Brian's Tech Corner

Brian's Tech Corner

Platform engineering, homelabs, and open source — notes from the field.

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New here? This page cuts through the archive and points you to the best starting point based on what you want to learn.

What is Brian's Tech Corner?

I'm Brian — a Staff Platform Engineer by day, homelab builder and open source developer by night. This site is my public notebook: deep technical dives on the tools and decisions I actually use at work and at home. No fluff, no beginner hand-holding — just real configs, real trade-offs, and real experience.

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Build a Kubernetes Homelab

Reading Path

For engineers who want to run production-like infrastructure at home

A full series taking you from hardware selection to a complete Kubernetes cluster with GitOps, observability, and HTTPS. Every post is a real config from my own setup.

1
Planning Your Kubernetes Homelab Hardware

How to choose Mini PCs, networking gear, and storage for a power-efficient homelab.

2
Proxmox VM Templates for Kubernetes

Create reusable cloud-init VM templates as the foundation for your cluster nodes.

3
Persistent Storage with Longhorn

Add replicated persistent volumes to your homelab cluster with Longhorn.

4
GitOps with ArgoCD

Manage your entire cluster declaratively from a git repo.

5
Homelab Monitoring with Grafana & Prometheus

Full observability stack — metrics, dashboards, and alerting.

Platform Engineering

Reading Path

For engineers building internal developer platforms or improving engineering velocity

Practical platform engineering — from self-service scaffolding to AI-powered code review. Content drawn from my experience as a Staff Platform Engineer.

1
Platform Engineering for Solo Builders

Apply enterprise-grade platform patterns to indie projects without the overhead.

2
The Greybeard Platform Engineering Pack

A thinking framework for making architecture decisions like a Staff engineer.

Home Networking & Infrastructure

Reading Path

For homelab builders who want a solid network foundation

Network setup, DNS management, and the routing/firewall configuration that keeps my homelab running reliably.

1
Why I Switched to UniFi (And Whether You Should)

An honest look at UniFi — the good, the trade-offs, and who it's for.

2
Pi-hole for Homelab DNS and Wildcard Records

Block ads network-wide and use Pi-hole as your homelab's internal DNS resolver.

Ready to explore everything?

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