alex.thom.ae - Personal Blog

Renovate at scale: a self-hosted dependency bot for fifty repositories

Alex Thomae — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0300

Most teams either ignore dependency drift or hand a SaaS bot org-wide write access and automerge everything. There is a middle path: run the bot yourself, make automerge a graded-trust decision, and treat the update pipeline as attack surface. Here is the whole setup, from one public repository.

Data residency is not sovereignty

Alex Thomae — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 09:00:00 +0300

A data-residency badge tells you where your bytes sit. It says nothing about who can actually compel them. For anyone keeping data under GDPR, the AI layer is where it gets hard: the models you can reach and trust are fewer than the marketing suggests, and the field is consolidating away.

Sovereign cloud is becoming a governance choice

Alex Thomae — Tue, 20 May 2025 09:00:00 +0300

A short look at Infomaniak’s foundation-backed governance model and why European cloud sovereignty matters for privacy, control, and reducing dependency on US infrastructure.

Mass Migration: ix.ai to egos.tech

Alex Thomae — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This spring clean-up focused on migrating Git projects from gitlab.com/ix.ai to a more structured and intentional home at gitlab.com/egos-tech. Along the way, CI pipelines were modernized, legacy configurations replaced, and everything was streamlined using shared Docker images and centralized Renovate Bot settings. The result: faster, cleaner builds and a foundation that’s easier to maintain - and maybe even collaborate on.

Viewing Software Development as a Continuous Process

Alex Thomae — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

One of the key mindset changes needed for a successful DevOps transformation is to view software development as a continuous process, rather than a one-off project.

DevOps Transformation: Mindset

Alex Thomae — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

One of the greatest struggles of organisations undergoing a transformation, is the changing of mindset.

Traefik, OpenVPN and Direct Container Connections on Docker Swarm

Alex Thomae — Sat, 19 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This How-To will show you how to launch an OpenVPN Server on Docker Swarm, to connect to your running services

OpenVPN Server on Docker Swarm

Alex Thomae — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 10:00:00 +0000

This How-To will show you how to launch an OpenVPN Server in Docker Swarm, running in dual (TCP/UDP) mode. It will use swarm-launcher to start the processes in privileged mode and Nginx as a loadbalancer/proxy for allowing connections to the VPN server.

Deploy traefik, prometheus, grafana, portainer and oauth2_proxy with docker-compose

Alex Thomae — Sun, 12 Jan 2020 10:00:00 +0000

Use docker-compose to deploy Prometheus, Grafana, Portainer behind Traefik cloud native edge router, all protected by oauth2_proxy

Protect your websites with oauth2_proxy behind traefik (docker stack edition)

Alex Thomae — Sun, 20 Oct 2019 07:00:00 +0000

This is how to protect your website with Google’s OAuth 2.0, using pusher/oauth2_proxy behind a containous/traefik cloud native edge router.

Design at Business Community Meetup - Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt, Germany

Alex Thomae — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 07:00:00 +0000

A few months ago I have participated at the Design at Business Community Meetup hosted by Deutsche Bank at their Digital Factory facility in Frankfurt, Germany. Here is the video from the event

Thoughts on DevOps - Focus on the Structure

Alex Thomae — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 14:00:00 +0000

In the previous post I talked about the connection between the organizational structure and culture, with a view from the DevOps transformation perspective. This article will focus on designing the organizational structure and triggering the change.

Thoughts on DevOps - Organizational Structure and Culture

Alex Thomae — Sat, 26 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In the previous post I talked about bottlenecks in organizations, with a view from the DevOps transformation perspective. This article will focus on the close relation between the organizational structure and the culture.

Thoughts on DevOps - Bottlenecks

Alex Thomae — Wed, 16 Jan 2019 22:00:00 +0000

Years ago, there was a worldwide tendency to adopt ITIL in the IT departments of all organizations, big or small. This, together with the wide adoption (although misunderstood by most) adoption of COBIT led to big and small companies setting up clear pillars, where the focus was on the activity being done, instead of the product or service delivered to the customer.

Delete Time Series from Prometheus 2.0

Alex Thomae — Sun, 03 Dec 2017 07:52:45 +0000

Since the update to Prometheus 2.0, the documentation still has to catch up. Because I’ve been debugging a custom written exporter, some unwanted metrics landed in my Prometheus. This is how to delete those series.

Deploy Proxmox with KVM on a Hetzner server

Alex Thomae — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 05:29:45 +0000

This guide will show you how to deploy Proxmox VE 5 with KVM Routing and NAT on a Hetzner server with focus on networking and DHCP/DHCPv6.

Website Provisioning – Automate Apache with SaltStack

Alex Thomae — Thu, 26 May 2016 12:21:06 +0000

Ever since I’ve started hosting my own domains, I’ve searched for ways to automate the website provisioning. Normally, the documentation includes the information on configuring your infrastructure based on roles. But if you have a webserver role for all your minions it doesn’t help with the individual provisioning I am aiming at.

Just a Great Tit

Alex Thomae — Wed, 25 May 2016 07:36:54 +0000

So I’ve had yesterday a small Great Tit (known as Pițigoi in Romanian and Kohlmeise in German) guest in my office. It just didn’t want to leave. I took the opportunity to take a few pics.

Baby Great Tit just sitting there

Animated

Spring Cleaning

Alex Thomae — Tue, 24 May 2016 14:30:55 +0000

I’ve managed to move the blog away from tumblr.com to my own hosted server. I’m celebrating by deleting old (and obsolete) posts from my blog.

I’m curious to see how much success I’ll have in writing new articles.

A plane, reaching for the sky!

Alex Thomae — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 19:23:03 +0000

Nothing to see. Just a plane in the sky.

Linux “root” tweaks

Alex Thomae — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:40:00 +0000

Tired of always being afraid someone will hack into your Linux computer/server? One of the most important steps is to make sure the attacker can’t log in with the “root” account. In order to do this, you have to

Bypassing the mobile ISP proxy (BMI)

Alex Thomae — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:19:00 +0000

Article target: web developers

How to bypass the Vodafone transparent proxy. For details about what it is, you can check out Vodafone transparent proxy - BMI Javascript at 1.2.3.4.

The 5 Phases of Caffeine Intake – The Oatmeal

Alex Thomae — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:24:04 +0000

Source: The Oatmeal

e-spres-oh

Alex Thomae — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:11:14 +0000

Source: The Oatmeal

Create a Time Zone Drop Down List (DDL) in PHP

Alex Thomae — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 23:47:00 +0000

Coordinated Universal Time (source: Wikipedia)

I’ve been struggling a bit with a working Time Zone Drop Down, so I thought I shared it. The target was to have a nice drop down list with as many Country/City combinations as possible, so that the users are not confused.

ADB Shell Tips and Tricks

Alex Thomae — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:32:00 +0000

WARNING: This documentation is outdated and will not be refreshed!

Coming from a Linux world, it was easy for me to use the Android Debug Bridge (adb) shell. Here are some ADB Tips and Tricks for you.

Android Debugging

Alex Thomae — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:40:00 +0000

WARNING: This documentation is outdated and will not be refreshed!

I intended to do this for a long time now, since Android Debugging goes hand in hand with Linux debugging. I’ve noticed, during my trolling on the >InsertCoin forum, that people that start messing around with their Android mobile (read: start rooting it), don’t know what to do if something fails.

The minimum tools needed for any debugging are:

How I added a custom “Facebook Like” button to my blog

Alex Thomae — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:16:00 +0000

WARNING: This documentation is outdated and will not be refreshed!

Adding a Facebook Like button to Blogger can be both easy and complicated, depending on who explains it. After a quick search on Google, I found how to add a custom Facebook Like button to my blog. Obviously, it’s not something difficult if I could do it in three minutes all together, but I thought I’d share the experience.

German – Reloaded (Or: Why German Should’t Scare You)

Alex Thomae — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:36:00 +0000

German language is relatively easy. “All those of us that know a derived language from Latin like Portuguese language and are used to conjugate some verbs can learn it quickly…” That’s what the German language teacher said at the first lesson.

Let’s herd the cats

Alex Thomae — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:19:00 +0000

Who would invest in a company both “micro” and “soft”?

Alex Thomae — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 18:22:00 +0000

Word goes that only “hacked” or “broken” Windows generates errors. The myth is busted however by this picture, taken in the London Underground:

London Underground error