March 31, 2026
Over the last 20+ years in IT, I’ve seen automation evolve from a nice-to-have to a non-negotiable part of how organizations operate.
Every company I’ve worked with has some form of automation.
The problem is that, in many cases, what they have is not an automation strategy but rather a collection of individual scripts, cron jobs, and one-off solutions that were built to solve immediate problems.
This is what I usually call ad-hoc automation or point automation, and while it works in the short term, it creates significant issues over time.
This does not happen only in small or particularly tech-adverse companies; it is a very common situation across sectors and sizes.
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February 27, 2026
Over the last 20+ years in IT, I’ve been lucky enough to work across many roles and industries.
In that time, I’ve always found that the work we do, and that we’re measured against, is only one side of the story.
The other side, and often the most important one, is the work we share: the ideas, the rationale, the reasoning, the reflections that shape how others think.
That is what thought leadership is about, why it matters more than ever in our industry, and why I started and continue doing it.
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January 20, 2026
Yesterday, I passed the Red Hat EX188 exam, which allowed me to renew my Red Hat Certified Specialist in Containers certification.
I had a very good memory of this exam from the last time I took it, so I was happy to go through it again.
Different from last time, I did encounter some difficulties with the last exercise, which was a little surprising to me, since the last time I found it testing the same capabilities as a walk in the park, but maybe this time I simply started with the wrong foot.
This obviously had no major impact on my exam, allowing me to easily achieve and exceed the required score to pass.
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December 29, 2025
After a few years of experimenting, I moved forward with a full electrical system rewiring in my house earlier this year, opting for a KNX-based design.
One of the aspects I really like about KNX is that it is a brand-agnostic protocol, which makes it very easy to find any kind of object compatible with it.
Another aspect that KNX has, different from many other options, is that it is it bus based.
Being bus-based is a huge pain when you have to install it, but once you have done it, the experience is way better, since there is no perceptible delay, no risk of interference, etc., making the day-to-day experience indistinguishable from a traditionally cabled system.
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November 13, 2025
Earlier this month, I sat the Red Hat EX374 exam to renew my Red Hat Certified Specialist in Developing Automation with Ansible Automation Platform certification.
As I’m already a Red Hat Certified Architect and have passed this same exam a couple of years ago, I wasn’t too worried about it.
Still, it is always interesting to see how exams evolve.
When I registered for the exam, I quickly checked the Objectives and remembered that it covered both Ansible core content (playbooks, modules, roles) and a lot of Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) capabilities, such as controllers, collections, and execution environments.
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October 16, 2025
Three years passed from the last AWS exam I took, and my AWS certifications were due for renewal.
The first thing I checked was the exam code, which I had taken three years ago.
It turns out that last time I took the SAA-C03, and this time I would also have taken the same exam.
This time around, I considered doing the SAP-C02 instead, but, given the very limited time, I decided on the SAA-C03.
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September 18, 2025
For years, I hosted this blog and several other services on AWS.
AWS is powerful, but it is also expensive and deeply entropic.
It often feels like every problem on AWS has three different services as possible solutions.
Each service has its own setup, and keeping track of everything just gets harder over time.
For personal infrastructure, the financial and cognitive cost simply stopped being worth it.
That’s why I decided to close my AWS account and move everything somewhere else.
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August 31, 2025
Last week, I renewed my Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Network Automation (EX457) certification.
As I’m already a Red Hat Certified Architect and have passed this same exam a couple of years ago, I wasn’t too worried about it.
Still, it is always interesting to see how exams evolve.
Since I did not remember the kind of content that was there last time, I read the objectives page and assumed it would have been more on the networking side.
But, in reality, the exam leaned much more toward Ansible playbooks, modules, and automation patterns than network-specific plumbing.
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July 30, 2025
At this point, it has become kind of a ritual for me: renewing my Google Professional Architect Certification during the summer months.
This time around, I renewed it slightly earlier than usual, which is today instead of the second half of August, as I did two years back.
Knowing the usual difficulties I have with scheduling the Google Cloud certification renewal exam, I started very early and, after a couple of attempts, managed to book the exam!
I’m not sure whether I’m getting better at booking Google Cloud exams or whether the system is improving, making it easier to use.
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June 30, 2025
When buying a service, you’re not just buying what’s on the label.
You’re buying into someone else’s business model.
This aspect is now becoming even more relevant, considering that many times, when buying a product, you are also buying a service with it since there are more and more hybrid products.
If you don’t understand how your provider is structured and how it makes money, you will not fully understand your relationship with them.
And you’re more likely to get blindsided.
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(Fabio Alessandro Locati|Fale)'s blog