I keep systems boring on purpose.

I'm Mikko Laaksonen, a DevOps and site reliability engineer based in Tampere, Finland. I've spent the last seven years keeping web applications and their databases running, first at a logistics startup in Helsinki, then as an independent consultant working mostly with small and mid-sized companies across the Nordics.

My background is a bit of a mix. I studied information technology at Tampere University of Applied Sciences, spent two years doing frontend and backend development before realizing I enjoyed the infrastructure side more than the application code, and have been gradually moving down the stack ever since — from PHP, to Linux servers, to containers, to whatever currently sits underneath all of it.

What this site is

nordicops.dev is a personal log, not a company blog. There's no editorial calendar and no SEO strategy. I write when I run into something worth remembering — a configuration that took too long to get right, a database setting that made a real difference, a piece of CSS that finally behaved. If it's useful to me when I forget it in six months, it's probably useful to someone else right now.

The site covers four things, roughly in order of how often I think about them:

• Linux administration — systemd, networking, filesystems, and the command-line habits that make servers less stressful to operate.
• Docker and containers — running Compose and Podman in production, image builds, and the networking quirks that trip people up.
• Databases — mostly PostgreSQL and Redis, plus backup strategy and the occasional time-series project with TimescaleDB.
• Web design — I still build the occasional marketing site or internal dashboard, and write about the CSS and design decisions that hold up over time.

How I work

Most of my client work is remote, but I'm based in Tampere and meet local clients in person when it's useful. I currently split my time between contract DevOps work, a handful of long-term retainer clients, and writing here. I'm not currently looking for a full-time role, but I do take on short engagements — server audits, migration projects, and "why is this database slow" investigations are the kind of thing I enjoy most.

Outside of work

When I'm not at a terminal, I row with a club on Näsijärvi in the summer and spend a fair amount of the winter cross-country skiing on the trails around Tampere. I also maintain a small homelab that exists purely to give me something to break on weekends — there's a running list of what's currently in it on the uses page.