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Writing about things I learn, build, and break; from backend systems and cloud infrastructure to open source, and life in general.

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LatestSep 7, 202610 min read

OpenTelemetry tail sampling with the Collector

Configure OpenTelemetry tail sampling to retain errors and slow traces, control trace volume, size Collector memory and scale safely across instances.

Aug 20, 20267 min read

How Linux Namespaces Work: The Core of Every Docker Container

Docker containers are ordinary Linux processes isolated with namespaces and limited with cgroups. Here is what that looks like from experiments with PID, network, mount, and UTS namespaces.

Aug 15, 202610 min read

The Pods Your Scheduler Never Sees: How Kubernetes Bootstraps Itself

Kubernetes has a Pod type that can run before its API server or scheduler is available. It is the quiet mechanism that brings a kubeadm control plane to life.

Aug 13, 202611 min read

Kubernetes Controller vs Operator: What's Actually the Difference?

Controllers and Operators both watch resources and reconcile state, so where is the actual difference? Here is a practical explanation using two systems I worked on.

Aug 12, 202611 min read

PAI: So You Don’t Have to Hand-Wire Kubernetes Observability Again

How Parseable Auto Instrumentation uses the OpenTelemetry Operator to collect Kubernetes logs, metrics, traces, and events through one declarative workflow.

Mar 25, 202610 min read

I Was a Complete Beginner in OSS. Here's the Guide I Wish I Had

I struggled with Git, synced the wrong branch, and got pinged by a maintainer on my first PR. Here's everything I learned contributing to OpenTelemetry, from forking to getting merged.

Mar 17, 20267 min read

From Clueless to Contributor: How OTel Taught Me What Observability Really Means

Monitoring and observability are not the same thing. I didn't fully get that until I started contributing to OpenTelemetry. Here's what 5+ merged PRs taught me that no course could.

Mar 8, 20268 min read

What Happens Inside Your Kubernetes Pod? I Had No Clue 😶‍🌫️ Until I Set Up OTel, Prometheus & Grafana

My Node.js app was running on Kubernetes. Pods were healthy. But I had zero visibility into what was actually happening inside. Here's how I fixed that with OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Grafana.