Patrick Priestley

Introduction Managing monitoring at scale is challenging. As your infrastructure grows from a handful of services to dozens or hundreds, maintaining consistent, comprehensive monitoring becomes increasingly complex. Manually creating Datadog monitors through the UI doesn’t scale, leads to inconsistencies, and makes it difficult to apply organizational standards. This guide walks through building a modular Terraform framework for managing Datadog monitors that scales from small teams to enterprise deployments. The framework emphasizes composability, allowing you to enable only the monitoring suites needed for each service while maintaining consistency across your entire infrastructure....

Introduction VM templates in Proxmox provide a powerful way to standardize and accelerate virtual machine deployments. Instead of manually configuring each new VM from scratch, you can create a template once and clone it as many times as needed, ensuring consistency across your infrastructure. Common use cases for VM templates: Rapid deployment of multiple identical servers Testing environments that need to be quickly provisioned and destroyed CI/CD pipeline workers that require consistent configurations Development environments for team members Staging environments that mirror production A template is essentially a read-only VM configuration that serves as a blueprint....

Introduction Terraform enables infrastructure as code (IaC) for Proxmox environments, allowing you to define, version, and automate VM provisioning. Instead of manually creating VMs through the Proxmox GUI, you can declare your desired infrastructure state in configuration files and let Terraform handle the deployment. Benefits of using Terraform with Proxmox: Reproducibility: Identical infrastructure across dev, staging, and production Version Control: Track infrastructure changes in Git alongside application code Automation: Integrate with CI/CD pipelines for automated deployments Documentation: Configuration files serve as living documentation Efficiency: Provision multiple VMs simultaneously with minimal effort Common use cases:...

Introduction Creating a virtual machine in Proxmox VE is straightforward, but the choices you make during setup significantly impact performance and functionality. This guide walks through creating an optimized Ubuntu Server VM with best-practice configurations for production or homelab use. What you’ll learn: Upload an Ubuntu Server ISO to Proxmox storage Create a VM with optimal hardware settings Configure storage, networking, and system options Enable QEMU Guest Agent for better VM management Apply performance tuning for maximum efficiency This guide is ideal for:...

Introduction SSH (Secure Shell) is essential for securely managing remote Linux servers. This guide walks through installing OpenSSH Server on Ubuntu, configuring SSH key authentication, and applying security best practices. What you’ll learn: Install and configure OpenSSH Server Set up SSH key-based authentication Disable password authentication for security Configure SSH client for convenience Troubleshoot common SSH issues Prerequisites Ubuntu Server installed (18.04 LTS, 20.04 LTS, 22.04 LTS, or 24.04 LTS) sudo/root access on the Ubuntu server Local computer with SSH client (Linux/macOS have it built-in, Windows uses PowerShell or PuTTY) Network connectivity between your computer and the server Part 1: Install OpenSSH Server SSH into the VM console or use the Proxmox console to run these commands....

Introduction Docker provides a powerful platform for building, shipping, and running applications in containers. This guide walks through installing Docker Engine (community edition) on Ubuntu Server using the official Docker repository. What you’ll learn: Install Docker Engine from official repository Install Docker Compose plugin Configure user permissions for Docker Verify Docker installation Run your first container Use cases for Docker: Application development and testing Microservices deployment CI/CD pipelines Isolated application environments Running multiple services on single server Prerequisites Ubuntu Server (18....

Introduction Netplan is the default network configuration tool for Ubuntu Server 18.04 and newer. It uses YAML configuration files to manage network interfaces, replacing the older /etc/network/interfaces method. Static IP addresses are essential for servers to ensure they’re always reachable at the same address, which is critical for services like web servers, databases, and SSH access. What you’ll learn: Check current network configuration Configure static IP with Netplan Handle cloud-init network configuration Test and apply Netplan changes safely Troubleshoot common networking issues When to use static IPs:...

Introduction Cloud-init is a powerful industry-standard tool for automating the initial configuration of virtual machines. Instead of manually setting up each new VM with network settings, user accounts, and SSH keys, cloud-init templates let you deploy pre-configured VMs in seconds. This guide shows you how to create a cloud-init template VM in Proxmox that you can clone repeatedly, with each clone automatically configured with unique settings like IP addresses, hostnames, and SSH keys....

Introduction Running out of disk space on a virtual machine is a common scenario as applications grow and data accumulates. Unlike physical servers, virtual machines in Proxmox make it relatively simple to expand disk capacity without downtime or hardware changes. This guide walks you through safely resizing an Ubuntu VM’s disk in Proxmox, covering both the Proxmox UI configuration and the in-guest partition and filesystem operations needed to make the additional space available to your operating system....