Second Brain
Continuing my journey in cloud engineering by building a SecondBrain workflow on Google Cloud to handle memory limits while exploring Kubernetes.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented numerous challenges to primary care clinics globally, one of which was ensuring that patients could accurately and consistently record their vital signs at home. This issue arose due to the necessity for remote consultations and the limited ability of patients to visit clinics in person. Here’s a detailed look at this challenge and some strategies to address it:
Building My Cloud-Native SecondBrain
As I move deeper into cloud engineering, I’ve been building out my own “SecondBrain” — a Zettelkasten workflow powered by Neovim, custom dotfiles, and a brief experiment using Llama as a kind of Grammarly. It ended up being more than I needed, but the exercise pushed me to work through a real deployment scenario.
The Challenge
Running everything locally with Docker Compose pushed my machine past its memory limits, especially with Llama models in the mix.
The Pivot
I migrated the setup to Google Cloud using the free trial credit. A VM with 16GB of RAM immediately solved the resource issues and gave me a good opportunity to get hands-on with Kubernetes.
What I Built
- Set up a lightweight Kubernetes cluster with k3s
- Moved my SecondBrain files, dotfiles, and development environment to the VM
- Converted the original Docker Compose setup into Kubernetes manifests
- Deployed Ollama and the Zettelkasten environment as separate services
- Added persistent volumes so notes and models stay intact across restarts
This is more than a personal note-taking system requires, but the real goal was to get comfortable with cloud infrastructure and remote development workflows.
What I Learned
- Kubernetes is great for managing memory-heavy workloads
- Cloud credits let you experiment without hardware upgrades
- Rebuilding local tools as cloud-native services teaches a lot quickly
- Not every workflow needs an LLM, but experimenting helps clarify what does
What’s Next
Now that the foundation is in place, the focus shifts back to daily use: writing, thinking, organizing. I may eventually move the setup to Oracle Cloud’s always-free tier when capacity opens.