$ Infrastructure & Deployment Engineering

Reliable deployments for the software your organization depends on.

I help small businesses, agencies, and technical founders deploy, document, and maintain applications and servers in the cloud or on their own hardware.

Get in touch View technical portfolio

Based in Montréal, Québec

Cloud

AzureCloudflareAWS

Self-hosted

ProxmoxDockerTrueNAS

Services

How I can help you ship and stay running.

Deployment Sprint

Get your application deployed and live, fast. I containerize your app, configure the environment, and ship it to the cloud or your own hardware with monitoring and backups in place.

Infrastructure Setup

Build out servers, networking, and storage from scratch. I set up virtualization, containers, and automated configuration so your infrastructure is reproducible and documented.

Monitoring & Alerts

Know when something breaks before your users tell you. I set up uptime checks, alerts, dashboards, and log visibility so issues are easier to detect and respond to quickly.

Maintenance & Support

Keep systems running with an ongoing retainer. I handle updates, monitor for issues, verify backups, and fix problems before they reach your users.

Migration

Move existing applications and servers to new infrastructure with minimal downtime. I plan the cutover, migrate data, and verify everything works before the switch.

Self-hosting Consulting

Draw on deep, hands-on knowledge of the open-source landscape. I evaluate and self-host dozens of tools in my own homelab, so I can recommend and configure the right stack for your exact needs.

Who I Work With

Organizations that benefit most from this kind of work.

Small Businesses

Get reliable infrastructure without hiring a full IT team. I handle deployments, servers, and documentation so your team can focus on running the business.

Agencies

Outsource the hosting, deployment, and DevOps for your client projects to someone who documents everything. I partner with dev and design agencies that need reliable infrastructure they can hand off with confidence.

Nonprofits

Stretch limited resources with self-hosted or low-cost cloud setups that stay documented and maintainable by volunteers and small teams.

Technical Founders

Ship your product without getting bogged down in infrastructure. I set up reproducible deployments you can hand off, own, or scale as you grow.

How I Work

A clear, predictable path from first conversation to a system you can run yourself.

Audit

I start by understanding what you have and where it hurts. I review your current setup, flag what's fragile or undocumented, and map out what needs to change before anything moves.

Setup

Then I build and deploy. I configure your servers or cloud environment, deploy your applications, and set up security and backups so everything runs reliably from day one.

Documentation

Nothing ships without docs. I write clear, plain-language documentation for everything I set up, so your team understands how it works and isn't dependent on me to keep it running.

Support

After handoff, I stay available. Whether it's answering questions, applying updates, or handling an incident, you have someone who already knows your systems and can respond fast.

Selected Work

A few projects that show what I can build, deploy, and keep running.

DawsAsset

An Odoo asset-tracking platform I built with a team for Dawson College, replacing spreadsheet tracking across four departments.

Met with each department to understand their needs, then picked the best-fit software from the available open-source optionsRequirements gathered through stakeholder meetings; Odoo chosen over other open-source options
A secure, standardized setup that runs identically in development and production, with encrypted connectionsContainerized dev setup and hardened production docker-compose on a vSphere VM behind nginx and HTTPS
Automated checks catch errors before release, updates ship smoothly, and data backs up on a scheduleCI for lint and tests, a deploy script for rollouts, cron for data backups
Clear documentation so the team can run and maintain it themselves, with no dependency on meFull documentation written so the teachers and department chair can maintain it after handoff

Code

The Coral Reef

A real-time multiplayer platform I built with a team and host for a nautical card game, live end to end.

Hosted on managed cloud infrastructure with dedicated storage and a separate databaseRuns on Azure with Blob storage and a remote MongoDB
A consistent setup across development and production, so what works locally works liveContainerized dev and production environments
Every change is automatically checked, packaged, and rolled out without manual stepsGitLab CI runs lint, unit tests, and builds, then archives and deploys via the az CLI
Updates flow through separate staging and live environments, released only when readySeparate dev and production rollouts triggered by merge to staging or a new tag

Code Live

Self-Hosted Homelab

17+ self-hosted services I run on my own hardware. The lab where I test the tools I recommend to clients.

The whole environment is defined as code, so it can be rebuilt or reproduced exactly from scratchInfrastructure as code with Proxmox and OpenTofu; Ansible, Docker, and Docker Compose provision and maintain the services
Self-hosted alternatives to commercial services: password manager, photo storage, file sharing, inventory, and game serversGame servers (Minecraft, Valheim), Vaultwarden, PrivateBin, Homebox, File Browser, Immich, TrueNAS Scale, plus my own plant tracker and chore tracker
Automated, redundant backups stored both on-site and off-site, so nothing is lost if hardware failsProxmox backups sync to a remote VPS; NAS volumes backed up via rsync
Constant monitoring of disk health and service uptime, with alerts before anything reaches the userDisk and service monitoring with Scrutiny, Uptime Kuma, and Prometheus + Grafana

Godash

A terminal dashboard I'm building to monitor Proxmox, straight from the command line.

Code

See more projects on my technical portfolio

About

Who you'd be working with.

I'm Talon Dunbar, a Computer Science graduate from Dawson College based in Montréal, Québec. My focus is the work that keeps software running: deployments, infrastructure, and the documentation that makes it maintainable. I work with small organizations in English and French.

Open-source, tested in practice

Finding the right open-source tool for a specific need is a skill I've built. When a problem comes up, I research the options, test the promising ones in my own homelab, and recommend based on what actually works, not what's marketed.

See what I've starred on GitHub

FAQ

Answers to the questions clients usually ask.

Cloud or self-hosted: which should I choose?

It depends on your team, budget, and data needs. Cloud is faster to set up and scales easily; self-hosting gives you control and lower long-term costs but needs hardware or someone to maintain it. I assess your situation and recommend honestly, even if that means a mix of both.

How do you price your work?

I work on a project basis with fixed quotes agreed up front, so you know the cost before we start. For ongoing support, I offer monthly retainers. Every quote is based on scope, not hourly guesswork.

Will I be dependent on you after the project?

No. Everything I build comes with plain-language documentation, so your team can understand and maintain it. I'm available for ongoing support if you want it, but you're never locked in.

Do you provide ongoing support?

Yes. Through a monthly retainer I handle updates, monitor for issues, verify backups, and fix problems before they reach your users. You can also bring me back for one-off work anytime.

Can you work with my existing team or stack?

Absolutely. I partner with dev and design agencies and can slot into your existing workflow and tooling. If you have a team, I document everything so they can take over confidently.

Do you work remotely or on-site?

I'm based in Montréal and work with clients remotely across Québec and beyond. On-site visits are possible for local projects when it makes sense.

How do we get started?

Send me an email and tell me what you're trying to solve. I'll reply with a few questions, and if we're a fit, we start with an audit to map out the work before anything moves.

Let's work together

Tell me what you're trying to solve. If we're a fit, we start with an audit.

Email me

talon@talonlikeaclaw.com

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