SYS // AWS FINOPS & K8S ARCHITECTURECut AWS waste without risking production
I help growth-stage startups and engineering teams eliminate 25%–40% of recurring AWS waste without sacrificing availability, latency, or developer velocity.
Free 15-Min Bill Review
1-on-1 Live Screenshare
We inspect your AWS Cost Explorer together. You walk away with the top 3 immediate architectural cost leaks to eliminate.
Just open Cost Explorer. Zero commitment.
AWS Cost Audit
Guaranteed 48 hours Turnaround
Comprehensive architecture report, Terraform/IaC fixes, idle resource reaper scripts, and guaranteed ROI delivered in writing.
AWS Waste Calculator
Interactive Simulator
Estimate potential monthly savings across NAT Gateways, idle non-prod EC2 instances, and orphaned EBS volumes in 60 seconds.
Fixed-Price AWS Cost Audits and DevOps Help
Start with what your AWS bill is wasting. You see the price before I touch anything. Every job ends with written notes on what I changed and where everything lives, so you are never locked in to me.
AWS and cloud
Not sure yet? Book a free 15-minute AWS bill review first. Pipeline and retainer work is quoted up front.
AWS Cost Audit
$250 fixedI go through your AWS bill and account (Cost Explorer or your Cost & Usage Report, VPC setup, compute and storage) and find where the money leaks.
What You Get
- Written findings, ranked by estimated monthly savings
- Terraform patches for the top fixes, ready to review and apply
- Notes on risk and rollout order for each change
- Delivered within 48 hours
CI/CD Pipeline Modernization
Quoted per projectUpgrade from fragile bash scripts and manual deployments to a zero-downtime, GitOps-driven pipeline using ArgoCD, GitHub Actions, and Terraform.
What You Get
- Fully automated CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions or GitLab CI)
- GitOps deployment with ArgoCD or Flux
- Blue/Green or Canary rollout strategy
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform modules)
Fractional DevOps Engineer
Monthly retainer — quoted10-20 hours per week of DevOps architecture and hands-on implementation, for startups that need infrastructure expertise without committing to a full-time hire.
What You Get
- Kubernetes cluster management and scaling
- On-call incident response and remediation
- Terraform module development
- Monitoring and observability stack (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki)
Self-hosted tools: n8n, Ghost, Metabase, Coolify, Dokploy
For small teams running their own tools on a VPS, and not wanting to become server administrators.
Self-Hosting Setup or Fix
$200 fixedn8n, Ghost, Metabase, or Coolify / Dokploy on your own VPS. New install, or an existing one throwing 502s, restarting in a loop, or quietly filling the disk.
What You Get
- Platform installed and locked down: firewall on, SSH password logins off, automatic panel updates off
- Your app live on your domain with SSL
- Nightly backups of your database and your files, stored off the server
- A real restore test before handover, with the time it took written down
- A one-page "where everything lives" note, so you are never locked in to me
Guarantee: If the restore test fails and I can't make it pass, you don't pay.
Backup Restore Verification
$300 fixedYou have backups. Nobody has ever restored one. I restore them onto a throwaway server, time it, and tell you exactly what would be missing.
What You Get
- Your latest database and file backups restored onto a separate, throwaway server
- The measured restore time, start to finish
- A list of everything that is not in the backups (volumes, uploads, panel config)
- Written steps to close each gap, or the fixes applied if you prefer
Docker Compose Production Hardening
$250 fixedYour docker-compose.yml works on a good day. I make it survive the bad ones: health checks, limits, secrets, log rotation and alerts.
What You Get
- Health checks and restart policies for every service
- Memory and CPU limits so one container can't take the server down
- Secrets out of files committed to Git
- Log rotation so logs can't fill the disk
- Disk and uptime alerts to email or Slack
- Written notes on every change and why
Emergency Server Rescue
$80/hourDisk full, containers won't start, site returning 502. I get in with a temporary SSH key, find the cause, and fix it.
What You Get
- A time estimate before I start
- A snapshot first whenever your provider allows it
- The fix, plus a short write-up of what happened and how to stop it happening again
- You remove my SSH key when I'm done
Handing a stranger your server? Here is how access works.
A temporary SSH key
You add it, and you delete it the minute I'm done. No passwords shared.
A snapshot first
Before I change anything, whenever your provider allows it. Undo is always one click away.
The price in writing
A fixed quote before any work starts. That is the price you pay.
A handover note
Where everything lives, how backups run, how to restore. Yours to keep.
Deep Dives From My Blog
Read the technical thinking behind these services.
How I work
Fixed price, stated up front
A self-hosting setup or fix is $200 and the AWS Cost Audit is $250, both fixed. Larger projects are quoted before any work starts, so there are no surprise invoices.
Fixes, not a PDF
Paid work ends in working changes (config, Terraform, backup jobs) plus written notes on where everything lives, not an automated report you'll ignore.
Hands-on
Docker, n8n, Postgres, Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS and GitOps CI/CD. The same stack behind the write-ups on this site.
Something useful for free first
A free 15-minute AWS bill review, or a free one-message recommendation for your self-hosted setup. You keep the advice whether we work together or not.
New practice, no fluff: I'd rather show you one real fix on your own bill than tell you about someone else's.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much does it cost to set up n8n, Ghost or Metabase on my own server?
- $200 fixed. That covers installing the platform (Coolify, Dokploy or plain Docker), locking down the server, your app live on your domain with SSL, nightly database and file backups stored off the server, and a real restore test before handover. You pay for the server itself directly to your hosting provider.
- Do you need access to my server?
- Yes, through a temporary SSH key that you add and remove yourself. I take a snapshot before changing anything whenever your provider allows it, and you delete the key the minute the work is done.
- What if the restore test fails?
- On the $200 setup, if the restore test fails and I can't make it pass, you don't pay.
- Can you fix a server that is already broken?
- Yes. 502 errors, containers restarting in a loop and full disks are fixed at the same $200 fixed price. If it is down right now, emergency rescue is $80/hour with an estimate before I start.
- How much does the AWS Cost Audit cost?
- $250, fixed. You get written findings plus Terraform patches within 48 hours. CI/CD projects are quoted per project and fractional DevOps is a monthly retainer, quoted up front.
- What is the difference between the free call and the paid audit?
- The free 15-minute AWS bill review is a call: we look at your bill together and I tell you the top 3 fixes. There is no written report. The paid AWS Cost Audit is a written deliverable with findings ranked by savings and Terraform patches for the top fixes.
- What is a fractional DevOps engineer?
- A fractional DevOps engineer works with your team 10-20 hours per week on a monthly retainer instead of as a full-time hire. That covers Kubernetes management, Terraform development, CI/CD pipeline work, monitoring setup, and incident response.
- How can I reduce my AWS bill?
- The usual wins are moving stateless workloads to Spot, replacing the Cluster Autoscaler with Karpenter, migrating to Graviton, routing internal traffic through VPC Endpoints instead of the NAT Gateway, shutting down idle non-prod, rightsizing, and cleaning up orphaned EBS volumes and snapshots.
Not sure what you need?
AWS bill too high?
Book a free 15-minute AWS bill review. We look at your bill together and I tell you the top 3 fixes on the call.
Self-hosted tool broken, or not set up yet?
Email me what you run and what's wrong. You get a fixed quote in writing, or a free one-message recommendation if you are still deciding.
Tell me what you're runningLoading scheduler...