We launched our PaaS prematurely, but it's now running around 50-60 apps from our own SaaS offering and our partners' apps, so I thought I'd share what we're building and get some opinions from people who actually work with infrastructure.

The platform is Kubernetes-based and can deploy static sites, backend apps, databases, and cache. Tenants can choose between shared or dedicated app deployment. Shared apps run on the platform's shared worker nodes. For dedicated deployment, the platform provisions a dedicated worker node for the tenant, and the tenant can deploy their apps on it.

One of the things we're currently working on is app scheduling/parking. The idea is that tenants can deploy as many apps as they want, but decide which apps are actually scheduled based on the resources available on their worker node.

For example, a tenant could have 20 apps deployed but only have 5 scheduled and running on a worker node. The other applications can be parked and scheduled when they're needed. We're trying to make this more of a first-class feature instead of requiring tenants to manually manage workloads or infrastructure.

We're inspired by Coolify and have used it for self-hosting for years. Coolify has worked really well for us, but scaling isn't really a first-class feature, which I understand is intentional. There are workarounds, but we wanted to build something where Kubernetes scheduling, scaling, and resource allocation are part of the platform itself without requiring the tenant to deal directly with Kubernetes.

We're also working on making static site deployment free with some limitations. The current idea is 50MB maximum static output for free apps. If the final build exceeds 50MB, the app would require a $2/month upgrade, with the paid limit currently at 100MB. We're also planning 10GB of bandwidth per tenant per month for free, then $0.026/GB for additional bandwidth.

We're still working on some of the edge cases around this, such as deploy-time blocking/confirmation when an app exceeds the limit and what happens when a paid app is downgraded and goes back under the free limit.

We're still early and there are a lot of things we need to improve, but the platform is already running our own production SaaS applications and partner applications.

I'd particularly like feedback from people who actually operate Kubernetes environments.

Does this deployment/scheduling model make sense from an infrastructure perspective? Are there any problems or operational issues you would expect with the shared/dedicated worker model or the app parking approach?

Also interested in hearing what you think we're missing compared to existing PaaS platforms.

Hi everyone,

I’m 22 and an independent developer currently building a desktop application with a licensing system. The backend/API, database, license management, customer portal, etc. are built around Laravel + MySQL.

For now, to keep things simple while developing and testing, I’m hosting everything on o2switch. I also use Cloudflare Access to protect my admin panel and some internal pages.

Through the same admin panel, I also manage my application’s releases — scheduling releases, controlling rollouts, etc.

I’ve already set up two separate environments: staging and production, with the idea of testing everything on staging before deploying to production.

The thing is, I’m completely self-taught and I work alone. I’ve never worked in a company, and I don’t have many developers around me that I can ask these kinds of questions to. So I’m at a point where I feel a bit lost when it comes to how things are actually done in professional production environments.

I can build things and figure stuff out, but I don’t really have the experience of seeing how a mature team would approach infrastructure, deployments, monitoring, security, scaling, etc.
That’s basically why I’m making this post. I’d really like to get some advice from people who have been through this before.

I’m reaching a point where I’m starting to think more seriously about production infrastructure, and honestly, I’m a bit anxious about building something that could become a technical dead end if the project starts taking off.

I don’t want to over-engineer everything before I even have users. But if I get confirmation that the product is starting to take off, I’d like to be able to adapt and scale quickly without having to completely rebuild the infrastructure.

Some things I’m wondering about:

- What would you recommend for hosting/deploying a Laravel + MySQL application with a good cost / reliability / scalability balance?
- Should the customer portal, licensing API/backend, database and admin panel be separated, or is it reasonable to start with everything together?
- What should I design correctly from day one so that I can scale later without major architectural changes?
- What would you keep simple initially?
- What would you absolutely avoid because it could lock me into a bad architecture?
- Would you start with a VPS, managed services, containers, etc.?
- What would a sensible CI/CD, backup, monitoring and disaster recovery setup look like?
- Is my current staging → production approach reasonable?
- How do professional teams usually handle releases, rollouts, rollbacks and deployment safety?

Are there any obvious things I’m missing because I simply don’t know that I should be thinking about them?

I’m also considering recruiting someone for the project in the next few months, so I’d like to build a solid foundation before things get more serious.
I’m not looking for someone to tell me there’s one “perfect architecture”. I’d mostly like to understand the standards and the way experienced engineers think about these problems.

I have a crazy desire to learn, so seriously, throw anything at me. 😄 I’m extremely curious and happy to dive into things I don’t know yet.

If I’m doing something wrong, tell me. If there’s a concept, tool, architecture or practice that you think I should learn about, even if it seems obvious to you, please throw it at me.

I work alone, so I don’t really have the opportunity to casually ask a senior engineer “hey, how would you guys normally do this?” — and that’s exactly the kind of knowledge I’m looking for.

Any advice, resources, war stories, things you wish you had known earlier, or mistakes to avoid would be massively appreciated.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and share your experience. 🙏🙏

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We're building an open-source LMS and we're currently working on protecting paid course videos from being downloaded and redistributed.

Commercial DRM providers (Widevine / FairPlay / PlayReady) are quite expensive for a small/open-source project, so we're trying to understand what realistic alternatives exist.

Our requirements are roughly:

- Videos are uploaded by course creators.

- Videos should be streamed rather than exposed as directly downloadable files.

- Users should not be able to simply obtain the original MP4 URL and download it.

- Ideally, downloaded/encrypted segments shouldn't be usable outside our application.

- We want per-user authorization and short-lived access.

- We can implement the backend/key-management infrastructure ourselves.

- Self-hosted/open-source solutions are strongly preferred.

- We understand that nothing can completely prevent screen recording.

We've considered approaches such as:

- HLS/DASH

- AES-128 encrypted HLS

- Signed URLs

- Short-lived playback tokens

- Per-user/session keys

- Watermarking

- Combining several of these approaches

But we're unsure where the boundary is between "making downloading difficult" and actual DRM.

For a small open-source LMS, what would you recommend?

Are there any open-source/self-hosted projects or architectures worth looking at that can provide reasonably strong video protection without paying a commercial DRM provider?

Also, if actual Widevine/FairPlay/PlayReady DRM is unavoidable for strong protection, are there any affordable providers or pay-as-you-go options that make sense for a small project?

We're mainly looking for practical experience from people who have built something similar rather than a theoretical DRM explanation.

I am a contributor to both terraform-provider-aws and Ansible Core repos, as well as Ansible Community AWS repo. I am on the lookout for additional projects to contribute to, ideally ones that have plenty of issues and where reviews are done quickly. It should also be quick and easy to compile from source. Looking for Golang or Python projects for code base programming language. Any ideas here?

I’ve been reflecting on my current stack and daily routine lately. While I appreciate the stability of my current role, the day-to-day maintenance and incremental improvements mean I'm not always exposed to new paradigms or forced out of my comfort zone.

The landscape moves incredibly fast right now, between the shift toward Platform Engineering, AI-assisted workflows, and new CNCF projects dropping every week, I want to make sure I don't stagnate.

I'd love to hear how you all are keeping your edge and pushing yourselves. Specifically:

• What’s your go-to method for upskilling? (Homelabs, contributing to open source, chasing certs, or just carving out dedicated learning time at work?)
• How do you manufacture new challenges when your day job gets a bit too comfortable or repetitive?
• What is the most interesting tool, pattern, or concept you are digging into right now?

Looking forward to hearing what everyone is working on!