infrastructure

Infrastructure that stays up

Servers, cloud, deployment, monitoring, backups and security. The layer everything else depends on, built so it doesn't need thinking about, and looked after so it stays that way.

What it looks like from where you're sitting

The server was set up by someone years ago. It works. Nobody wants to touch it, update it, or find out what's on it.

Deploying a change means someone copying files on a Friday evening and hoping.

Backups exist, probably. Nobody has ever restored one.

What we do about it

Build it properly, write it down, watch it

Design and provisioning

Hardened Linux servers or cloud environments sized to the job, built from a repeatable pattern so the next one is the same as the last.

Migrations

Moving live systems off old servers, between providers, or from one database to another, with a plan, a rehearsal, and a rollback.

Deployment pipelines

Code goes from a commit to production through a pipeline that tests it, with staging in between. No Friday evening file copies.

Monitoring and alerting

Uptime, resources, logs and application health, with alerts that reach a person who can act and don't cry wolf.

Backups you can restore

Automated, off-server, tested by actually restoring them on a schedule. A backup that's never been restored is a hope, not a backup.

Security and hygiene

Patching, firewalls, least-privilege access, no shared root logins, secrets managed properly, and a straight answer about what's exposed.

For the technical reader

How it's built

Ubuntu LTS, Caddy for TLS and routing, per-application users and service isolation, managed databases where the provider does it better than we would. Provisioning scripted so environments are reproducible. GitHub Actions for build and deploy, with environments gated and secrets kept out of the repo.

Monitoring is push-based where we can make it so: the thing being watched reports in, and silence is itself an alert. Backups go to object storage in a separate account, with restore drills on a calendar. Everything is documented in a runbook that a competent engineer who has never seen the system could follow.

os · ubuntu lts, hardened baseline edge · caddy, tls, per-app isolation data · postgres, mysql (managed), object storage cloud · digitalocean, others on request delivery · github actions, staging → production ops · push monitoring, alerting, restore drills, runbooks
example · platform

Rebuilding a multi-site hosting platform after a compromise

[Case study placeholder. What was found, how the live sites were kept running, the new per-site isolation and monitoring design, migration with no downtime. Our own platform, so this one can be told in full.]

Not sure what's on that server either?

We'll take a look and tell you plainly what state it's in, what's at risk, and what we'd do about it.