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Overview

This was not a software project. It was hands-on production infrastructure work at InterServer from June through August 2025.

The role covered server deployment, OS installation, PXE-based imaging, hardware troubleshooting, cable management, and general operational support inside a live data center. That experience matters because it changed infrastructure from something abstract into something physical, procedural, and operationally sensitive.

What I Did

My day-to-day work included:

  • racking and cabling servers and networking equipment
  • installing and configuring Linux, Windows, and Proxmox on new hardware
  • running PXE-based imaging and deployment workflows
  • checking hardware inventory and preparing systems for deployment
  • troubleshooting failed drives, memory issues, NIC problems, and boot failures
  • helping maintain labeling, cable organization, and deployment documentation

The work happened in an environment where nearby systems were already serving customers. That made accuracy, communication, and sequencing matter.

PXE and Deployment Work

One of the most useful parts of the job was seeing how repeatable provisioning works at scale.

Instead of installing every operating system manually, servers could boot from the network, pull a standard image, and complete installation through automated configuration. That required understanding how DHCP, network booting, imaging infrastructure, and post-install configuration fit together.

The value was not just speed. It was consistency. Imaging workflows reduce drift, make setup repeatable, and help teams bring hardware online without reinventing the process each time.

Hardware Troubleshooting

The troubleshooting side of the role was equally important. Production hardware fails in ways that do not look like software bugs.

Common cases included:

  • failed drives and RAID rebuilds
  • memory errors surfaced through hardware logs and diagnostics
  • NIC and cabling problems
  • boot and POST failures during initial deployment

That work built a useful discipline: gather evidence, form a hypothesis, test it, and document what changed. The tools are different from application debugging, but the mindset transfers directly.

Working in Production

The biggest lesson was not technical complexity. It was operational discipline.

In a data center, small mistakes can affect live systems. Work has to be deliberate, communicated clearly, and documented well enough for someone else to understand what happened later. That means thinking about change control, sequencing, rollback risk, and whether a task can be done safely before starting it.

Those habits carried directly into how I think about software and infrastructure projects now.

What It Shows

This experience gave me the foundation behind the software and infrastructure work elsewhere in the portfolio.

  • physical infrastructure understanding: what deployment looks like before anything reaches the cloud abstraction layer
  • Linux on real hardware: installation, configuration, and troubleshooting outside a VM-only environment
  • network-boot and provisioning fundamentals: how repeatable server setup works in practice
  • hardware diagnosis: reading symptoms, isolating faults, and verifying fixes
  • production habits: documentation, care around live systems, and clear communication under operational constraints