About
I’m Michele Bologna (pronounced [miˈkeːle boˈloɲːa], hear it on Forvo). I build software and teams as a Senior Engineering Manager at SUSE, leading multiple engineering teams working on Rancher with a focus on Cluster API, Fleet (GitOps at scale), and Private Registry. I also speak at conferences on Kubernetes, GitOps, and edge computing.
Outside work, I run a homelab where I experiment with k3s clusters, Tailscale networking, Ansible automation, and GitOps pipelines. My public projects are on GitHub; see the full list. My professional profile is on LinkedIn.
I hold a Master’s in Computer Software Engineering (summa cum laude) from the University of Bergamo and spent a year as a visiting researcher at UCLA. My M.Sc. research produced BitFountain, a P2P system combining BitTorrent with erasure codes; my B.Sc. thesis was ZDesktop, a zoomable filesystem UI built with STMicroelectronics.
About this site
This site started in 2007 as a playground for experimenting with Apache, PHP, MySQL, and WordPress, curious about how the pieces fit together. Reader feedback kept me going, and it has been evolving ever since. The blog hosting has moved through several iterations (at one point a self-hosted Kubernetes cluster with a full GitOps pipeline); today it runs on Hugo, deployed to Cloudflare Pages.
Topics range from Linux and Kubernetes to homelab infrastructure, DevOps tooling, and the occasional opinion piece. Posts from 2015 onward are in English; older ones are in Italian, and a few of them now have an English version too.
The purpose has stayed the same throughout:
- A personal reference: documenting what I learn, for my future self and anyone else who finds it useful
- An informal portfolio: showing what I think about and how I approach problems
- A writing exercise: I believe communication is a skill worth keeping sharp (“Listen to understand, speak to be understood”)
Recent writing
Start here
New here? I’ve been writing since 2007, so the recent posts are only a small part of the archive. These are the ones I’d hand to a first-time reader, grouped by topic, old favourites included.
Kubernetes, GitOps and containers
Small clusters run like big ones, and the container habits that got me there.
Security
Fewer open doors, encrypted disks and config files that hold up to a review.
Linux and self-hosting
The boring parts that keep servers alive, like upgrades, disks, deploys and backups.
Tools and workflow
The setup I live in every day, from the terminal to the inbox.
Old posts, now in English
A few Italian posts that still get read, checked again and rewritten in English.
From the archive
Puzzles, a honeypot, and the post where it all started (in Italian).