Use Step CA as an ACME Server (ACME v2) and Issue/Renew TLS Certificates with Certbot + NGINX
This guide enables ACME v2 on an existing Smallstep Step CA deployment, then shows how a host like test.maksonlee.com can […]
Identity, Security & PKI
Engineering field notes
Practical DevOps, Infrastructure, and Platform Engineering Notes
Tested walkthroughs from real lab and production-style setups across Linux, cloud, Kubernetes, networking, security, observability, data platforms, IoT, Android, and self-hosted services.
Identity, Security & PKI
Enable Step CA SSH Certificates with Keycloak OIDC (Groups → Principals) + Configure Ubuntu Servers to Trust the CA (Ubuntu 24.04 + Windows 11)
This post extends my previous Step CA deployment: Here we add SSH short-lived certificate login using: What you’ll build Users
Identity, Security & PKI
Move HashiCorp Vault OSS to Another AWS EC2 Instance (Ubuntu 24.04, File Storage, AWS KMS Auto-Unseal)
This post shows how to move a single-node Vault OSS deployment from one EC2 instance to another existing EC2 host
Cloud, Linux & Virtualization
How to Move a KVM VM on Ubuntu 24.04 to VMware Workstation Pro on Windows (QCOW2 → VMDK)
This is the reverse of my previous migration (VMware Workstation → KVM). The safe, repeatable flow is: Shutdown the VM
Observability & Operations
Monitor Backstage with Grafana LGTM Stack using OpenTelemetry (Alloy OTLP → Mimir)
This post migrates Backstage backend monitoring from kube-prometheus-stack (ServiceMonitor + Prometheus scrape) to an LGTM-style push pipeline: Backstage (OpenTelemetry SDK)
Observability & Operations
Install Grafana Alloy on Kubernetes
This post installs Grafana Alloy on Kubernetes as a push-only OpenTelemetry gateway and exposes: We keep OTLP/gRPC (4317) enabled inside
Observability & Operations
Install Grafana on Kubernetes and connect it to Mimir + Loki + Tempo
This post installs Grafana (UI) on your Kubernetes cluster and connects it to your existing backends: Note: Grafana can connect
Observability & Operations
Install Grafana Tempo on Kubernetes with Ceph RGW S3 Storage
This post installs Grafana Tempo (traces backend) on Kubernetes, using Ceph RGW (S3-compatible) for long-term trace storage. If you already
Observability & Operations
Install Grafana Loki on Kubernetes with Ceph RGW S3 Storage
This post installs Grafana Loki (logs backend) on Kubernetes, using Ceph RGW (S3-compatible) for long-term object storage. This is the
Observability & Operations
Install Grafana Mimir on Kubernetes with Ceph RGW S3 Storage
This post installs Grafana Mimir (metrics backend) on Kubernetes, using Ceph RGW (S3-compatible) for long-term object storage. Why Mimir first