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Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) #4: Boot and the system — systemd, target, GRUB2, password recovery
10 min read

Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) #4: Boot and the system — systemd, target, GRUB2, password recovery

The fourth post in the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) series. We work through the structure of systemd and how to control services with systemctl, switching the boot target, editing kernel parameters in GRUB2, and the single most frequent RHCSA task — root password recovery with rd.break — by typing the commands ourselves.

AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02) #5 Domain 1-4 Development with AWS Services — Messaging and Events
5 min read

AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02) #5 Domain 1-4 Development with AWS Services — Messaging and Events

The fourth post of the DVA-C02 development domain. It covers the difference between SQS standard queues and FIFO queues, visibility timeout and long polling, DLQs, SNS pub/sub and fan-out (SNS + SQS), EventBridge's event bus and rule-based routing and schedules, and Step Functions' state machines (Standard vs Express), all at the exam level. Knowing when to choose which messaging service is the core.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #16 Full-Scale Multiple-Choice Practice Exam — 50 Questions + Explanations
18 min read

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03) #16 Full-Scale Multiple-Choice Practice Exam — 50 Questions + Explanations

The final post of the SAA-C03 series. Matched to the real exam's domain weights (security 30% , resilience 26% , high performance 24% , cost 20%), you solve 50 questions and find your weak domains through each question's answer and explanation. Solve them on the clock, then go back to the relevant domain post to shore up any gaps.

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) #14 Scheduling 2: Taints/tolerations, Priority/PriorityClass, preemption
10 min read

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) #14 Scheduling 2: Taints/tolerations, Priority/PriorityClass, preemption

The fourteenth post in the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) series. We work through taints that let a node push Pods away and tolerations that accept that rejection (the NoSchedule/PreferNoSchedule/NoExecute effects, tolerationSeconds), the default taint on control plane nodes, and finally PriorityClass for ranking priority and preemption that evicts lower-priority Pods when resources run short — all from an operator's point of view with YAML and kubectl.

Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) #9 Helm: install, upgrade, rollback, values
9 min read

Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) #9 Helm: install, upgrade, rollback, values

The ninth post in the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) series. We organize Helm's chart structure and the release concept that lets you treat a bundle of manifests as a single package, then drill helm repo,install,upgrade,rollback and values overrides hands-on, command by command. We type through the full flow of previewing results with dry-run and reverting with history.

Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) #7: seccomp Profiles
8 min read

Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) #7: seccomp Profiles

The seventh post in the Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) series. We cover how to use seccomp to filter the system calls a container can make. We work directly through the three profile types — RuntimeDefault, Localhost, and Unconfined — the securityContext.seccompProfile setting, and writing and verifying a custom profile JSON loaded onto the node.

Python book now available free in full — Modern Python: From Basics to FastAPI in Production
2 min read

Python book now available free in full — Modern Python: From Basics to FastAPI in Production

From variable declarations to FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, JWT auth, and deployment, this 34-chapter, 5-part Python book is free to read in full on the site.

Python Data Analysis #4: Transforming Data — New Columns, Dates, and Missing Values
7 min read

Python Data Analysis #4: Transforming Data — New Columns, Dates, and Missing Values

One post covering the data cleanup phase in pandas: vectorized operations for new columns, the str and dt accessors, what NaN really is, how to decide between dropna and fillna, type conversion with astype, and removing duplicates.

Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) #6: Variables and facts — precedence, magic vars, custom facts
10 min read

Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) #6: Variables and facts — precedence, magic vars, custom facts

The sixth post in the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) series. From a hands-on angle, we cover where variables are defined (play vars, vars_files, group_vars/host_vars, extra-vars, register) and their reference syntax, the precedence rules where extra-vars always wins, the facts gathered by gather_facts and how to reach them through ansible_facts, how register stores a task result, magic variables like hostvars and groups, and finally custom facts you build under /etc/ansible/facts.d.

Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) #3 Shell scripting: conditionals, loops, arguments, exit codes
10 min read

Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) #3 Shell scripting: conditionals, loops, arguments, exit codes

The third post in the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) series. To write the simple bash scripts that show up regularly on the RHCSA exam, we type our way through shebang and variable quoting, positional arguments and exit codes, test/if/case conditionals and for/while/until loops, command substitution and arithmetic, read input and functions. At the end we write a real-world script that validates arguments and processes multiple targets in a loop.

The AWS Book Is Now Free in Full — AWS: From Basics to Production Operations
2 min read

The AWS Book Is Now Free in Full — AWS: From Basics to Production Operations

From your first IAM policy to running a fullstack app on ECS Fargate, this 33-chapter, six-part AWS practical book is free to read in full on the site.

The Kubernetes Book Is Now Free in Full — Kubernetes: From Basics to EKS in Production
2 min read

The Kubernetes Book Is Now Free in Full — Kubernetes: From Basics to EKS in Production

From Pod basics to GitOps, observability, and cost governance on EKS, this 32-chapter Kubernetes book is free to read in full on the site.