DevOps
Troubleshooting Latency: A Systematic Approach to Finding the Bottleneck
A systematic method for tracking down latency issues in production systems, from network to application to database, built from decades of war stories.
Performance
Databases
Stored Procedures: When to Use Them, When to Avoid Them
Opinionated guide to stored procedures covering performance benefits, maintainability costs, security implications, and practical guidelines for when they help vs hurt.
DevOps
Continuous Profiling in Production: Pyroscope, Parca, and Finding the CPU Hog You Never Knew You Had
Continuous profiling is the fourth pillar of observability most teams skip. Learn how Pyroscope, Parca, and eBPF-based profilers find CPU and memory bottlenecks that metrics and traces can't.
Databases
SSD vs HDD: How to Choose the Right Storage for Your Workload
Practical guide to choosing SSD or HDD storage for databases, analytics, and archival workloads based on real-world performance, cost, and endurance tradeoffs.
Databases
Sharding vs Partitioning: Database Scaling Strategies Compared
Sharding and partitioning are related but different database scaling strategies. A veteran architect explains both approaches, their trade-offs, and when to use each.
Cloud Architecture
Bare Metal Cloud: When the Hypervisor Is the Problem, Not the Solution
Virtual machines are the default in cloud computing, but for a growing set of workloads, the hypervisor is pure overhead. Bare metal cloud gives you dedicated hardware without the colocation operations burden. Here's when it makes sense.
Databases
Distributed Caching Explained: Redis, Memcached, Valkey, and How to Choose
A principal architect's guide to distributed caching: how Redis, Memcached, and Valkey work, when to use each, and lessons from running caches at scale in production.
Cloud Architecture
ARM in the Cloud: AWS Graviton, Ampere Altra, and Why CPU Architecture Actually Matters Now
ARM-based cloud instances are delivering 40-60% better price-performance than x86 equivalents. Here's how AWS Graviton and Ampere Altra work, what workloads benefit most, and how to migrate.
Networking
Latency vs Bandwidth: What's the Real Difference and Why It Matters
Understand the critical difference between latency and bandwidth, why both matter for performance, and how to optimize each in real-world cloud and network architectures.