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Tuesday, 9 June 2026

  • Zerto Docs MCP — Part 2: Hybrid Search and a Curated Knowledge Layer

    Zerto Docs MCP — Part 2: Hybrid Search and a Curated Knowledge Layer

    Posted on May 26, 2026 by Justin Paul | 1 Comment
    Running a public Zerto Docs MCP server taught me the ceiling of dense-only retrieval. This is the story of finding it, fixing it with BM25 + RRF + reranker, and three other things (KB articles, a curated lessons doc, ingested ZertoPublic example scripts) that needed fixing while I was in there.
    Read more »
  • AI-Powered Grain Market Tracking for Farmers

    AI-Powered Grain Market Tracking for Farmers

    Posted on May 22, 2026 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
    How I built a self-hosted grain-marketing dashboard for my farm — scraping local cash bids, computing basis against CBOT, summarizing the day with a guard-railed LLM, and exposing the whole thing as an MCP server so an AI crop-advisor chat can see live local prices.
    Read more »
  • My Zerto Docs MCP Server: Ask Claude (or Copilot, or Cursor) Real Questions

    My Zerto Docs MCP Server: Ask Claude (or Copilot, or Cursor) Real Questions

    Posted on May 20, 2026 by Justin Paul | 1 Comment
    A hosted MCP server that lets Claude, Copilot, Cursor, and other LLM clients answer Zerto questions using the actual help.zerto.com docs — 21,000 pages across 360+ bundles plus the entire KB archive. This post covers what it does, how to wire it up to your client of choice, and how I went from a standard dense RAG to a reranked one that's ~3× more…
    Read more »
  • Introducing Webhook Server: Windows-Native Webhooks for Zerto (and Anything Else)

    Introducing Webhook Server: Windows-Native Webhooks for Zerto (and Anything Else)

    Posted on May 11, 2026 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
    If you’ve ever tried to wire a Zerto pre/post script to “go do something real” on a Windows host — update DNS, kick a Slack channel, restart a service, ping the recovery VMs to make sure they actually came up — you know the story. Zerto fires your script, the script does some PowerShell, and…
    Read more »
  • Troubleshooting Keycloak Authentication

    Troubleshooting Keycloak Authentication

    Posted on January 23, 2026 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
    Keycloak became the cornerstone of the Zerto appliance back in 10.0 (wow, it’s been almost 5 years!) and over that time we have tried to simplify getting started, as well as integrating Keycloak with other identity providers like LDAP OIDC and SAML. But sometimes the IT gods just aren’t smiling when folks are trying to…
    Read more »
  • DIY Precision Agriculture: Fertilizer Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico Part 2

    DIY Precision Agriculture: Fertilizer Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico Part 2

    Posted on April 28, 2025 by Justin Paul | 1 Comment
    I have good news and great news: The good news is that all my corn is in the ground! The great news is that my DIY fertilizer monitor preformed amazingly. If you havent read part 1 check it out here, but the TLDR recap is: consistency is the name of the game. I need to…
    Read more »
  • DIY Precision Agriculture: Fertilizer Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico Part 1

    DIY Precision Agriculture: Fertilizer Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico Part 1

    Posted on March 16, 2025 by Justin Paul | 1 Comment
    Agriculture has been part of my life forever. I grew up on a farm and worked for my grandpa and dad until I was old enough to go off to university. Computers were a huge interest as well and sometimes those two priorities conflicted when I was growing up. I cannot even count the times…
    Read more »
  • Automated Rotation of Keycloak LDAP Federation Password for Zerto

    Automated Rotation of Keycloak LDAP Federation Password for Zerto

    Posted on October 9, 2024 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
    Maintaining secure integrations between Active Directory (AD) and identity management platforms like Keycloak is a crucial task in any modern IT environment. Password management for service accounts, especially those used in sensitive environments such as LDAP integrations, can become tedious when performed manually. However, automating the process reduces errors, enhances security, and saves time. In…
    Read more »
  • A Water Heater Breakdown Was the Best Thing for My Utility Bills!

    A Water Heater Breakdown Was the Best Thing for My Utility Bills!

    Posted on September 12, 2024 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
    The back story… Recently I replaced an electric water heater with a manufactured date from 1992. You might be asking yourself how the hell a water heater survived that long to begin with. Long story short, my wife and I purchased a farm which belonged to my great-grandparents in 2021. They had passed about 15…
    Read more »
  • DIY Stratum 1 NTP Server: Secure Time Sync with Raspberry Pi Under $200

    DIY Stratum 1 NTP Server: Secure Time Sync with Raspberry Pi Under $200

    Posted on August 30, 2024 by Justin Paul | 10 Comments
    In today’s digital world, precise timekeeping is more important than ever. From securing financial transactions to managing networks, accurate time synchronization ensures that all devices are on the same page. This is where the Network Time Protocol (NTP) comes into play. NTP is a protocol designed to synchronize the clocks of computers over a network,…
    Read more »

The Ultimate Nerd Raspberry Pi Cluster case version 2.0!

The Ultimate Nerd Raspberry Pi Cluster case version 2.0!

Posted on August 23, 2020 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
How do you make the Ultimate Nerd Raspberry Pi cluster case better!?! I wrote this article sometime in late 2019 or early 2020… apparently I forgot to click publish. Woops! So basically this post is about how I made my…
Read more »

What Happens When You Turn 240 Containers Against A SQL Server To Test VSS Stun Time

Posted on August 19, 2020 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
This is the story of how I created a load generator using containers to performance test MS SQL and the effects on VSS stun time. I’ve heard from customers more times than I can count that VSS is SUPER disruptive…
Read more »
How to Build a JunkYard Kubernetes Cluster on the Cheap!

How to Build a JunkYard Kubernetes Cluster on the Cheap!

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
This post is about recycling old hardware that you might never consider using for a lab. It won’t be a super technical post, but since Kubernetes requirements are not the same as virtualization hosts you might be surprised at the…
Read more »
How to Enable Zerto LTR with no hardware using HPE Cloud Volumes Backup

How to Enable Zerto LTR with no hardware using HPE Cloud Volumes Backup

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
Zerto Long Term Retention Zerto is known for its super low RPO and RTO objectives and its ability to “re-wind” your VM like a DVR would do to a movie. Those features require production class storage, and sometimes lots of…
Read more »

How to Install VMware Drivers on a non-VMware Machine

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
This method of installing VMware Drivers is for those who don’t like the idea of cracking the VMware Tools installer and removing the parts that check for VMware based VMs. I guess you could say that this way is more…
Read more »
Warning! Don’t try to learn Kubernetes

Warning! Don’t try to learn Kubernetes

Posted on April 30, 2020 by Justin Paul | 3 Comments
Was that a click bait headline or what! LOL, seriously though, if you have been thinking about learning about containers DON’T start with Kubernetes! There is a lot of buzz around Kubernetes, containers, and Docker, and for good reason. However,…
Read more »
Why I recommend CoSchedule for your blog!

Why I recommend CoSchedule for your blog!

Posted on November 27, 2019 by Justin Paul | 1 Comment
CoSchedule automates the time-consuming part of blogging. Allowing you to focus on your posts, and not on promoting them!
Read more »
Why you should get 2 GL-AR750S routers!

Why you should get 2 GL-AR750S routers!

Posted on November 27, 2019 by Justin Paul | 2 Comments
Since my “Finally a Geek Travel Router I Love” post over a year ago I have upgraded to a GL-AR750S travel router. It’s essentially the same thing, except it has Gigabit ports and external antennas. I won’t lie, I actually…
Read more »
All the news you missed at KubeCon 2019

All the news you missed at KubeCon 2019

Posted on November 19, 2019 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments
If you weren’t able to make it to KubeCon 2019 you missed a lot of news. This is a summary post with links to all of the major press releases at KubeCon 2019 that I’m aware of. If you have…
Read more »

Visualize the Future, Shape the Present, and Restore the Past with Key Cloud Native Projects

Posted on November 19, 2019 by Justin Paul | 1 Comment
Amanda Katona, Cloud Native Community Engagement Director, VMware With KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019 closing out the calendar year, it’s a great opportunity to reflect on the success of Kubernetes and its ecosystem. There’s such positive momentum we can…
Read more »
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Recent Posts

  • Zerto Docs MCP — Part 2: Hybrid Search and a Curated Knowledge Layer
  • AI-Powered Grain Market Tracking for Farmers
  • My Zerto Docs MCP Server: Ask Claude (or Copilot, or Cursor) Real Questions
  • Introducing Webhook Server: Windows-Native Webhooks for Zerto (and Anything Else)
  • I Built an Entire Company Out of AI Agents – Part 1
  • Troubleshooting Keycloak Authentication
  • DIY Precision Agriculture: Fertilizer Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico Part 2
  • BREAKING: Broadcom Announces Radical U-Turn on VMware Pricing
  • DIY Precision Agriculture: Fertilizer Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico Part 1
  • Automated Rotation of Keycloak LDAP Federation Password for Zerto

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