About Me

Hi, I’m Robert. I’m a Linux Engineer, open source enthusiast and a self-hosting geek. Most of the time I work in Operations and focus on infrastructure and deployment automation, which is my real passion. On my private blog thegeeklab.de I write about everything that comes to my mind, but mainly about topics from the Linux and open source world.

My Linux journey started almost 10 years ago. For more than 5 years, maintaining and managing Linux servers in professional environments has been my daily business. I have worked a lot with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in corporate environments and prefer RPM-based distributions for my personal use as well. My daily driver is a Thinkpad powered by Fedora and since the restructuring of the CentOS project, I have been using Rocky Linux for my servers.

ownCloud
System Administrator
May 2019

ownCloud is an open-source file sync, share and content collaboration software. As part of the operations team, I am responsible for the company-wide server infrastructure. That also including the Continuous Integration platform, which is a critical component for the development of our products. To manage the container-based deployments of more than 70 servers, we follow the infrastructure as code approach and use Terraform, Ansible and Continuous Deployment. Graylog, Telegraf, Prometheus and Grafana build the foundation for a seamless monitoring and troubleshooting.

Schwarz IT
Linux Engineer
Oct 2017 - Apr 2019

The Schwarz IT is the central IT service provider of the Schwarz Group where the main customers are the two retail divisions Lidl and Kaufland. During my work as part of the Linux Server team, one challenge was to design a test-driven infrastructure environment using Ansible and Ansible Tower for more than 4.000 Linux servers in three different data centers to replace the existing Puppet configuration management.

Kaufland
First Level Support
Jul 2013 - Aug 2014

While working in the First Level Support Team of the Kaufland distribution center of Barsinghausen, the main task was to provide support for all problems related to the soft- and hardware environment of the employees and the retail ERP solution (SAP).

BS Business Informatics
DHBW Mosbach
Sep 2014 - Sep 2017

During my dual studies, I worked in various areas at Schwarz IT. After joining the SAP security department, I worked in the Linux department, where I also wrote my Bachelor Thesis entitled “Selection and prototypical implementation of a configuration management solution for Linux”.

IT specialist
IHK Cottbus
Sep 2010 - Jun 2013

Apprenticeship as “Computer Science Expert Subject Area: System Integration” at Kaufland Logistik VZ 2.