I’m John Schmanski.

From Homelab to Production. Infrastructure Built the Right Way.

About Me

I’m a Certified Linux and Kubernetes Administrator and IT Freelancer based in Nagano, Japan. I love building and maintaining automated, production-grade infrastructure in my homelab and documenting the journey through my projects and posts on my blog. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to connect.

Production-Grade WordPress on Kubernetes

This site runs on a hardened WordPress deployment on my bare-metal Kubernetes homelab cluster. It’s built with GitOps principles using ArgoCD, Vault secrets management, Longhorn persistent storage, and Cloudflare for WAF and CDN, because even a portfolio project deserves production-grade infrastructure.

Read the full writeup →

Everything from TLS certificates to database secrets is automated. Because it’s running on my infrastructure, I own the entire project lifecycle. No neglected installs, no shared hosting, just clean, documented, repeatable deployments.

What I Do

I like it when things work.

Linux Administration

System configuration, scripting, and maintenance. Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS).

Kubernetes

Cluster management, application deployment, and troubleshooting. Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA).

Infrastructure as Code

Automated, repeatable deployments using Terraform, Ansible, ArgoCD, and Helm. Certified Terraform Associate.

Monitoring & Observability

Metrics collection and dashboarding with Prometheus and Grafana. Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA).

Reliable Infrastructure, Built the Right Way.

Work Experience

What I’ve been up to.

Freelance IT

2023-Present

Building infrastructure and providing systems support for small clients. Kubernetes and Linux administration.

English Teacher

2010-Present

Over 15 years in a professional environment developing communication, documentation, and client-facing skills

My Portfolio

I built all this.

HomeLabo

Self-hosted Multi-node Bare-metal Kubernetes Cluster
https://github.com/jwschman/homelabo

WordPress on Kubernetes

Hardened Production-ready Self-hosted WordPress
https://wordpress.jwschman.com

Homelab Monitoring

Public Grafana Page with Prometheus Metrics monitoring HomeLabo
https://monitoring.jwschman.com

Truenas Gotify Adapter

Go Application for Centralized TrueNAS Alert Management
https://github.com/jwschman/truenas-gotify-adapter-golang

Simple Shelly Exporter

Minimal Prometheus Exporter for Shelly Plug US
https://github.com/jwschman/simple-shelly-exporter

My Certifications

See? I know what I’m doing.

CKA: Certified Kubernetes Administrator
LFCS: Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator
HCTA0-003 HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate
PCA: Prometheus Certified Associate
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner: CLF-C02

Get In Touch

I’m happy to hear from visitors about anything, so please don’t hesitate to reach out.