I am Farid. I have spent about twenty-five years around computers and the last stretch of it designing data centre, cloud and AI infrastructure for customers who have to live with the result. I work out of Algiers.

Most of my week is spent turning a messy inventory export into a number somebody will sign for. That work taught me two things worth writing down. First, almost every sizing argument is really an argument about assumptions nobody wrote on the slide. Second, the tool that produces the assessment usually belongs to someone with a stake in the answer.

So this site is mostly method: how I read a quote, how I check a capacity model, what I ask before agreeing that a platform is a replacement for another one. Some of it is code, because I build small things on weekends and they teach me more than documentation does.

A note on independence

I write here as myself. Nothing on this site is my employer speaking, nothing here comes from a customer engagement, and I do not publish vendor material that is not already public. Where I name products I try to be equally unkind to all of them.

Corrections

If something is wrong, say so in the responses under the article. I would rather fix a post than be right in the archive.