Capability
Platform & Infrastructure
The layer most application developers avoid: Linux administration, Apache and Nginx configuration, deployment, and the performance tuning users actually feel.
What is actually included
- Linux server administration, configuration, and hardening
- Apache and Nginx configuration, TLS, and caching strategy
- Deployment that is repeatable and written down rather than remembered
- Front-end and server-side performance measurement and tuning
The layer most application developers avoid
Linux administration, web server configuration, TLS, caching, and deployment. It is unfashionable and it is where a surprising share of production problems actually live. Knowing what the server is doing is what separates a plausible theory about a slow page from an actual diagnosis.
Performance work
Performance is measurable, which makes it one of the few areas where an argument can be settled rather than debated. The work is unglamorous and largely a matter of removing things: requests that did not need to be made, bytes that did not need to be sent, and queries that did not need to run.
- Linux server administration, configuration, and hardening
- Apache and Nginx configuration, TLS, and caching strategy
- Deployment written down and repeatable rather than remembered
- Measured front-end and server-side performance tuning
Deployment deserves particular attention. A release process that lives in one person’s head is an outage waiting for that person to take a holiday, and it is usually a weekend of work to fix permanently.