In this post, I want to dive deep into VPA (version 1.3.0), explain why it could be useful for you, and provide a quick overview in the first section if you're short on time. This article mainly focuses on the Recommender component - I'll cover the other two in a future post.

1. Don't Skimp on Resource Requests and Limits
2. Namespace Like Your Life Depends on It
3. Avoid Running Multiple Containers in One Pod Unless Necessary
4. Use a Package Manager for Your YAML Files
5. Ingress and Networking Best Practices
6. Lean On Liveness, Readiness, and Startup Probes
7. Mind Your Security: RBAC, Pod Security, and Secrets
8. Monitor Everything (And Then Monitor Some More)
9. Automate Deployments with CI/CD
10. Keep Your Kubernetes Cluster and Components Updated
11. Use Labels and Annotations Wisely
12. Adopt a Multi-Environment Approach
13. Optimize Your Container Images
14. Implement a Reliable Logging Strategy
15. Treat Kubernetes Like Cattle, Not a Pet
16. Consider a Higher-Level Approach for Complex Deployments
17. Final Thoughts

Ever notice how major system failures rarely start with major problems? That's exactly what happened to us when a simple push notification exposed the fragility of our Kubernetes infrastructure. But here's the twist: it wasn’t a bug that took us down—it was our own success.

What is a quality gate? A quality gate is a milestone in an IT project that requires that predefined criteria be met before the project can proceed to the next phase. We set quality gates for code programs, run unit/integration/acceptance tests, and run static code analysis before merging code from the developer's branch into the main branch. But do we set quality gates for helm charts? Or should we?

We should and I will present an example of how to do that.

In this article, I will share how I built a computing cluster with around 100 CPU cores and approximately 400 GB of RAM while keeping costs as low as possible.

Adding container drift detection to Google’s Container Explorer

Generate Kubernetes architecture diagrams from Kubernetes manifest files, kustomization files, Helm charts, helmfile descriptors, and actual cluster state.

The OpenTelemetry ecosystem continues to evolve with powerful tools that enhance your observability strategy. Among these, the OpenTelemetry Transformation Language (OTTL) stands out as an incredible capability for manipulating and transforming telemetry data.

This guide explores what OTTL is, how it works, and how you can leverage it to maximize the value of your observability data with minimal effort.

Valkey is not only thriving, but now outperforming Redis 8.0 in real world benchmarks.

The privacy-first password & email alias manager. Fully end-to-end encrypted, with built-in alias generation and email server — giving you full control over your online identity and safeguarding your privacy.

Gokapi is a simple, self-hosted file sharing server with automatic expiration and encryption support — ideal for teams or individuals who want privacy, control, and no clutter.

A tool to build and deploy software across many servers.

Pangolin is a self-hosted tunneled reverse proxy server with identity and access control, designed to securely expose private resources on distributed networks. Acting as a central hub, it connects isolated networks — even those behind restrictive firewalls — through encrypted tunnels, enabling easy access to remote services without opening ports.

Papra is a minimalistic document management and archiving platform. It is designed to be simple to use and accessible to everyone. Papra is a platform for long-term document storage and management, like a digital archive for your documents.

Tinyauth is a simple authentication middleware that adds a simple login screen or OAuth with Google, Github and any provider to all of your docker apps. It supports all the popular proxies like Traefik, Nginx and Caddy.

The open-source project management alternative to Trello.

Operational.co is a open-source Event tracking tool. Monitor signups, webhooks, cronjobs and more.

Operational is a Open source alternative to Logsnag, another Event tracking tool in the same category.