About

How it started

My enthusiasm for technology began early. My first video game console was an Atari 2600 with Pac-Man, which I received for my eleventh birthday in 1982. In 1984 my first home computer followed, a Commodore C64, first with Datasette, later with a 1541 floppy drive and eventually with a NEC 9-pin printer. I was already programming in BASIC on the C64 back then.

In upper secondary school I chose computer science, which later also became one of my Abitur subjects. There I learned Turbo Pascal and wrote many programs around searching and sorting. In 1989 I bought my first PC: a 386 SX 16. At that point it was clear that computers and IT would stay with me for a long time.

Education and first steps

After graduating from school in 1991, I first completed military service from 1991 to 1992 in tank battalions 336 and 331 in Celle / Scheuen.

In autumn 1992 I began studying computer science H2 with mathematics as a minor at the University of Paderborn. My focus areas were cryptography, databases and software development with C, C++ and Java.

Already during my studies, from 1996 to 2001, I worked independently as an IT consultant and service provider. During that time I gained early practical experience in real projects, from acquisition and project management through to implementation. Back then I mainly programmed in C, C++, Visual Basic and, in the web environment, HTML, CSS, PHP and Perl.

Unix and Linux

I first came into contact with Unix systems during my studies from 1992 onward. At university I worked with SunOS and later Solaris, which gave me my first intensive experience with multi-user systems, shells and system-level administration. As a long-time Windows user since version 2.0, the beginning was not easy, especially working on the shell and thinking in Unix structures.

In the late 1990s, Linux also arrived on my desktop. My first distribution was SuSE Linux 6.0, which I explored intensively and used to gain a lot of practical experience, from installation to daily use and system customization.

Professionally, Linux became central from 2006 onward. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, I supported, among other things, a highly available two-node Oracle 10g RAC Standard Edition cluster with fully redundant SAN and network topology and an additional single-node test system.

In the following years, the systems were continuously developed further and updated to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and Oracle Database 11g. The focus was always on stability, high availability and reproducible operating processes, because this system formed the core of the production control system and therefore had to run without interruption.

In parallel, I worked with many other distributions over time, including Ubuntu Server since 16.04 LTS, Debian, Raspberry Pi OS, Linux Mint and Rocky Linux. For me, Linux is not only a tool, but a platform that can be adapted flexibly to many different requirements, from a small Raspberry Pi to complex Linux server environments.

Professional practice

From 2001 to 2021 I worked as a senior IT administrator, from 2019 onward with team lead responsibilities, in an international industrial company with several thousand employees and highly available system landscapes.

There I gained extensive experience over many years in building, operating, monitoring, developing further and stabilizing complex IT infrastructures, from classic systems to demanding and critical environments. I was also able to gain valuable experience in international projects in Switzerland and the United States.

My focus areas included Windows and Linux server operations, system monitoring, virtualization, Oracle DB and RAC, MySQL, MariaDB and Microsoft SQL Server, high-availability solutions with failover clustering on Windows Server and Linux, system architecture and long-term archiving. Operating and stabilizing Linux and Unix systems in production-related environments was part of my everyday work for many years.

Today

I am the founder and owner of Catarix IT, an IT service company for private and business customers.

In my daily work I help customers operate their IT securely, stably and transparently. This includes not only building and supporting systems, but also detecting problems early before they affect operations.

My focus is on sustainable solutions: clean structures, understandable concepts and systems that work in the long term, not only in the ideal case but also in everyday use.

At the same time, this website deliberately remains private. It is my personal space to record and share experience, technical topics, thoughts and projects.

What drives me

This development still shapes the way I work today: understanding systems, building them cleanly and operating them reliably over the long term.

I am interested not only in whether something works, but also in how and why. I like understanding systems, recognizing connections and building solutions that are clean, secure, cost-efficient and traceable.

While troubleshooting is something many people dread, for me it is often the most interesting part of the work.

That is exactly what this site is about as well: Linux, infrastructure, self-hosting and personal thoughts from practical experience.