Systems

Welcome to my website. I’m Dami Ola, a platform-focused engineer working across infrastructure, automation, and system reliability, with a background in GIS and enterprise systems.

I document how I build and understand systems. That includes working through infrastructure on AWS, Linux environments, CI/CD pipelines, configuration management, and identity and networking layers. The focus is on tracing how systems behave, where they fail, and how to make them more predictable through automation.

My background is in technical GIS and infrastructure platforms, where I worked with spatial databases, Python automation, and electric and gas network operations. That experience pushed me toward cloud and platform engineering, where I could work closer to the systems that run and scale in production.

This site is a record of that work. It contains builds and walkthroughs that reflect enterprise environments, along with the decisions, tradeoffs, and failures encountered along the way.

My approach is simple: clarity, practicality, and execution. Everything here was built, tested, broken, and rebuilt before being documented.

If you are interested in DevOps, cloud infrastructure, Linux, or end-to-end technical project building, you will find something useful here.

I Got Tired of Rebuilding Docker Test Environments, So I Terraform’d It

I’m rebuilding part of my AWS setup and figured this was a good time to write this down instead of relying on memory and vibes. Any time I need a clean Docker environment to test images or mess around without breaking anything important, I really don’t want to be clicking through the AWS console or babysitting a server. The problem is always the same. I need an Ubuntu box, Docker installed, basic access set up, and I need it quickly. Doing this manually means clicking through EC2, setting up security groups, opening ports, SSH’ing in, installing Docker, and then deciding what to do with the instance when I’m done. ...

Joining Rocky Linux 9 to Windows Server 2022 Active Directory (UTM)

I’ve built and documented Windows Active Directory labs before, you will find some on this website and some on my GitHub. Linux joining AD is conceptually simpler, but operationally more fragile. One wrong DNS setting, one wrong network mode, nothing works, and now I’m mad at my computer, trying to figure out what went wrong. This lab documents the correct mental model, and the exact steps I took to complete it. ...

Windows AD Lab on UTM: Join a Windows 10 Client to the Domain

In a previous post, I explained the steps to take to create a Windows Active Directory (AD) and get it ready for client computers to join. You can find the post here. Today, I will be walking through the process of joining a Windows 10 client to the AD and also some “fun” things we can do with the AD, and try to replicate some domain/enterprise-wide settings used in the real world. ...

Windows AD Lab on UTM: Build a DC, DNS, and DHCP

This lab walks through the steps I took to build a basic Active Directory (AD) lab environment using Windows Server 2022 as the Domain Controller (DC) and Windows 10 as the client. Everything was done inside UTM. In a later post, I will cover joining a Linux client to this Windows server. Setting up the virtual machines I downloaded the Windows Server 2022 and Windows 10 Enterprise ISO files from Microsoft Evaluation Center. I noticed Microsoft took the Windows 10 ISO off their website because they stopped supporting security updates for Windows 10, but I have uploaded it here. You should still be able to find the Windows 10 Server on the Microsoft Evaluation Centre. I used to run this lab on VirtualBox on my 2019 Intel MacBook Pro, but I spilled a glass of margaritas on that computer. VirtualBox does not work well on Apple Silicon, so I switched to UTM. Don’t drink around your computer guys! ...