Hello, my name is Pieter Bakker, nice that you found me here.

I am an independent and vendor-neutral consultant focused on guiding and supporting companies in the successful deployment of open source technologies and solutions. This can range from mere consulting to designing, implementing, securing and managing extensive and complex systems such as network and containerized cloud infrastructure, communication platforms, high-availability web application stacks and storage pools.

With over 20 years of experience in the IT sector I have held many different positions ranging from purely technical to operations, marketing and sales. As (co)founder of multiple companies I have gained a broad understanding and insight in managing and growing businesses which allows me to translate commercial and administrative challenges into technical solutions and IT strategies that meet and exceed business objectives.

I greatly value freedom of choice, privacy and the protection of data. So it’s no surprise that I quickly embraced Linux and open source in general, making it my first choice for building robust IT infrastructures to deliver powerful and effective solutions with low cost and a high return on investment (ROI). Over the past decades I have built a very extensive knowledge with design, installation, configuration, security and operational management of Linux servers and connected networks, adept at managing complete application stacks from the OS to custom applications. Furthermore, I have a deep understanding of and expertise in architecture, infrastructure design, implementation and support of solutions in public cloud, hybrid cloud and on-premises environments. Virtualization and more recently containerization have always had my full attention, in particular LXD, a lightweight system container that I believe offers the best technology for building cloud infrastructures that are not only platform independent (no vendor lock-in), secure and scalable, but also very flexible and easy to migrate.

In everything I do, I always strive to keep things simple, transparent and not over-engineered by deploying technologies and using platforms that have proven their value over the years, are easy to manage and future-proof. Of course, that doesn’t mean I sit still, quite the opposite. I’m extremely curious by nature, so I’m very hungry for knowledge and you’ll always see me trying out and testing new things to stay ahead of the game and gain knowledge of the cutting-edge technologies.

Although I can sometimes get lost in the technical aspect and spend too much time on that, I remain a true entrepreneur and am constantly looking for new opportunities and exciting challenging business initiatives to get involved in. Therefore, I always like to take the time to brainstorm new ideas and or promising concepts that need some extra power to be launched.

The blog on this site primarily serves as a reference and reminder for myself to keep track of what technologies have been used, how they have been set up and configured, as well as what problems have occurred and what solutions have been found to fix and prevent them. By sharing this info I hope to perhaps also help others get started or give a better understanding of the open source solutions out there and how to use them correctly.

If you run into problems, don’t have time to do the work yourself or think I can somehow add value to your business or organization I am available as a consultant. Also, feel free to contact me for business proposals and or checking out new projects. Just drop me a line and let’s see what we can do for each other.