Field notes from the infrastructure trenches
The infrastructure game is simple: everything that can fail, will fail. The only question is whether you'll be ready.
The Reality Check
Most systems fail not because of exotic edge cases, but because of mundane, predictable problems. Disk fills up. Memory leaks. Connection pools exhaust. DNS times out. The CAP theorem isn't theoretical—it's Tuesday.
What Actually Matters
Observability isn't optional. If you can't measure it, you can't fix it. Metrics, logs, traces—all of them. The production fire starts 30 minutes before you notice it in Slack.
Redundancy is expensive until it isn't. That backup database you're paying for? Worth every cent at 3 AM when the primary goes down.
Automate everything. Manual deployments are tech debt. Manual rollbacks are disasters waiting to happen.
The Stack
Real infrastructure isn't glamorous: - Load balancers that actually balance - Databases that replicate correctly - Queues that handle backpressure - Logs that don't fill your disk
Getting Started
# The basics still matter
systemctl status your-service
journalctl -fu your-service
htop
df -hThe Bottom Line
Infrastructure is about reducing surprises. Every layer of abstraction is a place where things can go wrong. Know your stack. Own your uptime.