Beautiful Surveys in Grafana
I encourage you to add some feedback forms to your Grafana dashboards. The whole premise of DevOps is breaking down silos between teams; this is a great step towards that goal.
Ned McClain
Writing about cloud architecture, operations, security, software, and sometimes the mountains.
Latest posts
IFrame Panel for Grafana
I created a simple iframe visualization panel for Grafana. Although it has been possible to embed iframes in Grafana dashboards in the past, this dedicated plugin better balances functionality with security.
Fixing Grafana's IaC Problem
The conflict arises when teams use IaC tools to deploy Grafana dashboards. This results in dashboards that can be edited in the UI, but changes cannot be saved - a frustrating user experience.
Community Formbricks Helm Chart
I have two clients using Formbricks for everything from simple contact forms to full-blown "in-app experience management". One of them needed a Helm chart to deploy to their Kubernetes environment, and they were happy to let me share: GitHub - nmcclain/formbricks-helm: Helm chart for deploying Formbricks on
Enhance Your Grafana ❤️ ArgoCD Integration
ArgoCD and Grafana have been key building blocks in a big chunk of the Kubernetes environments I've worked with. ArgoCD provides continuous app delivery, while Grafana acts as the "single pane of glass" for ops/dev/product team observability. Argo CD follows the  GitOps  
PostgREST on Fargate
You can deploy PostgREST on AWS Fargate in a matter of minutes. This post will show you how to do it step-by-step.
Deploy your own GeoIP API in 6 minutes: video
I recently helped a client deploy their own geo IP lookup service, and wanted to show you how to do it too. Learn how in this 6-minute video.
Static Hosting a Ghost Site
Here's a quick run-through of how to use Ghost to power a static website.
Introduction to ClickHouse Backups and clickhouse-backup
Data backups are an inglorious but vital part of IT operations. They are most challenging in “big data” deployments, such as analytical databases. This article will explore the plumbing involved in backing up ClickHouse and introduce the clickhouse-backup tool for automating the process.
Updated "firstboot" Release for Raspberry Pi OS
News on an updated build of raspberian-firstboot: easy, full customization of a Raspberry Pi image before deployment.
Better CSRF Protection
Web developers must protect their apps against Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks. This article looks at an alternative approach to CSRF protection: on-demand, cryptographically signed tokens that require no storage.
Why DevOps ❤️ ClickHouse
Databases hold a special place in the hearts of operations folks. ClickHouse deserves a spot in your toolbelt for analytics use cases.
Pandemic Preparation for IT Teams
The COVID19 outbreak has reached near-pandemic levels. Now is not the time for alarm. However, it is the perfect opportunity to take a moment and think about how prepared your business is for catastrophe.
Custom Object Recognition for Non-Developers
From software development to economics to marketing, familiarity with machine learning will make you better at your job. The power of machine learning is in your reach today. You don't have to understand models or tensors or any math at all. Now is the time to add ML
Edge Networking’s Last Resort
As the number of IoT devices has exploded, so has the compute power of each individual device. This post looks at a simple way to use that power to improve the availability of edge/IoT devices.