Hey folks, I'm
Sergei Guidia
DevOps Engineer
and good guy :)
I believe that development is an endless journey of self-improvement. My passion for technology and my aspiration to achieve the highest level of expertise in DevOps inspire and drive me every day. My goal is to deepen my knowledge and skills in this field as deeply as possible. I envision a future in DevOps as a transformative tool capable of reshaping business processes and enhancing software development, and I am committed to becoming an expert in this pivotal domain. In the world of DevOps, the possibilities are limitless, and I am ready to explore them to the fullest and contribute to the advancement of this innovative field.
I would like to tell a bit about how I got into IT and when it happened. Back when I was in school, I developed a passion for website development. I became deeply engrossed in learning technologies like CSS and HTML. At the time, there were these things called CGI inserts, if I remember correctly. Later on, I delved into PHP and Perl, MySQL databases became popular, and forum engines were emerging. Mods were being developed for them, and I made my initial attempts at writing my own website and forum code. Concurrently, there were these popular email newsletters that were sent using specialized platforms. I even published a kind of magazine. The theme of my website was Windows OS, and I published articles, tips, and notably, a FAQ section. The FAQ was the core of my newsletter—some subscribers asked questions, while others answered them. I compiled everything into a coherent whole and released it. I had around 70k newsletter subscribers, and my website received about 2-3 thousand visitors daily. This was all happening in the year 2000 when the internet wasn't as developed as it is today. It's unfortunate that I have nothing left from those times.
All of this laid a strong foundation for IT in my life. Then came university and work in IT, but I won't dwell on that; you can see it in my resume. But then, a war happened. I hadn't been a supporter of the Russian government since 2014, but the events of 2022 confirmed my stance. I actively participated in my country's political life. I volunteered during elections, attended protests, recorded videos of these events, and uploaded them to YouTube. I even featured in local news. Ultimately, it became unsafe for me to stay in the country, and I made the decision to leave Russia. So, at the age of 35, along with my family (my wife and two children), we found ourselves in the United States in the summer of 2022. I had to escape through dangerous Mexico, risking my family's lives, and start over from scratch. I consider this another achievement. It's been a year now, and I work as a leak repair technician in critical infrastructure. This is my first job, and I'll continue working here until I return to my true passion—information technology.
In order to keep up with rapidly advancing technologies, I reinforce my knowledge through daily learning and practice. I take on additional projects on various freelance platforms and stay curious about industry trends. During the time I spent in the United States, I dedicated all my free time to two important activities:
- Improving my English language proficiency.
- Exploring the world of DevOps, absorbing any technologies associated with it. I contemplated whether to attend a boot camp or self-study, and I chose the path of obtaining certifications. It's currently the only way I can validate my qualifications and prove my professional readiness. I don't aspire to a senior role; I'm more than willing to start from the ground up, in a mid or even junior position. Everyone has to start somewhere.
I've decided that on this website, I'll document my relevant experience in this field. It will serve as my calling card and portfolio, where I'll structure and describe my achievements and the expertise I've acquired. I'm fully open to participating in open-source projects as a DevOps engineer, so if anyone is interested, please reach out to me via email.
In essence, I can familiarize myself with any technology; just give me a bit of time and internet access.
Projects
Website Portfolio !!!
Initially, I wanted to purchase basic hosting to upload my resume and simply have a quick way to present myself. However, upon further consideration, I realized that this could turn into a real project. I plan to use modern technologies and practices extensively for my website. While many of the features might seem excessive, I'm doing this with the goal of gaining practical knowledge. So, let's get started:
- Created an S3 bucket, made it public, configured Bucket policy, and manually uploaded my website.
- Purchased the domain guidia.tech from an external service (not AWS).
- Added a new hosted zone in AWS Route 53, obtained the NS servers, and set them up with my DNS provider.
- Added an SSL certificate to my domain. To do this, I obtained it from AWS Certificate Manager. Unfortunately, or fortunately, you can't directly link the certificate, so I had to set it up through CloudFront. I created a new distribution, selected the appropriate S3 bucket, specified the CNAME names for the main domain, enabled HTTP to HTTPS redirect, and selected the certificate.
- Decided to add some CI/CD to my project. I used Git - AWS CodePipeline - AWS S3 Bucket combination. Now, when I upload new code to Git, it automatically deploys to the S3 bucket.
- CDNs are great, but when your only index.html doesn't update for several days, and you want to make changes right now because, according to Murphy's law, your potential employer is reviewing your modest portfolio right now and can't see the cool changes you've made to this project, you decide to tweak things. I automated the cooperation between the S3 bucket and CloudFront, so every time new code is deployed from GitHub, it triggers automatic invalidation of all changed files. To do this, I used AWS Lambda services.
This is a hands-on learning experience, and I'm excited to see how it evolves. Stay tuned for more updates!
Certificates
LPIC-1
LPIC-1 is the certification in the multi-level Linux professional certification program of the Linux Professional Institute (LPI).
sergei-guidia-7a8d09d0-7d16-43f0-b936-4cd63af3fa53-certificate.pdf
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
Earners of this certification have a comprehensive understanding of AWS services and technologies. They demonstrated the ability to build secure and robust solutions using architectural design principles based on customer requirements. Badge owners are able to strategically design well-architected distributed systems that are scalable, resilient, efficient, and fault-tolerant.
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner validates foundational, high-level understanding of AWS Cloud, services, and terminology. This is a good starting point on the AWS Certification journey for individuals with no prior IT or cloud experience switching to a cloud career or for line-of-business employees looking for foundational cloud literacy.
AWS Cloud Quest: Solutions Architect
Earners of this badge have demonstrated solution building knowledge using a broad set of AWS services. Badge owners have acquired hands-on experience building secure, fault tolerant and highly available AWS solutions.
AWS Cloud Quest: Cloud Practitioner
Earners of this badge have demonstrated basic solution building knowledge using AWS services and have a fundamental understanding of AWS Cloud concepts. Badge earners have acquired hands-on experience with compute, networking, database and security services.
CKA: Certified Kubernetes Administrator
Earners of this designation demonstrated the skills, knowledge and competencies to perform the responsibilities of a Kubernetes Administrator. Earners demonstrated proficiency in Application Lifecycle Management, Installation, Configuration & Validation, Core Concepts, Networking, Scheduling, Security, Cluster Maintenance, Logging / Monitoring, Storage, and Troubleshooting
CKAD: Certified Kubernetes Application Developer
Earners of this designation demonstrated the skills, knowledge and competencies to perform the responsibilities of a Kubernetes Application Developer. Earners are able to define application resources and use core primitives to build, monitor, and troubleshoot scalable applications and tools in Kubernetes. The skills and knowledge demonstrated by earners include Core Concepts, Configuration, Multi-Container Pods, Observability, Pod Design, Services & Networking, State Persistence.