March 2026 monthly summary focusing on key accomplishments across two repositories (lsst-it/k8s-cookbook and lsst-it/lsst-control). Delivered performance visibility enhancements, deployment/CI/CD stability improvements, scalability upgrades, and dependency updates that collectively increase reliability, throughput, and operational clarity.

February 2026 focused on delivering Fleet integration capabilities, production readiness, and observability across the two core repositories (lsst-it/k8s-cookbook and lsst-it/lsst-control). The team shipped multiple features to enable centralized Fleet management, stabilized bundle operations, and aligned branching and promotion practices with production goals. Investment in upgrade, logging, and monitoring improved reliability, security posture, and visibility for operations and development teams.

January 2026 monthly summary: Delivered security hardening, configuration management improvements, networking stability enhancements, data retention upgrades, and governance automation across lsst-control and k8s-cookbook. Notable changes include migrating node layer configuration to EYAML for Hiera compatibility, removing an unused user to reduce attack surface, and improving Calico filtering to prevent false positives. Loki data handling was enhanced with 90-day chunk retention, a minimum of 3 replicas across components, and tuned resource limits to reduce throttling and OOM events. Automation and policy improvements were introduced via Mergify (shipit labeling and backport approvals) and supported by fleet, CNPG, and Ceph-related updates to improve reliability and operational efficiency.

December 2025: Delivered targeted infrastructure and CI/CD stability improvements across lsst-control and k8s-cookbook, focusing on aligning tooling versions with supported features and predictable pipelines.

November 2025 (2025-11) was focused on network modernization, system cleanup, reliability improvements, and enhanced observability across lsst-control and k8s-cookbook. Key outcomes include improvements to DHCP and network interface handling, removal of deprecated components, stronger backup controls, and expanded telemetry for governance and monitoring. Key achievements: - DHCP configuration overhaul and interface updates across lsst-control (commit references: 483b645097d439219bdfa092e2aa22553cccd1d3, 87273ef64372e1dd36ebb4bc48648991f69e8c00, bcbdae9e23fe7802c8a31348a360a0458d57e2d1, 19ae40835d7400b785e06806c399f88b7bd99603) - Network interface modernization: enp1s0 naming and NetworkManager migration (commits: bed9f1f6c7f7dc05f95ddf8678f70e02812832fc, d57cb17424cc4934d7927b6c06bcd18a6e98f916) - System cleanup and deprecations: removal of legacy components and hacks to simplify maintenance (commits: 704044f9e65ff603f24a9b24a07e103df47ff8f2, 672a77a83ae0bd9271af1bfe5a9d502a82b9c0e6) - Backup and performance enhancements: bandwidth controls for S3 uploads and enabling restic backups for IPA service (commits: bcb635fce58ba4e46bc888b66688d8bfe341bc8f, efb1f252419fc41288b185dfc7345428ae8a08b3) - Ceph Telemetry Enablement and Monitoring Enhancements (k8s-cookbook): telemetry enabled across the cluster to improve monitoring and governance (commits: 8baca9240f19988d25b3de7682fbf18334f65df5, f2178287f1a6a3c28e18a8570bd5e4bad36e1e73, cc0af456ac333ba2b74e7f413edd587d41d6ec00, bb0892d71460285f49cdc11b084ce5ab7f56cb51) Impact and business value: - Increased reliability and maintainability through network standardization, deprecation of hacks, and modern config management. - Improved backup reliability and performance with controlled bandwidth for S3 transfers and safe IPA restic backups. - Enhanced observability and governance via Ceph telemetry across the Kubernetes-backed cluster, enabling safer data management and quicker incident response. Technologies and skills demonstrated: - Puppet, Hiera, Foreman, systemd, NetworkManager and NM, Restic backups, IPAs backup, Ceph telemetry, and S3 bandwidth controls.

Concise monthly summary for 2025-10 focusing on business value and technical accomplishments across two repositories: lsst-it/k8s-cookbook and lsst-it/lsst-control. Highlights include decommissioning Velero configurations, automating PR promotion and backport workflows with Mergify, updating branching strategies for cluster configurations, implementing Alloy IP address management, and several stability/security fixes (YAML indentation, Ceph OSD path prefixes, Keycloak image repo, and dependency maintenance).

2025-09 Monthly Summary: Delivered major reliability, observability, and modernization improvements across the k8s-cookbook and lsst-control repositories. The work enhanced incident diagnosis, availability, and operational efficiency through dashboard enhancements, platform upgrades, and modernization efforts (including ANTU).

2025-08 monthly summary for lsst-control and k8s-cookbook focusing on delivering business value through feature upgrades, improved observability, and network/infrastructure reliability across sites.

July 2025 performance summary: Delivered a set of reliability, security, and data-access improvements across two repositories (lsst-control and k8s-cookbook) with a focus on simplifying maintenance and accelerating deployment of robust data pipelines. Key features delivered: - S3ND service optimization and standardization in lsst-control: tuned bandwidth limits and timeouts, standardized on s3nd across configurations/tests, upgraded to latest image versions, and aligned endpoint mappings; significant tests stabilized as s3nd moved from legacy daemon implementations. Commit series include upgrades to v1.6.x–v1.7.x and endpoint/name refinements (examples: 4f5feb26..., 0c367ebe..., cbe09720..., 15d67537..., 029dbd15..., d2d4a6ed...). - NFS data path migration to /data: migrated NFS exports/mountpoints from /ccs-data to /data across all nodes, with test configurations adjusted to reflect new paths and host export targets (commits: 75c182a6..., d43e52dc..., 420ca7af..., 453d20a3..., 56db350a...). Key bugs fixed: - RGW health and routing stability in k8s/cookbook: reduced RGW pool pg_num to address too many PGs per OSD, and fixed ingress service naming for RGW routing; plus cleanup of CephBucketTopic defaults to align with CRD behavior. Commits include a3afc0bc..., cffd81d0..., 3a6d115e.... - RGW erasure coding tweaks for small clusters: adjusted data/coding chunks to support ~5 OSD clusters (a67cf784...). Major additional improvements: - LSST-Cam S3 credential rotation across all deployments: introduced CephObjectStoreUser and ExternalSecret resources to rotate AWS keys for lsstcam in Ruka, Kon Kong, and Elqui; followed by completion of key rotation and cleanup of old credentials. Commits: c3b39d0c..., 5b2b3d77..., 0277202b..., f6d969b1..., 9c53041e... . - CephBucketTopic and Kafka integration: CRDs for CephBucketTopic and ExternalSecret to configure Kafka endpoints across components, enabling bucket notification delivery. Commits: d12b79fc..., aa938aa9.... - Mimir deployment migration to OBCs and Kustomize: provisioning migrated to Object Bucket Claims and replaced mimir-pre bundle with Kustomize (e76761c8...). - O11y RGW cross-namespace watch (Loki): RGW instance allowed to watch Loki namespace to improve cross-component observability (2f6030de...). - Additional LFA-related RGW work included new RGW users calib, rubintv, and saluser; and ongoing Kubernetes/OCS improvements. Overall impact and accomplishments: - Improved data access reliability and performance, aligning storage and compute configurations with current S3ND and NFS best practices. - Strengthened security posture via automated rotation of credentials and tighter access controls (ExternalSecret + CRD-driven workflows). - Increased observability and resilience with cross-namespace Loki integration and CRD-driven event notifications to Kafka. - Reduced operational risk by tuning RGW health parameters and fixing routing across the cluster, enabling smoother customer data flows. Technologies/skills demonstrated: - Kubernetes, CRDs, ExternalSecrets, Kustomize, Object Bucket Claims (OBCs), Loki, Ceph RGW, S3ND, NFS, and CI/test infrastructure - End-to-end configuration management, migration planning, and cross-team coordination across multiple clusters and deployments.

June 2025 monthly summary for lsst-control (lsst-it/lsst-control). Focused on upgrading and hardening the S3ND image, performance improvements for uploads, and enhancements to the test gateway to expand testing capabilities and reliability. The work involved coordinated image version bumps, environment hardening, and test gateway integration across cluster components to improve data ingest reliability and test throughput.

May 2025 monthly summary: Achievements across the k8s-cookbook and lsst-control repositories include secure CephObjectStore access via 1Password integration, secrets-driven Kafka authentication for CephObjectStore, multi-cluster S3-compatible daemon deployment, governance enhancements with a block-merge-commits workflow, and storage/testing infrastructure improvements. These initiatives reduced risk, improved operational reliability, and standardized testing and bucket management across clusters.

April 2025 performance summary for lsst-it/k8s-cookbook and lsst-it/lsst-control focused on secure, scalable cluster operations, storage modernization, and CI improvements. Key storage/cluster work delivered in k8s-cookbook includes: (1) Rook Ceph upgrade and security hardening: upgraded image tags to ghcr.io/lsst-it/rook:v1.17.0-lsst2, bumped rook-ceph to v17.0.0 and later v1.17.1, enabled OSD encryption, aligned authentication mechanisms, and migrated CephBucketTopic credentials to Kubernetes secrets; (2) Rook Ceph demo configurations for elqui and konkong clusters, adding rook-ceph-demo with all elqui/konkong NFS exports to enable cross-project storage access via a shared library; (3) Ayekan cluster modernization: migrated from RKE1 to RKE2 and decommissioned monitoring, with a corresponding increase in pod density (to 250) and test updates; (4) Fleet deployment stability and CI: fixed fleet.yaml misconfigurations and cleaned duplicates; introduced a fleet bundles CI workflow and refined chart lint/bundle validation naming; (5) RKE2 upgrade and capacity optimization across lsst-control: migrated ayekan to RKE2 and increased pod density on ayekan/manke clusters, plus network configuration data format modernization to YAML.

March 2025 delivered storage modernization, security hardening, and cluster stability improvements across k8s-cookbook and lsst-control. Key features migrated storage paths to newer nfs1, optimized Grafana resource usage for reliable observability, enabled Ceph OSD encryption with RGW tuning for improved data security and performance, introduced a new Ceph Object Store config 'lfa' with OBCs to streamline multi-service data provisioning, and upgraded the RKE2 cluster in the ruka environment to benefit from the latest features and fixes. These changes reduce operational risk, improve security posture, and unlock more scalable storage and monitoring capabilities.

February 2025 monthly summary for infrastructure work across lsst-it/k8s-cookbook and lsst-it/lsst-control. Focused on storage unification, cluster modernization, security hardening, and networking/ingress enhancements. Key initiatives include migrating from RKE1 to RKE2, relocating NFS exports under Elqui for unified management, Ceph tuning with OSD encryption, and upgrading Rook Ceph. Implemented modern ingress and authentication (cert-manager, Traefik, Keycloak) with IPAddressPool improvements. Expanded shared storage across roles (NFS from Elqui) and enhanced IP space management (IPAddressPool relocation). Completed network and role refinements in lsst-control, including bonding, DHCP pool hardening, and retirement of older EL7 support. Added RubinObs components and notifications to improve data access and observability. These changes deliver tangible business value: more reliable deployments, tighter security, scalable storage, and faster secure access to applications.

December 2024: Delivered major infrastructure modernization across Kubernetes ingress, storage, and cluster tooling to improve reliability, security, and scalability. Implemented ingress modernization with ingressClassName, Traefik as the ingress provider, and IPAddressPool support; consolidated object storage and access controls by decommissioning deprecated RGW instances, migrating to LFA RGW, and replacing pool quotas with bucket quotas while tuning pool allocation. Enhanced Ceph reliability and observability with an extended exporter, global tuning, and OSD encryption, plus storage tuning (single MDS and PG sizing) and disabling Ceph rook orchestration. Implemented TLS automation via cert-manager and adjusted data governance by reducing retention to 180 days and cleaning up legacy constraints and net-attach definitions. Completed Kubernetes cluster modernization by migrating from RKE1 to RKE2, and advanced Pillan network/config improvements with an RKE2 deployment upgrade. These changes delivered improved traffic routing, data governance, security, and operational stability for production workloads and positioned the platform for future scale.

November 2024 monthly summary for development work across lsst-it repositories. Delivered cross-cluster S3 daemon management, enhanced data-transfer integration, infrastructure reliability improvements, and standardized configuration naming. Expanded Ceph Object Store user provisioning in Elqui, and improved secure ingress exposure for S3 services (Chonchon/Elqui) with embargo support. Completed fleet/vault alignment and cleanup to reduce operational risk.

October 2024 monthly summary focusing on delivering performance, security, networking, and deployment stability across the Elqui deployment and related infrastructure. Key features were delivered across k8s-cookbook and lsst-control with tangible business impact including improved storage performance, stronger data security, and more reliable networking and deployment processes.

Month: 2024-09 Summary: Across two repositories, delivered substantial infrastructure and platform improvements that enhance operational control, network segmentation, configuration reliability, and storage performance. The work strengthens deployment stability, reduces manual handoffs, and improves observability and scalability for production workloads. Key features delivered: - lsst-control: LHN sysctls support for RKE2 agent and server configurations. Improves operational control and performance tuning. (commit 4344eb75cf698ab2ae2584e2a32b41beff4f61d9) - lsst-control: Network VLANs for segmentation and management (VLAN 1802 and 1803). Improves security segmentation and manageability. (commit a6953b62923341c49e10557c318a4a306aa5b3db) - lsst-control: Puppet module updates to quadlets 1.1.0 and s3daemon 1.0.0 to increase configuration reliability. (commits 0ad7564e08e626537a848bf4ca9554b411505ba0; 2d08a63d614fd1d495b0ae3a81f7738a8aeb2dbe) - k8s-cookbook: Ceph cluster performance, stability, and RGW tuning—config adjustments to improve data integrity, load balancing, and operation queue efficiency. (multiple commits including 64b47fe2848de23544a9f9f5683c85a496fd7acc, f8f4fa0cfce479aed2b6e747432f74668f7fcf6e, 5e7ba24e81c931d6cee6dfa8448545abeb3a8179, 86d9ee4f833ea7399d726841ce37acf3042129af, 4ca25976ca75d051025db8b935d1a46b71d8248a, 9f93b8508cd61852b929fcc277489a96d6b6df67, 9255aa1d33d1b6498d064fd20c67df249e7d90f1, 71d2431e42aabcef2c5a2965cad8cd97b851b32e, f7c5e155775a59b51697f0ec3eb4b1fc59d2b08b, 60b9f5982bdc80aa0fa47f1f44980b7d02c8ff5c, 257bb869a58cf05454d6e1aacf168f0669f9260a, 6da4b980103eea90854a72664c64af585921b2af) - k8s-cookbook: Kubernetes Ingress and Infra Compatibility Upgrade to improve deployment reliability with newer Kubernetes versions. (commit 98fb07efbe39434114dc8862e49cf58222f584a6) Major bugs fixed / reliability improvements: - Ceph stability and data integrity improvements from selective config hardening (osd_scrub_auto_repair enabled, osd_op_queue tuning, pool param refinements, RGW settings) to reduce maintenance windows and improve predictability. These changes are reflected in the Ceph-related commits listed above. - Ingress/infra compatibility upgrades to reduce deployment hiccups when upgrading Kubernetes versions, improving reliability of application rollouts. Overall impact and accomplishments: - Strengthened operational control (LHN sysctls), network segmentation (VLANs), and configuration management reliability (Puppet modules), enabling safer, more scalable ops. - Substantial Ceph performance and stability improvements support higher I/O throughput, better data integrity, and more predictable service levels for storage-dependent workloads. - Improved deployment reliability and future-proofing through Kubernetes ingress compatibility upgrades. Technologies/skills demonstrated: - Infrastructure automation and configuration management (Puppet, quadlets, s3daemon) and packaging (Puppetfile) coordination across repos. - Linux kernel/sysctl tuning for RKE2-based environments and network engineering (VLANs). - Storage engineering with Ceph tuning (osd, mgr, rgw parameters) and monitoring implications. - Kubernetes ingress configuration and compatibility strategies for evolving clusters.

May 2023 focused on strengthening the lsst-control configuration management surface by consolidating roles, expanding test coverage for new functionality, and modernizing the data path away from NFS. Key outcomes include integrating the debugutils module into the ccs-mcm role with updated tests, merging the atsccs role into ccs-mcm with updated service definitions, and removing NFS mounts on auxtel-mcm to discontinue NFS data sharing. These changes improve maintainability, reduce operational risk, and align with the system architecture direction for a more robust control plane.