In praise of boring infrastructure

The best infrastructure is the kind you forget about. A blog should survive months of neglect and still be there when you come back.

What boring looks like

• One small container, one folder of files.
• A reverse proxy that handles certificates automatically.
• A deploy that is one command or one push.
• Configuration in a repository, not in someone’s memory.

Fewer moving parts, fewer surprises

Every extra service is another thing that can fail at midnight: a database, a cache, a queue. A static site needs none of them. The container is read-only, runs as an ordinary user, has almost no privileges and a memory limit. If it is compromised, there is very little to take.

Write the manual while you remember

The system is only boring if you can still operate it in a year. Keep a README with the commands for the common jobs: update, roll back, renew, recover. If you cannot do it from the README alone, the README is unfinished.

The test

Imagine you are away for six months and come back to a problem. Would you know where to start? If yes, the infrastructure is boring enough.