Reviewing August 2024

This month was dedicated to CloudCheck, a project I've been thinking about since early 2023 to help small teams reduce cloud waste. Many startups lack dedicated devops or the time to continuously monitor and optimize their server usage. I've experienced this issue firsthand in previous jobs, and it's also easy for hobbyists to forget a server running in the clouds and keep paying for it for a long time.

I built a simple MVP using Ruby 3.3 and Rails 7.2 (released this month) to monitor my AWS and DigitalOcean accounts. Over the course of the month, I added generic cloud support so it could also be applied to the Proxmox servers in my homelab and various Raspberry Pi servers around the house.

I went down a rabbit hole exploring the /proc filesystem on Linux to get the necessary metrics for auditing a server. I created a simple bash script that can be called by a cron job every minute to send a plain text file to an API. The API then does some computations, sometimes with previous metrics, to derive system load and uptime, CPU and RAM usage, disk and network IOPS, and more. I also learned how the Linux filesystem has evolved to provide more comprehensive data over the years.

After spending enough time on the MVP, I switched gear to create a landing page for the service. It's basic and will need further improvements, but I'm satisfied with the initial result.

The challenge now is finding some early adopters to test the MVP and provide feedback for improvement. The MVP will be free, and, if possible, will remain free for hobbyists to help terminate forgotten cloud servers. However, marketing is hard for devs, and I don't have a significant audience on social media to promote the project.

So, at the end of the month, I decided to take a break from that task and instead spend a few days creating another Ruby on Rails app allowing people to send emails to the AIs made by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Mistral instead of using their respective web apps. These AIs helped me write the content for the landing page, but it was a frustrating experience that is now much easier with this new service. I named it Goodbot.club, and we'll see where it goes.

Anyway, if you manage cloud servers and are interested in trying CloudCheck you can sign up for early access, and I'll be happy to read your feedback.

Tags: news, cloudcheck.cc, goodbot.club, ai