After years of supporting FreeBSD in production, we've seen a clear pattern: the most resilient systems are the ones their teams truly understand and control. With cloud bills climbing and closed platforms tightening their grip, taking control of your infrastructure isn’t just nice to have—it’s a strategic advantage.
We put together this roundup to answer the top questions we hear from clients exploring independent infrastructure. These articles reveal cost-efficient paths to control, uncover common pitfalls, and show what it really takes to own every layer of your stack—from core services to long-term maintenance.
Rethinking Lock-In: Why Control Pays Off
What does it mean to own your infrastructure? It means rejecting vendor-imposed limits and building on open standards—so your systems follow your strategy, not someone else’s roadmap.
If you’ve ever felt trapped by SaaS tools or boxed in by commercial contracts, Unlocking Infrastructure Sovereignty: Harnessing the Power of Open Source Solutions explains how companies can break free from vendor lock-in, save costs, and gain real flexibility —including the jaw-dropping example of Ahrefs saving $400 million by going off-cloud.
Want to see how that plays out in storage? Open Source Storage over Commercial Offerings brings the concept of sovereignty down to disk level—where reliability matters most. It unpacks the risks of vendor lock-in, from surprise price hikes to discontinued products, and shows how ZFS on FreeBSD puts you in control. One standout takeaway? Open source helps you avoid costly, high-risk migrations when vendors change the rules.
And if you’re curious about the risks of depending too much on one OS, The Case for OS Diversity and Independence webinar discusses what can go wrong when you put all your infrastructure eggs in one basket. Klara co-founder Allan Jude and Alex Kretzschmar (FOSS evangelist and Self-Hosted podcast co-host) share real-world lessons—including how a single upstream change in OpenSSL caused major disruptions.
Self-Hosting the Essentials
Owning your stack starts with running foundational services in-house. Skip third-party dependencies and keep your core systems fast, reliable, and under your control.
You’ve probably heard the saying, “It’s always DNS.” It kind of is. Controlling Core Infrastructure: DNS Server Setup doesn’t just show you how to run your own DNS server—it explains why you should want to. From real packet captures to the hard-to-ignore stat that one user’s smart home shot off over 275,000 DNS queries in a month (!), it’s a wake-up call for keeping resolution local and under control.
On the flip side of the same coin: time. Our follow-up article, Core Infrastructure: Why You Need to Control Your NTP, walks you through the surprisingly low-effort, high-reward world of running your own NTP time server. Not only does it keep your network devices tightly synchronized—even through outages—but it can also put a stop to the relentless flood of IoT time-checking noise. Bonus points for geeking out over timecounter selection and learning how to keep your LAN’s sense of time rock solid.
Owning the Stack, End to End
From OS to storage, owning your infrastructure means getting your hands dirty—and reaping the benefits of full control. These reads break down what that really looks like in practice.
Let’s start at the storage layer. If you’ve ever fallen into a comparison rabbit hole trying to choose between SAS, SATA, or NVMe—or wondered whether building your own NAS is worth it—Building Your Own FreeBSD-based NAS with ZFS delivers real-world context and clarity (including a great section on why U.2 NVMe is the new hotness).
Then, when you're ready to dig deeper into customization, Customizing the FreeBSD Kernel shows how to tailor the operating system to your hardware and needs. But don’t worry—it’s not a "break everything and hope" guide. It’s a practical, safe approach to modular builds, tuning, and managing out-of-tree modules like a pro.
Rounding out the picture is Owning the Stack: Infrastructure Independence with FreeBSD zooms out to the strategic level. It connects architecture choices to long-term sovereignty—cutting out audit surprises, subscription traps, and vendor-controlled updates. If you care about compliance, resilience, or budget control, this is your blueprint.
Long-Term Sustainable Support for Your FreeBSD Deployment
FreeBSD can be rock-solid in production—but only if it’s treated as a living system, not a one-time install. Over the years, we’ve seen how lack of planning leads to stalled upgrades, unmaintainable forks, and costly technical debt. This section shows how to keep FreeBSD stable, secure, and ready to grow long-term.
If you've ever wondered why so many FreeBSD-based products end up tangled in upgrade delays and patch spirals, Maintaining FreeBSD in a Commercial Product – Why Upstream Contributions Matter explains how a handful of local patches can snowball into dozens—turning simple upgrades into six-month recovery efforts. The fix? Upstream early and often. It’s not just goodwill—it’s long-term cost control.
Want the full picture of what FreeBSD in production really takes? What We’ve Learned Supporting FreeBSD in Production (So You Don’t Have To) shares hard-earned lessons from years in the trenches—missed patches, ZFS missteps, hardware snags. It’s a no-fluff guide to running FreeBSD reliably, especially when uptime matters.
Build with Confidence: Expert Support for Vendor-Neutral FreeBSD Systems
Designing from scratch, upgrading legacy systems, tightening the bolts on your stack—going vendor-free takes more than good intentions. It takes expertise.
That’s where we step in.
Our FreeBSD services cover the full lifecycle: architecture design, implementation reviews, upstream-aware development, and production-grade support. From emergency response to long-term planning, our team is here to help you own every layer of your infrastructure—with confidence. See what our FreeBSD Infrastructure Support covers →
Embedded