whoami
We keep your infrastructure, databases and Kubernetes clusters running - quietly, boringly, and with the receipts to prove it.
BST Consult is an independent engineering consultancy: cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platform engineering, database operations, observability and security hardening, delivered by senior engineers who carry the pager and have long since made peace with 3am. No account managers, no bench - since 2010.
what we do
Services
Seven practices we're hired for again and again. Each can run standalone or as part of a broader engagement - rather like a Swiss Army knife maintained by someone who actually reads the manual.
Kubernetes that your team can actually operate
Cluster design, upgrades, multi-tenant setups and CI/CD pipelines built so deploys are boring and rollbacks are one command.
- Cluster bootstrap & upgrades (EKS, GKE, kubeadm, k3s)
- Helm charts, GitOps (Argo CD / Flux)
- Autoscaling, resource limits, cost tuning
- Ingress, service mesh, network policy
Infrastructure as code, not tribal knowledge
AWS-first, with production experience on Google Cloud and Azure too - but we've run Nortel and Cisco networks and FreeBSD/Linux boxes long before "cloud" was the default word for infrastructure.
- AWS, Google Cloud & Azure architecture and cost review
- Terraform / Ansible infrastructure-as-code
- Migration from bare metal or legacy hosting
- Network & firewall design (Cisco, Nortel)
Custom-built data centers, virtualized the right way
From rack planning to a running hypervisor cluster: on-prem and colo builds with Proxmox, VMware or KVM, sized for what you actually run - not what a vendor slide deck insists you might need by 2030.
- Proxmox VE & VMware vSphere/ESXi clusters
- KVM/libvirt and Hyper-V virtualization
- Shared storage (Ceph, ZFS, iSCSI/NFS) & HA/failover
- Rack design, colo migration, hybrid on-prem/cloud
Schemas, replication and queries that scale
Postgres is our home turf: from schema design and query tuning to replication topologies and zero-downtime migrations.
- Postgres performance tuning & indexing
- Replication, failover, backup strategy (WAL-G, pgBackRest)
- Schema design & migration planning
- Connection pooling & capacity planning (PgBouncer)
Know what broke before your customers tell you
We wire up metrics, logs and traces into dashboards and alerts that point at the actual failure, not a wall of noise that could double as a light show.
- Prometheus / Grafana / Loki stacks
- Alerting design (SLOs, error budgets, on-call routing)
- Distributed tracing for Kubernetes workloads
- Incident postmortems & runbook creation
Hardening that doesn't slow the team down
Practical security work: reduce attack surface, patch the real gaps, and leave your team with a process instead of a one-off report.
- Server & network hardening audits
- Kubernetes RBAC & secrets management review
- SSH, VPN & access control cleanup
- Incident response & forensics support
Custom development where off-the-shelf stops working
Backend services, internal tools and integrations in the language your team already runs - built to be operated, not just demoed.
- Backend services in Go, Node.js, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java
- API design & integration work
- Legacy system modernization
- Ruby on Rails applications
technology
The stack we run in production
Not a buzzword list - this is what's actually deployed and supported across current engagements. No blockchain. We checked twice.
bstconsult --stack --verbose
cloud & orchestration
virtualization & data center
databases
observability
operating systems
languages
legacy support
networking & security
how we work
A straightforward process
No lengthy procurement cycle. Most engagements start within a week of the first call - considerably faster than most committees can agree on a font.
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Technical review
A short call and a look at your current setup - architecture, database, cluster, or codebase - to understand what's actually going on before proposing anything.
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Scoped proposal
A written scope with concrete deliverables and either a fixed price or a day-rate estimate. No open-ended retainers unless you want one.
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Hands-on delivery
We work in your repos and infrastructure, with regular check-ins, not a black box that reappears at the deadline.
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Handover & documentation
Runbooks, diagrams and knowledge transfer so your team can operate what we built without needing us on call.
engagement models
Ways to work with us
Pick the shape that matches the problem - all three are staffed by the same senior engineers, who have not yet learned to be in two places at once, but are working on it.
Project
A defined piece of work - a migration, a cluster build, a security audit - scoped and quoted up front.
Ongoing support
Continuous infrastructure, database and on-call coverage for teams that need a senior engineer without a full-time hire.
Day rate
Drop-in help for a specific problem - an incident, a review, or unblocking a migration - billed for the time it takes.
background
About
BST Consult has provided hands-on technology consulting since 2010, working directly with client teams rather than through a large delivery organization, or indeed anything involving the word "synergy" said with a straight face. Engagements span infrastructure design, Kubernetes and cloud migration, database operations, observability, security hardening and custom software development.
The approach is practical: pick the right tool for the problem in front of you, keep systems boring and well-documented, and stay accountable for what gets shipped - not handed off to a junior team the moment the ink dries on the contract.
- founded
- 2010
- engagement style
- direct, senior-only
- based
- remote-first
- contact
- info@bstconsult.com
start a conversation
Tell us what you're running into
A slow database, a Kubernetes cluster nobody fully understands, an audit that's overdue - describe it and we'll reply from a real inbox, usually within a day, and never with the phrase "per my last email".