About Blue Canoe
Blue Canoe is an independent technical practice established in 2001.
This site is a knowledge bank: a growing record of infrastructure built, problems encountered, decisions made and lessons learned. It covers networks, servers, internet services, software, security and the operational work that connects them.
The material is based on real projects and maintained as those projects develop. Where later evidence changes an earlier conclusion, the published record is corrected or clearly updated.
This site records what we built, what went wrong and what we learned. It is not a claim that ours is the correct way, or the best way—just a way that has worked for us, under the circumstances described.
The work behind these articles stretches across roughly eighteen months to two and a half years of taking systems apart, reconsidering decisions and rebuilding. The tidy sequence of published articles should not be mistaken for a tidy or uninterrupted project.
There was a great deal of sweat, and occasionally some blood. Computers bite; rack-mounted equipment bites harder. Even when you know what you’re doing, one slip can provide a painful reminder that infrastructure is not entirely a software problem.
We share the reasoning and evidence so readers can judge what might be useful in their own circumstances, including where a different approach would make more sense.
The underlying approach is straightforward:
- prefer evidence to assumption;
- understand the problem before choosing the solution;
- keep systems as simple as their purpose allows;
- automate work that benefits from being repeatable;
- validate changes and preserve a route back;
- document enough that the reasoning remains understandable later.
The site is not intended to generate engagement for its own sake. The material is here because recording useful work improves the work itself, and because it may also be useful to somebody facing a similar problem.
Blue Canoe is operated by Nigel Frankcom.
Commercial information is available at blue-canoe.com.
Copyright and reuse
Unless otherwise stated, material on this site is © Blue Canoe. Linking and short attributed quotation are welcome.