ModernOps
Engineering Journal
Field Notes.
Plain-math writeups from the engineers who take your calls: the licensing, hardware and platform decisions mid-market IT teams are actually facing. No sales pitch, sources shown.
Index · All notes
01
The 3-host VMware trap, and the escape hatch that costs about half.
Broadcom went subscription-only, hardware prices are spiking, and small clusters now pay enterprise rates. The math on the standard three-host shop (96 cores, $14K–$18K a year), and what a hosted alternative actually looks like.
02
When ransomware hits, the district stops.
A recovery playbook for schools and local government. Backups are not the plan. This is the sequence that gets identity, phones, payroll and critical services back online in hours instead of weeks, and what "fully recovered" actually means.
03
The reverse information paradox: don't lose your crown jewels.
You pay for AI with money, then pay again with the proprietary knowledge you hand over to make it useful. Why the second bill is the one nobody reads carefully, and how to move fast without giving the exhaust away.
04
If your admin can delete the backups, you do not have backups.
Ransomware crews target backup infrastructure first. How immutability actually works on Pure SafeMode and NetApp SnapLock, the 3-2-1-1-0 rule, and a 60-second check for whether your copies are truly locked.
05
Veeam just gave your VMware exit a safety net.
Backup & Replication 13.1 shipped Proxmox VE replication and Instant Recovery. What works today, the fine print that still limits it, and the DR-first way to leave VMware without betting the company on the move.
06
When “it’s still running” isn’t a strategy.
A manufacturer replaced aging VMware hosts and an end of life SAN before the hardware forced the decision. A three-node Proxmox VE cluster with NetApp AFF A20 storage, near-instant conversions with the Shift Toolkit, and the licensing savings that finally bought them DR.
06
In the works.
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