infra · since 2013
Servers and software
Ten years on a public cloud, from the hypervisor up; the last of them leading a team of 20+ engineers. Now many websites and cloud accounts, and products of my own.
Software~/about · whoami
Systems and buildings.
I'm Ahmet Dereli: 13 years in infrastructure, ten of them on a public cloud, from the hypervisor up. Today I keep many websites and cloud accounts patched and monitored, and build products of my own. On the other track I work as a building contractor: houses and villas in Antalya and Burdur.
Two tracks Software and building.
build · contractor
Houses and villas
Houses and villas as a building contractor. A single-storey mountain house in Bucak was built in 2023 and has its occupancy permit; a villa with a pool in Kemerağzı has its design done and its structure starting.
ConstructionWhat I do The infrastructure side.
01 · cloud & platform
From servers to cloud
Hypervisors, VM images, storage and network automation for a public cloud. Parts of it shipped as products: a network gateway, an object-storage gateway, geo-DNS acceleration.
02 · running many sites
Many sites, one way of doing things
Dozens of Drupal, WordPress and CiviCRM sites on PaaS and VMs, kept consistent with ansible-pull, 50+ roles and a library of checks.
03 · security at scale
Security updates
When an advisory comes out: find which sites are really affected, patch them in a safe order and check the patch reached every one.
04 · cloud migrations
Cloud migrations
Multi-account cloud set up as code, central identity, audit trails with locked logs, and production moved onto new standards through reviewed plans.
05 · data & delivery
Data and delivery pipelines
ETL into a warehouse, and CI/CD with approval gates, drift checks and rollback, for apps and analytics alike.
06 · leading & selling
Team and sales
Led a team, hired and trained, sat in pre-sales meetings and gave a talk on high availability.
Path So far.
- now
Building contractor
Houses and villas. A mountain house in Bucak built in 2023, occupancy permit issued; a villa with a pool in Kemerağzı designed, structure starting.
- 2022 — now
DevOps engineer, web platforms
Many Drupal, WordPress and CiviCRM sites: patching, upgrades, CI/CD, mail and incident work. Alongside it, cloud landing zones, data pipelines and delivery for larger teams.
- 2019 — 2022
Engineering lead, public cloud
Led a team of 20+ engineers serving 1,000+ customer environments. Owned the network and storage products, joined pre-sales, hired and trained.
- 2015 — 2019
Automation & DevOps engineer
Ansible for the whole stack: hypervisors, images, networking, DNS, monitoring. Ran a small R&D group.
- 2013 — 2015
Where it started
Joined the same cloud company while still at university. My first servers and first outages were there.
- before
The groundwork
Network systems at a technical high school, network courses, and the first servers I set up, and broke, at home.
Own work My projects.
in developmentVillaOpsOperations software for villas and holiday rentals.
runningairadarResearch journal and signal radar for crypto spot markets.
in progressHomelab write-upStorage, a development VM and a private network.
completedMountain houseBucak, Burdur. 100 m², single storey.
structure startingVilla with poolKemerağzı, Antalya. 4+1 over 2.5 storeys.
plannedLabSix product ideas: SaaS, AI and extensions, not started yet.
Talk & education In short.
- talk · 2021
Understanding High Availability
Failover, ARP, virtual IPs with VRRP, and an HAProxy cluster as the worked example.
- education
Computer technology and information systems
BSc in computer technology and information systems; graduate studies in business, cyber security and computer engineering.
Toolbox Tools I use.
automation
platforms
cloud
delivery
observability
data
web stack
network
How I work A few principles.
Read before you touch.
Understand what the system does today before changing what it should do tomorrow.
Fix the cause, not the symptom.
If one server broke, I check whether the same problem is waiting on the others.
One host, then everyone.
A dry run, then a small group, then all of them. Even for a small change.
Write it down.
A fix that is not written down has to be found again next time.