Docker on Munish Thakur | DevOps Engineer

Building My Portfolio: From HTML to Hugo

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When I decided to build my portfolio, I had a choice: keep it simple with plain HTML, or use it as an opportunity to demonstrate my DevOps skills. I chose the latter.

Why Hugo?

Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. Here’s why it made sense for a DevOps engineer:

Speed: Hugo builds are blazing fast (milliseconds, not minutes)
No runtime dependencies: The output is just HTML, CSS, and JS
DevOps-friendly: The Kubernetes documentation itself uses Hugo
Markdown-based: Write content in Markdown, focus on writing

The Architecture

┌─────────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐
│ Markdown Files │────▶│ Hugo Build │────▶│ Static Files │
└─────────────────┘ └──────────────┘ └─────────────────┘
 │
 ┌───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┐
 │ │ │
 ▼ ▼ ▼
 ┌─────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐
 │ GitHub Pages │ │ Docker/Nginx │ │ Kubernetes │
 │ (Production) │ │ (Local Dev) │ │ (Proof of Work)│
 └─────────────────┘ └─────────────────┘ └─────────────────┘

The DevOps Artifacts

This repository isn’t just a portfolio—it’s a showcase of DevOps practices:

Docker Image Optimization: Lessons from Production

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

At Solytics Partners, I optimized Docker images and achieved a 35% size reduction and 75% faster build times. Here’s what I learned.

The Problem

Most Dockerfiles I inherited looked like this:

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FROM python:3.11
WORKDIR /app
COPY . .
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
CMD ["python", "app.py"]

This creates images that are:

Docker Image Optimization: The 75% Reduction Story

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When I joined Solytics Partners as a DevOps Intern, one of my first tasks was optimizing our Docker images. Our Nimbus Console service was running a 3.1GB Docker image, and it was slowing down deployments significantly.

I managed to reduce it by 60-75%, but not without learning some hard lessons about over-optimization.

The Problem

Our production image was massive:

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FROM python:3.10 # Base image alone: ~900MB
RUN apt-get install openjdk-11-jdk # Java: +200MB
RUN playwright install # All browsers: +1GB
RUN Rscript install_r.sh # R environment: +500MB
# ... 100+ Python packages: +500MB

Total: 3.1GB

Fixing XMLSec/LXML Version Mismatch: When Installation Order Matters

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes the most frustrating bugs are the ones with cryptic error messages. This was one of them.

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>>> from onelogin.saml2.auth import OneLogin_Saml2_Auth
xmlsec.Error: (100, 'lxml & xmlsec libxml2 library version mismatch')

The application container was crashing on startup, and all I had was this error message.

The Problem

Our Django application needed SAML authentication, which required python3-saml. This package depends on both lxml and xmlsec, which both depend on the system library libxml2.