{"@attributes":{"version":"2.0"},"channel":{"title":"Jacob Colvin","link":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/","description":"Jacob Colvin is a Lead Software Engineer working on developer platforms and infrastructure, writing about Kubernetes, observability, and open source.","generator":"Hugo","language":"en-us","copyright":"CC BY-NC 4.0<\/a>","lastBuildDate":"Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000","item":[{"title":"Introducing kat: A TUI and rule-based rendering engine for Kubernetes manifests","link":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/posts\/2025\/07\/introducing-kat-a-tui-and-rule-based-rendering-engine-for-kubernetes-manifests\/","pubDate":"Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/posts\/2025\/07\/introducing-kat-a-tui-and-rule-based-rendering-engine-for-kubernetes-manifests\/","description":"

I don’t know about you, but one of my favorite tools in the Kubernetes ecosystem is k9s<\/code><\/a>. It’s a terminal UI (TUI) for interacting with your Kubernetes clusters, and at work I have it open pretty much all of the time. After I started using it, I felt like my productivity skyrocketed, since anything you could want is just a few keystrokes away.<\/p>\n

However, when it comes to rendering and validating manifests locally, I found myself frustrated with the existing tools (or lack thereof). For me, I found that working with manifest generators like helm<\/code> or kustomize<\/code> often involved a repetitive cycle:<\/p>"},{"title":"Linkerd Multi-cluster Without a Public IP Address","link":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/posts\/2023\/04\/linkerd-multi-cluster-without-a-public-ip-address\/","pubDate":"Mon, 03 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/posts\/2023\/04\/linkerd-multi-cluster-without-a-public-ip-address\/","description":"

Recently, I’ve set up Linkerd<\/a> in my homelab, and one of\nthe features I was really interested in was multi-cluster communication<\/a>.\nThis allows you to mirror services between clusters. Meaning, apps in one\ncluster can communicate with services in another cluster, as if they were in the\nsame cluster.<\/p>\n

Setting up multi-cluster communication with Linkerd is straightforward under\nideal conditions. However, it can be more challenging if one of the clusters\ncannot create services of type LoadBalancer<\/code> (with a public, or otherwise\nroutable IP address). This is the case for me, as I have clusters both at home\nand in Hetzner, with my home Kubernetes cluster running behind NAT.<\/p>"},{"title":"Building a Twin-ITX Cluster","link":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/posts\/2023\/04\/building-a-twin-itx-cluster\/","pubDate":"Sun, 02 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/posts\/2023\/04\/building-a-twin-itx-cluster\/","description":"

I am building a cluster that includes a Turing Pi<\/a> (a\nmini-ITX cluster board), alongside a normal mini-ITX system. I wanted to put\nboth of these in a single chassis to save space, which is possible with a “dual\nmini-itx”, or “twin-itx” chassis. This article covers most of the chassis I\ndiscovered.<\/p>\n

As of writing, I have made a purchase (I went with the MyElectronics chassis).<\/p>\n

1U<\/h2>\n

1U chassis will not fit a Turing Pi. So, I did not evaluate these.<\/p>"},{"title":"Backups for K8s and Beyond","link":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/posts\/2023\/01\/backups-for-k8s-and-beyond\/","pubDate":"Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/posts\/2023\/01\/backups-for-k8s-and-beyond\/","description":"

Intro<\/h2>\n

Recently I have been moving my homelab<\/a> to Kubernetes. This has\npresented the need for a backup solution for any persistent data I might have\nthere. For quite some time, I have been using Duplicati<\/a> for my\nbackups, but I haven’t been completely content with its performance, and have\nheard many horror stories of restores not working properly. So, I wanted to take\nthis opportunity to find a backup solution that worked well for my personal\ncomputers (I have Windows, Linux, and Darwin hosts), my storage servers (UnRaid\nand FreeNAS), as well as Kubernetes. Assuming that such a solution exists, of\ncourse!<\/p>"},{"title":"How to use Grafana and Prometheus to Rickroll your friends (or enemies)","link":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/posts\/2021\/07\/how-to-use-grafana-and-prometheus-to-rickroll-your-friends-or-enemies\/","pubDate":"Fri, 30 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/jacobcolvin.com\/posts\/2021\/07\/how-to-use-grafana-and-prometheus-to-rickroll-your-friends-or-enemies\/","description":"

Source code: https:\/\/github.com\/MacroPower\/prometheus_video_renderer<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the blog post: https:\/\/grafana.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/30\/how-to-use-grafana-and-prometheus-to-rickroll-your-friends-or-enemies\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\n