all systems operational · Nairobi, KE · UTC+3

Arshford Thua
builds infrastructure_

Systems & DevOps engineer running Linux, Kubernetes, backups, mail and hosting at scale. I set things up, keep them running, and make sure they recover when they don't — infrastructure you don't have to babysit.

50+
cPanel/WHM servers managed
40k
domains under automation
1,500
WordPress accounts hardened
6+ yrs
running production systems
~/about

Who I am

I'm Arshford Thua (ArsH), a systems & DevOps engineer working across multi-country web hosting infrastructure. My day is Linux, containers, backups that actually restore, mail that lands, and dashboards that tell the truth about what's running.

I hold a BSc in Information Technology and a stack of Linux and cloud certifications, and I've spent years keeping large fleets healthy — from Kubernetes clusters to hundreds of hosting servers.

Under Ashif Labs I bring that same discipline to individuals and small teams: clean setups, sensible security, and infrastructure that just works.

~/expertise

What I work with

Linux & systems

UbuntuDebianAlmaLinuxhardeningLVMnetworking

Containers & orchestration

DockerKubernetesRKE2RancherLonghornHelm

Backup & disaster recovery

restic / BackrestBareosJetBackupKasten K10tested restores

Mail infrastructure

PostfixDovecotrspamdPMGOX App SuiteDKIM/SPF

Hosting & billing

cPanel / WHMWHMCSDNSregistrar & EPP automation

Automation & code

AnsibleBashPythonPHPDjangoCI/CD

Monitoring & observability

GrafanaElastic APMSigNozUptime KumaPlaywright synthetics

Cloud

Oracle CloudAzureContaboHetznerS3 / MinIO
~/work

Selected work

Centralised backup infrastructure

Deployed Bareos across central servers with PostgreSQL catalogs, grandfather-father-son retention, TLS dial-home clients and hardened deploy scripts — plus a restic/Backrest strategy for cross-provider VM backups with LVM-snapshot consistency.

BareosresticPostgreSQLAnsible

Kubernetes backup dashboard

Built a Django status dashboard unifying JetBackup, Kasten K10 and Longhorn across multiple clusters, with per-engine collectors and a "needs attention" view. Surfaced a fleet-wide backup outage hiding behind stuck jobs.

DjangoKubernetesMySQLmonitoring

Self-hosted mail platform

Deployed and ran OX App Suite on Kubernetes — Dovecot, Postfix, PMG relay, LDAP auth, Solr full-text search, encryption and S3 filestore — and handled a live production database and storage migration.

OX App SuiteDovecotPostfixMinIO

Mail filtering & anti-spam

Tuned rspamd to kill false-positive storms, score abusive patterns and whitelist trusted senders — with a custom React/FastAPI dashboard for visibility into what's being filtered and why.

rspamdReactFastAPILua

WHMCS performance engineering

Multi-month effort diagnosing OOM kills, PHP-FPM exhaustion, CPU throttling and N+1 query explosions across billing platforms — fixed with Redis caching, index work and probe decoupling.

WHMCSPHPMySQLRedis

Fleet tooling & hardening

A parallel PHP nameserver scanner with daily change-detection across a 40k-domain fleet, and an Ansible-driven script that normalised file permissions across 1,500 WordPress accounts — hardened against path traversal.

PHPBashAnsibleWordPress
~/experience

Experience & education

Systems & DevOps Engineer

Truehost · multi-country web hosting

Keeping large-scale hosting infrastructure healthy across countries.

  • Run Kubernetes clusters (RKE2/Rancher) and a fleet of 50+ cPanel/WHM servers
  • Own backup & DR, mail infrastructure, and monitoring across the platform
  • Automate fleet-wide operations with Ansible and custom tooling
  • Lead performance engineering and incident response on production systems

Founder

Ashif Labs

Bringing production-grade infrastructure practices to individuals and small teams — hosting, backups, self-hosting and monitoring, done properly.

BSc, Information Technology

Kirinyaga University · 2015–2019
~/certs

Certifications

LPIC-2
Linux Engineer · 201 & 202
LPIC-1
Linux Administrator · 101 & 102
OCI Architect
Oracle Cloud · Pro & Associate
Azure Fundamentals
Microsoft Certified
JNCIA
Juniper · Junos & Security
Essentials
Linux · Cybersecurity · IoT
~/services

How I can help

01

Server setup & hardening

VPS provisioning, firewall, SSH, users and updates — a clean, secure base to build on.

02

Hosting & migration

Move sites without downtime. WordPress, cPanel, DNS and email handled end to end.

03

Backup & recovery

Automated, encrypted backups with restores that are actually tested — not assumed.

04

Docker & self-hosting

Run your own tools — Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, monitoring — on infrastructure you control.

05

Mail server setup

Self-hosted email with sensible anti-spam, so your mail lands and stays yours.

06

Monitoring & uptime

Dashboards and alerts that tell you what's wrong before your users do.

Let's get it running

Have a server, a site, or an idea that needs solid infrastructure behind it? Tell me what you're working on.