Author Archives: John S. Tonello

Practical Linux DevOps book in pre-release

I’m excited to announce the pre-release of my new book, Practical Linux DevOps with Apress! It’s a guide to creating and using your own lab to get started with Linux and DevOps concepts. https://amzn.to/3NsLH39

Chef Infra in 60 seconds

This brief video provides a quick overview of Chef Infra, a versatile modern tool for infrastructure-as-code.

Secure containers and Kubernetes at scale with Polymorphing

Containers have revolutionized application development by making it far easier for engineers and product teams to quickly develop software that’s more reliable and easier to scale, but these benefits have always come with a few worrying realities. It can be hard to know what’s inside a publicly available image and, though they’re handy, containers just… Read More »

How to install Chef Automate and Chef Infra Server

A step-by-step guide to installing Chef Automate and Chef Infra Server on-prem so you can get started with automation and configuration management with Chef Infrastructure, Chef Compliance, and Chef App Delivery.

Chef 101: Getting Started With Automation

Take a look at some practices that can help you get a running start with your Chef automation and the principle of Policy as Code. This post is designed to be beginner-friendly. You don’t need any coding experience to follow along — just an interest in automation, and curiosity about how best to implement it… Read More »

The coding SysAdmin

For anyone working in a traditional sysadmin role, automation — and a larger DevOps conversation — can be disconcerting. Modern automation means “code” and some sysadmins insist coding is outside their job descriptions. In fact, when I was an IT director, I had a sysadmin tell me, “We don’t code.” He was content with maintaining… Read More »

How my cat helped me build a better IoT app

My cat Tucker is a somewhat predictable animal who likes to curl up in predictable spots around the house, so he’s the perfect subject for surreptitious video surveillance and just the sort of motivating force I needed to rework a Raspberry Pi project I’d been putting off for some time. [Read more]

Cellular + IoT isn’t as hard as you think

I’ve always been a bit hesitant to add cellular networking to my IoT projects because I figured the cost of bandwidth and the hardware requirements were more trouble than they were worth. But after some experimentation, I got over my fears and found cellular wasn’t nearly as expensive or as complicated as I thought. [Read… Read More »