About OpsReview

About This Site Link to heading

OpsReview.com is a technical blog dedicated to sharing real-world experiences, practical guides, and honest reviews from the DevOps and SRE trenches. Unlike theoretical tutorials, the content here comes from actual implementations across diverse production environments.

About the Author Link to heading

Chet R is a seasoned DevOps Consultant, Site Reliability Engineer, and Operations professional with over two decades of experience building and maintaining production systems for companies of all sizes.

Experience & Expertise Link to heading

  • DevOps & SRE: Building reliable, scalable infrastructure across cloud and on-premise environments
  • DevSecOps: Integrating security practices into CI/CD pipelines and development workflows
  • Operations Engineering: Managing complex production systems, incident response, and post-mortem analysis
  • Cloud Infrastructure: AWS, Azure, GCP architecture and cost optimization
  • Configuration Management: Puppet, Salt, Ansible, Terraform, Terragrunt
  • Container Orchestration: Kubernetes, EKS, Docker, container security
  • CI/CD: Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Bitbucket Pipelines, GitHub Actions, AWS CodeDeploy
  • Monitoring & Observability: Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Sentry
  • Security & Compliance: Snyk, SOOS, SonarQube, OWASP ZAP, Vanta

Why OpsReview? Link to heading

As a consultant, I’ve encountered the full spectrum of DevOps implementations—from elegant solutions to necessary compromises driven by budget constraints, legacy systems, and organizational requirements. This blog exists to:

  • Share Practical Knowledge: Real implementations with actual trade-offs, not just “best practices”
  • Provide Honest Reviews: Straightforward assessments of tools and SaaS products I’ve used
  • Document Solutions: Guides for problems I’ve solved, hoping to save you the debugging time
  • Build a Resource: A collection of DevOps wisdom from years of production experience

The Reality of Production Systems Link to heading

Not every solution is perfect. Sometimes you can’t use the “recommended” approach due to:

  • Budget constraints
  • Legacy system requirements
  • Compliance restrictions
  • Timeline pressures
  • Organizational policies

This blog acknowledges these realities and provides solutions that work in the real world, not just in isolated lab environments.

What You’ll Find Here Link to heading

📚 Guides Link to heading

Step-by-step implementations of DevOps tools, infrastructure setups, and production deployments. From AWS VPC configurations to Kubernetes deployments, CI/CD pipeline integrations, and security scanning implementations.

🔍 Reviews Link to heading

Honest assessments of SaaS products and DevOps tools, including:

  • Monitoring platforms (Datadog, New Relic)
  • Security scanning (Snyk, SOOS, SonarQube, OWASP ZAP)
  • Error tracking (Sentry)
  • Compliance tools (Vanta)
  • And more

💡 Insights Link to heading

Lessons learned from production incidents, architectural decisions, cost optimization strategies, and the evolution of DevOps practices over two decades.

Site History Link to heading

OpsReview.com launched in December 2019 as a platform to share the accumulated knowledge from years of consulting work. The content reflects real implementations, challenges faced, and solutions discovered across various industries and tech stacks.

Get in Touch Link to heading

Have questions about a specific implementation? Want to discuss a particular tool or approach? Feel free to reach out via the contact form.

Stay Updated Link to heading

“There’s always a better way of doing things, but it’s up to you as the DevOps professional to find the balance between cost, efficacy, and long term support.”

Good Hunting! 🥷