https://beyondthecert.dev/Recent content on Beyond The CertHugoenWed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/i-moved-my-homelab-tailscale/Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/i-moved-my-homelab-tailscale/What happens when you move five Kubernetes nodes and a NAS to a new apartment, and the one thing that breaks isn&#39;t what you expect.https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/from-10-days-to-30-minutes/Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/from-10-days-to-30-minutes/<p>When people ask me what made me decide to automate my homelab cluster, they expect a story about frustration — some late night where everything broke and I snapped. That&rsquo;s not what happened.</p> <p>The first time I built a bare metal Kubernetes cluster manually, it took me a week and countless hours. Manual steps, configuration files, troubleshooting, and learning. And when it was done, I looked at it and thought: the next evolution of this is automation. Not because I was tired of doing it manually — but because I wanted to be able to reproduce it at a moment&rsquo;s notice.</p>https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/one-unplugged-cable/Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/one-unplugged-cable/I unplugged a router to add a power strip. My Kubernetes cluster went down. Here&#39;s what broke, how I fixed it, and what I&#39;d do differently.https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/calico-tailscale-bgp-conflict/Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/calico-tailscale-bgp-conflict/Running Calico and Tailscale together on bare metal Kubernetes? There&#39;s a BGP conflict nobody warns you about. Here&#39;s what breaks and the two-step fix.https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/project-genesis1/Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/project-genesis1/I built a 4-node bare metal Kubernetes cluster from scratch. Two control planes, two workers, full GitOps pipeline. Here&#39;s what broke and what I learned.https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/allow-me-to-reintroduce-myself/Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/allow-me-to-reintroduce-myself/The cert gets you in the door. This is what&#39;s behind it.https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/i-built-kubernetes-from-scratch/Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/i-built-kubernetes-from-scratch/At work, I click a button and get a Kubernetes cluster. So I built one from scratch to understand what that button actually does.https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/building-kubernetes-the-hard-way/Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/building-kubernetes-the-hard-way/I passed the CKA in January after four attempts. It taught me how to use Kubernetes. But understanding how the pieces actually fit together — that comes from building it yourself.https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/i-didnt-pass-the-cka-by-studying-harder/Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/i-didnt-pass-the-cka-by-studying-harder/My story: 41 → 47 → 65 → 81. Four attempts. Three failures. One certification. Here&#39;s what actually happened.https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/3-5-years-of-silence/Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/posts/3-5-years-of-silence/I haven&#39;t posted since August of 2022. A lot changed. Here&#39;s the story of a layoff, a rebuild, and finding my niche in platform engineering.https://beyondthecert.dev/about/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://beyondthecert.dev/about/about