October 30, 2026
Timmy Reilly
Platform Update
🚀 Phase 7 Live: On-Demand Service Deployment UI
After months of development, Phase 7 of the demo platform is now live! This release brings a complete
overhaul of the Services UI with greyed-out service cards, real-time deployment log streaming via WebSocket,
and an enhanced modal for monitoring deployments. Services now display as unavailable by default and launch
on-demand when clicked, with full visibility into the build and deployment pipeline.
What's New:
- ✅ Greyed-out (60% opacity) stopped services for better UX
- ✅ Deploy button remains clickable even when service is stopped
- ✅ Real-time WebSocket log streaming with color-coded levels
- ✅ Enhanced deployment modal with deployment ID tracking
- ✅ "Open Service" button appears when deployment completes
- ✅ Improved authentication (Admin + Guest roles working)
- ✅ Service registry streamlined to 4 core services
The infrastructure for end-to-end deployments is complete. Next phase focuses on building
service container images and testing the full GitHub Actions + Ansible pipeline.
October 25, 2026
Timmy Reilly
Architecture
🏗️ Building a Cost-Optimized Demo Platform: Lessons Learned
The journey to build a cost-effective, on-demand demo platform has taught us valuable lessons about
cloud architecture, auto-scaling strategies, and deployment automation. In this post, we share what
works, what doesn't, and how to optimize for both performance and cost.
Topics covered: Container orchestration, WebSocket scaling, Ansible playbooks,
GitHub Actions optimization, and cost monitoring strategies.
October 20, 2026
Timmy Reilly
Tutorial
📚 Deploying ASP.NET Core Applications to Azure Container Apps
A comprehensive guide to deploying ASP.NET Core applications to Azure Container Apps, including
setup, configuration, scaling policies, and best practices. This tutorial walks through the entire
process from building a Docker image to handling deployments via GitHub Actions.
Topics covered: Docker containerization, Azure ACR setup, Container Apps configuration,
auto-scaling, WebSocket support, and monitoring.