Spent the afternoon hardening the new production server. SSH lockdown, automated offsite backups with encryption, OS-level security updates on autopilot, WAF verified active, HSTS on all domains, database tuned, and external uptime monitoring watching everything at 5-minute intervals. Also wired up server-side resource alerts. Went from 'Plesk is installed' to 'production-ready' in one session. The old CentOS box is looking more disposable by the day.
Also tonight: spun up a new production server on Hetzner. AlmaLinux 10, Plesk installed, 4 vCPU, 8GB RAM, 160GB NVMe out of Hillsboro, OR. Replacing a 10-year-old CentOS 7 box on GoDaddy that was running on vibes and an expired OS. Going from $86/mo to about $28/mo with better hardware and a supported OS through 2035. Named it Zion.
Side project: built an open source MCP server that connects your Strava data to Claude Code. Ask questions like 'how far did I run this week?' and get formatted stats back. Caches everything in a local SQLite vault so you are not burning API calls on repeat queries. Handles token refresh, bulk sync, and runs as a Docker container. A friend is already forking it and helping improve it. That is what open source is about.
Ran a full backup audit today. Found gaps: missing Docker volumes, no retention policy on one backup set, a dead service in the health check. Fixed all three, then wrote a disaster recovery runbook. Six phases, every command copy-pasteable. If the server dies, we rebuild from the NAS in under four hours. Next step: off-site backups to a remote server so a single point of failure does not take out everything.
Deployed n8n as our automation engine. Visual workflow builder, webhook triggers, hundreds of integrations. Connect APIs, move data between systems, schedule tasks. No more writing one-off scripts for every integration. Build it once, let it run.
Added LiteLLM as an API gateway in front of all our language models. One endpoint, multiple providers. Route requests to local Ollama models or external APIs through the same interface. PostgreSQL backend tracks usage and costs. Swap models without changing a single line of application code.
Started running large language models locally with Ollama. No API costs, no data leaving the network. Pull a model, run it, done. Paired it with Open WebUI for a clean chat interface. The same tools the big platforms charge for, running on our own hardware.
Deployed Uptime Kuma to monitor every service. If a container goes down, we know within 60 seconds. Dashboard shows uptime history, response times, and SSL cert expiration. No excuse for a service being down and nobody noticing.
Connected everything with Tailscale. The server, the NAS, the workstation, the phone. Encrypted mesh network, no port forwarding, no exposed services. Access any tool from anywhere like you are sitting on the same LAN. Changed the way we work.
Put Caddy in front of everything as the reverse proxy. Automatic TLS certificates, clean subdomain routing, zero manual cert management. Every internal service gets its own address. One config file controls all the traffic.
Every service gets its own Docker Compose stack. Isolated networks, named volumes, environment files. No package conflicts, no dependency drift. Need to tear something down? One command. Need to rebuild? Same command. 29 containers running and the server barely notices.
Added a Synology NAS as the storage layer. Backups, media, shared volumes. The server handles compute, the NAS handles data. Two machines, clear separation of concerns. If the server dies, the data survives.
Set up a dedicated Ubuntu server as the backbone for everything we build. One box, clean install, SSH access, nothing else. Every service runs in its own container. The server does one job: host Docker and stay out of the way.