China, Tencent networks, worst AI scrapers only|
|**Standard**|Most sites|Block specific countries, known bot networks, AI crawlers, balanced rate limits|
|**Strict**|Regional sites|Whitelist specific countries, block all AI scrapers, aggressive rate limiting|

# Monitoring

The worker logs all blocks as JSON:

{
"action": "BLOCKED",
"reason": "blocked_country",
"country": "CN",
"ip": "1.2.3.4",
"path": "/some-page",
"timestamp": "2025-11-29T12:00:00.000Z"
}


View live: `wrangler tail your-worker-name --format=json | grep "BLOCKED"`

# Important Notes

* Test before deploying to production
* Be careful blocking countries where you have real users
* Check your analytics to identify bad ASNs
* Monitor logs after deployment

# Contributing

PRs welcome—especially new AI scraper user agents (the landscape changes fast), common bot ASNs, and performance improvements.

https://redd.it/1pa3qyg
@r_devops

Python CLI for automating Advent of Code workflows (caching, safe submissions, leaderboards)

I built a small Python CLI called “elf” to automate Advent of Code tasks that usually require manual copy and paste. It is designed to be noscriptable and safe for repeated use.

Features:
• Fetch and cache puzzle inputs
• Guarded answer submissions with guess history
• Private leaderboard retrieval (JSON, table, or typed model)
• Typed Python API for integration or automation
• Cross-platform and dependency-light

GitHub: https://github.com/cak/elf
PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/elf

If anyone automates AoC for fun or as a warmup exercise each December, I’d appreciate feedback.https://github.com/cak/elf

https://redd.it/1pa4n8r
@r_devops

Excessive Data Exposure in APIs: Why Your Endpoints Return Too Much Information 📤

https://instatunnel.my/blog/excessive-data-exposure-in-apis-why-your-endpoints-return-too-much-information

https://redd.it/1pa8ghg
@r_devops

The momentum of Gitless GitOps (OCI Centric)

You think it’s just a buzz or a real solution that will be adopted?

Have you adopt it? Share some experience, since we considering going there

https://redd.it/1pa9hxr
@r_devops

Our sprint planning keeps blowing up bc of surprises every damn week… how do we stick to our agenda?

Every time we try to run a clean session, someone suddenly remembers a critical ticket, a hidden dependency or some last-minute scope change that nukes the whole plan. It’s like the agenda is just a suggestion at this point. Anyone figured out how to keep things structured without sounding like the process police?

https://redd.it/1pab2uc
@r_devops

Struggling to find a proper way to share private helm charts to clients

So we have some private helm charts that we want to distribute to our clients, our OCI images are private and are in dockerhub, ideally i would like to have one place to grant access to our helm charts and our docker images. that's why i pushed the charts also there.


Should i add the clients as members in the team in dockerhub with only read access? so that they can get both the images and the charts? what is your way of handling this.


ideally i wouldn't want to require my clients to sign in to docker, just an access token that i manage and distribute to the client would be enough, access tokens in docker however are user based. you need to specify the user to consume them.

https://redd.it/1paea9g
@r_devops