<![CDATA[The Cloud Dive: Sentinel]]>https://theclouddive.com/s/sentinelhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Qd10!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7be82cb5-9eb0-4b86-96e8-07063afdc715_800x800.pngThe Cloud Dive: Sentinelhttps://theclouddive.com/s/sentinelSubstackTue, 30 Jun 2026 06:21:00 GMT<![CDATA[A Dev Kafka Broker for the Price of a Bad Coffee]]>https://theclouddive.com/p/a-dev-kafka-broker-for-the-pricehttps://theclouddive.com/p/a-dev-kafka-broker-for-the-priceMon, 09 Mar 2026 13:45:47 GMT
An AI generated diagram of this deployment — laptop → fly proxy → Kafka broker on Fly.io.

Deploying Kafka on Fly.io

Before I could wire Kafka into Sentinel’s ingestion layer, I needed a Kafka broker that wasn’t going to cost me $50/month to leave running while I figured things out.

AWS MSK? Overkill for dev work. I need something in the middle — a real bro…

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]]><![CDATA[Sentinel: Scoping the Ingestion Layer Architecture]]>https://theclouddive.com/p/sentinel-scoping-the-ingestion-layerhttps://theclouddive.com/p/sentinel-scoping-the-ingestion-layerMon, 02 Mar 2026 17:31:12 GMTDesigning the Architecture: What We’re Building and Why

Last episode we talked about the gap — the difference between a portfolio that shows you can deploy and one that shows you can design.

Now we close the gap.

This is where Sentinel stops being an idea and starts being a system. But before we get into what we built, we need to start with something most …

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]]><![CDATA[Sentinel: Why Most Cloud Portfolios Don’t Get You Hired]]>https://theclouddive.com/p/sentinel-why-most-cloud-portfolioshttps://theclouddive.com/p/sentinel-why-most-cloud-portfoliosTue, 24 Feb 2026 17:43:19 GMT

This is Episode 0 of Sentinel, a public build documenting production-level cloud thinking.

You did the tutorials. You deployed the thing. Maybe you have the certifications.

And nobody cares.

That’s not bitterness. That’s the market telling you something. Most cloud portfolios look the same to the person reading them — and that person has seen forty of them…

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