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# Mattias Åsell - Articles | Ankra Blog

Canonical: https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell

Mattias writes about GitOps, security, and platform architecture - from draft-first AI workflows to the engineering behind Ankra's native deployment engine. 29 articles on the Ankra blog.

[All posts](https://ankra.ai/blog)

# Mattias Åsell

Mattias writes about GitOps, security, and platform architecture - from draft-first AI workflows to the engineering behind Ankra's native deployment engine.

 [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattiasasell/)

## 29 articles

[Observability](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/observability)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Stacks](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/stacks)

[## Parseable on Kubernetes: Your Logs and Metrics, in Your Own Bucket](https://ankra.ai/blog/parseable-on-kubernetes)

Run Parseable on your own Kubernetes cluster with one Ankra stack profile. Logs and metrics land as Parquet in an S3 bucket you own, for about €6.50 a terabyte.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

November 13, 2026

11 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/engineering)  [Homelab](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/homelab)

[## Kubernetes the Hard Way, Part 3: Back Up etcd and Restore a Lost Control Plane](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-the-hard-way-backup-restore)

Back up a Kubernetes 1.37 cluster by hand with etcd snapshots, then delete the control plane and restore it. Includes the encryption key trap, all tested.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 25, 2026

12 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/engineering)  [Homelab](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/homelab)

[## Kubernetes the Hard Way, Part 5: Certificates, Expiry and Renewal Without Downtime](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-the-hard-way-certificates)

Read every Kubernetes certificate, watch one expire, and renew them all by hand. Most components reload a renewed certificate with no restart at all. Tested.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 25, 2026

9 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [GitOps](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/gitops)  [Homelab](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/homelab)

[## Kubernetes the Hard Way, Part 6: GitOps by Hand, a Reconcile Loop With Git and kubectl](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-the-hard-way-gitops)

Build GitOps from scratch on Kubernetes 1.37. A Git repository, a reconcile loop with kubectl server-side apply and pruning, drift repair, rollback, all tested.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 25, 2026

8 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/engineering)  [Homelab](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/homelab)

[## Kubernetes the Hard Way, Part 2: A Highly Available Control Plane](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-the-hard-way-high-availability)

Build a Kubernetes 1.37 control plane that survives losing a server. Three control planes, etcd with TLS, a load balancer, and failure drills, all tested.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 25, 2026

13 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/engineering)  [Homelab](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/homelab)

[## Kubernetes the Hard Way, Part 4: Pod Networking by Hand, Without a CNI Plugin](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-the-hard-way-networking)

Build Kubernetes pod networking by hand with network namespaces, veth pairs, a bridge, routes and NAT, then call a CNI plugin yourself and trace a Service. Tested.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 25, 2026

11 min read

[AI](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/ai)  [Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)

[## Kubernetes MCP Servers in 2026: Kubeconfig-Based vs Hosted, Compared](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-mcp-servers-compared-2026)

Seven Kubernetes MCP servers compared, from kubernetes-mcp-server and mcp-server-kubernetes to the EKS, AKS and GKE servers and Ankra's hosted one.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 23, 2026

13 min read

[Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Platform Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/platform-engineering)

[## Kubernetes on Proxmox VE in 2026: Every Way to Run It, Compared](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-on-proxmox-options-2026)

Proxmox VE has no built-in Kubernetes. Seven ways to run it in 2026, from Talos, Cluster API and Terraform to Cloudfleet and Ankra, and what each leaves to you.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 23, 2026

13 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/engineering)  [Homelab](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/homelab)

[## Kubernetes the Hard Way in 2026: Kubernetes 1.37 From Scratch](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-the-hard-way)

Kubernetes the Hard Way, updated for Kubernetes 1.37 and Debian 13. Every command tested end to end, on local machines and on Hetzner Cloud.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 23, 2026

30 min read

[Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [AI](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/ai)  [CI/CD](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/ci-cd)

[## From AI-Built App to Production in 2026: Where to Run What You Made with Cursor, Claude Code or Lovable](https://ankra.ai/blog/ai-built-app-to-production-2026)

Take an app built with Cursor, Claude Code, Lovable, Bolt or Replit to production in 2026. What production adds, the hosting routes compared, how to pick.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 15, 2026

14 min read

[Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [AI](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/ai)

[## AI Tools for Kubernetes Operations in 2026: Troubleshooting Assistants, Agents and MCP Servers](https://ankra.ai/blog/ai-tools-for-kubernetes-operations-2026)

Twelve AI tools for Kubernetes compared, from open source troubleshooters to AI operations platforms and MCP servers, and how each one handles write access.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 15, 2026

14 min read

[Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [GitOps](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/gitops)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)

[## Argo CD Alternatives in 2026: GitOps Platforms with a Proper UI](https://ankra.ai/blog/argo-cd-alternatives-gitops-platforms-2026)

Flux with a web UI, Akuity, Harness, Octopus, Rancher Fleet, Devtron and Ankra compared, plus when plain Argo CD is still the right call.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 15, 2026

14 min read

[Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [Developer Experience](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/developer-experience)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)

[## European Heroku Alternatives in 2026: PaaS Options with EU Hosting](https://ankra.ai/blog/european-heroku-alternatives-2026)

Hosted European PaaS or push-to-deploy in your own EU cloud account? Nine Heroku alternatives compared by headquarters, hosting location and fit.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 15, 2026

14 min read

[Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Platform Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/platform-engineering)

[## Kubernetes Management Platforms in 2026: 10 Options Compared](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-management-platforms-2026)

Rancher, OpenShift, Spectro Cloud, Kubermatic, Portainer, Mirantis, Platform9, Azure Arc, Omni and Ankra compared, with who each fits.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 15, 2026

14 min read

[Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Cost Optimization](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/cost-optimization)

[## Kubernetes on Hetzner in 2026: Every Way to Run It, Compared](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-on-hetzner-options-2026)

Hetzner has no managed Kubernetes. Eight ways to run it in 2026, from kube-hetzner and Talos to Syself, Cloudfleet and Ankra, and what each leaves to you.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 15, 2026

14 min read

[Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Platform Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/platform-engineering)

[## Northflank, Qovery and Porter Alternatives in 2026: Platforms That Deploy to Your Own Cloud](https://ankra.ai/blog/northflank-qovery-porter-alternatives-2026)

Northflank, Qovery, Porter, Ankra, Coolify, Dokploy, Kamal, Render and Railway compared, with where each runs your apps and who it fits in 2026.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 15, 2026

14 min read

[Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Platform Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/platform-engineering)

[## Rancher Alternatives in 2026: 8 Options for Managing Kubernetes Clusters](https://ankra.ai/blog/rancher-alternatives-2026)

Eight Rancher alternatives for 2026 compared side by side, from OpenShift and Spectro Cloud to Portainer and Omni, with when each one fits.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

October 15, 2026

14 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Cost Optimization](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/cost-optimization)  [Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/engineering)

[## We Moved Our Production to UpCloud. Here Is What Sovereignty Actually Cost.](https://ankra.ai/blog/we-moved-production-to-upcloud)

Ankra's own platform now runs in Helsinki. The timeline, the bill, the benchmark numbers, and the places UpCloud let us down, from the team that did the move.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

September 21, 2026

14 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Developer Experience](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/developer-experience)  [Startups](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/startups)

[## Migrating From Vercel and Supabase to Ankra: What Moves and What Changes](https://ankra.ai/blog/vercel-and-supabase-to-ankra)

Moving a Next.js app on Vercel with a Supabase backend onto a Kubernetes cluster you own. What maps across, the database move, and the hard parts.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

September 18, 2026

12 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [Cost Optimization](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/cost-optimization)

[## AWS vs GCP vs Hetzner: Six Clouds, One Kubernetes Benchmark](https://ankra.ai/blog/six-clouds-one-kubernetes-benchmark)

We ran the same k6, iperf3 and fio suite on EKS, GKE and Hetzner and lined the results up against UpCloud, OVH and DigitalOcean. The cheapest node in the test won more than it had any right to.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

August 9, 2026

13 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/engineering)  [Best Practices](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/best-practices)

[## The Spec Sheet Is Not a Benchmark: Testing Kubernetes Clusters in 15 Minutes](https://ankra.ai/blog/benchmarking-kubernetes-clusters)

Two identical cloud VMs measured 2.8x apart on CPU; one failed etcd's fsync bar. A 15-minute in-cluster benchmark suite catches this before production does.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

August 8, 2026

9 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [Comparisons](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/comparisons)  [Cost Optimization](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/cost-optimization)

[## UpCloud vs DigitalOcean vs OVH Kubernetes Benchmark](https://ankra.ai/blog/upcloud-vs-ovh-vs-digitalocean)

UpCloud vs DigitalOcean vs OVH on identical Kubernetes clusters. UpCloud led on storage and network, OVH on latency, DigitalOcean had the slowest tails.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

August 8, 2026

12 min read

[Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [DevOps](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/devops)  [Best Practices](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/best-practices)

[## Life After ingress-nginx: A Field Guide to Gateway API](https://ankra.ai/blog/ingress-nginx-to-gateway-api)

ingress-nginx is retired and its successor was cancelled before it shipped. A migration path to Gateway API that does not require a big-bang weekend.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

August 5, 2026

8 min read

[Security](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/security)  [GitOps](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/gitops)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)

[## The Kubernetes Security Work That Actually Matters in 2026](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-security-that-actually-matters)

Half of all clusters are running an ingress controller that stopped receiving security patches in March. Meanwhile, teams debate service meshes. The five findings that show up in every real cluster security review, each with the incident that proves it and the fix.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

July 4, 2026

9 min read

[Security](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/security)  [GitOps](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/gitops)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)

[## How to Manage GitOps Secrets Without Plaintext in Git](https://ankra.ai/blog/gitops-secrets-sops-age)

Manage GitOps secrets by encrypting each value with SOPS and AGE before it reaches Git. Only ciphertext is committed and decrypted at deploy time.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

July 2, 2026

10 min read

[Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/engineering)  [GitOps](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/gitops)  [Platform Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/platform-engineering)

[## GitOps Without ArgoCD: Inside Ankra's Native Deployment Engine](https://ankra.ai/blog/native-deployment-engine)

New Ankra clusters no longer run ArgoCD. Here is the engineering story of the native deployment engine: why we built it, how the reconcile loop works, what the migration does to your live resources (nothing), and what we have not finished yet.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

June 26, 2026

8 min read

[Startups](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/startups)  [Cost Optimization](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/cost-optimization)  [AI](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/ai)

[## The Early-Stage Infrastructure Playbook: Kubernetes Before Your First DevOps Hire](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-for-early-stage-startups)

'Don't use Kubernetes until you have a platform team' was good advice in 2019. The premises changed. What a two-to-six person company should set up in week one, what to deliberately skip, and what it actually costs: about zero.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

June 16, 2026

9 min read

[AI](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/ai)  [GitOps](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/gitops)  [Platform Engineering](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/platform-engineering)

[## Drafts, Approvals, GitOps: Letting an AI Build Production Without Breaking It](https://ankra.ai/blog/drafts-approvals-gitops)

AI agents have wiped real production databases this year. Replit's went down during a code freeze, Cursor's took nine seconds via Terraform. Here's how Ankra's draft-first, GitOps-backed AI gives teams a senior DevOps agent without that failure mode.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

May 6, 2026

9 min read

[Best Practices](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/best-practices)  [Kubernetes](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/kubernetes)  [DevOps](https://ankra.ai/blog/tag/devops)

[## Kubernetes Best Practices for Production Deployments](https://ankra.ai/blog/kubernetes-best-practices)

Master the essential strategies and patterns for running reliable, scalable applications on Kubernetes in production. Learn from real-world examples and avoid common pitfalls.

[Mattias Åsell](https://ankra.ai/blog/author/mattias-asell)

August 6, 2025

3 min read