Hi, I’m Brett Rutherford — a senior infrastructure engineer based in the Pittsburgh, PA / Steubenville, OH area, and this site is where I write about the things that actually take up my headspace: virtualization, home labs, faith, and rebuilding a life.
I’m also, as of March 6, 2026, a person in recovery. If you’re here for the tech content, that’s still here — but I’m not going to bury the rest of the story to make myself look tidier than I am. If any part of this resonates with you, I want it to be a place you can land.
Where I’ve Been
My career background is in enterprise virtualization and infrastructure — VMware vSphere, vCenter, ESXi, Proxmox, Azure hybrid identity, disaster recovery, and keeping systems compliant in regulated environments (SOC2, PCI-DSS). I spent over a decade on the side of IT most people never see: the failover plans, the patch cycles, the quiet fixes that keep everything running before anyone notices something was wrong. I built that career at places like VMware Inc., Sierra Experts, Wolfe LLC, and JAGGAER, among others.
But the last couple of years haven’t looked like a straight-line career, and I’m done pretending they did. I’ve led a Walmart Deli/Bakery department, managed parts and service at AutoZone, worked ramp operations at a regional airport, stocked shelves in an Amazon warehouse, and spent time as a Behavioral Health Technician supporting people through their own recovery. Some of that was about keeping the lights on and showing up for my family — including caregiving for my aging parents. Some of it was about rebuilding myself from the ground up after admitting I couldn’t keep living the way I had been.
The Honest Part
My recovery journey actually started back in August 2021 — shortly before an arrest, and the forced, unavoidable admission that came with it: I am an addict. That moment stripped away every excuse I’d been running on. It wasn’t the end of the story, though. Recovery isn’t always a straight line, and mine wasn’t either. What I can tell you with certainty is where I stand today: sober since March 6, 2026, from addictions that are harder to name out loud than a substance — success, sex, and people pleasing. Those don’t come with the same warning labels as drugs or alcohol, which made them easier to hide from everyone, including myself, for a long time. Chasing achievement, chasing validation, and contorting myself to keep everyone around me comfortable had quietly become the way I coped with pain I didn’t want to feel. It cost me things. It cost people around me things too.
I’m not going to lay out every turning point here today — some of that story is still being written, and I’ll share more of it as I go. What I can tell you is that Narcotics Anonymous principles and my Christian faith have been the two load-bearing walls of rebuilding my life since then. NA gave me a structure for honesty, accountability, and surrender that I didn’t have on my own. My faith gave me a reason to believe the rebuilding was worth doing, and Someone to answer to besides myself. Together they’ve been the foundation of what I think of as a phoenix-style reinvention — not a comeback to who I was, but a rejoining of society as someone more honest than I’ve ever been.
What I Do Now
I bring all of it with me — the technical depth of an infrastructure engineer, the calm-under-pressure instincts of someone who’s de-escalated a crisis in person, the people-first leadership habits of someone who’s run a retail team through a rough stretch, and the hard-won humility of someone in recovery. Right now I’m pursuing my VCP-DCV and AWS Cloud Practitioner certifications, with AWS Solutions Architect next — because rebuilding a career, like rebuilding a life, doesn’t happen all at once.
The Home Lab
Outside of the day job, I run a 3-node Proxmox VE high-availability cluster (a Dell PowerEdge R720, an Intel NUC, and a custom-built desktop), backed by 10GbE networking, Proxmox Backup Server, Foreman/PXE provisioning, and a full Ubiquiti UniFi stack. It’s part hobby, part proving ground — a place to test the same kind of resilience and failover thinking I bring to production environments, minus the stakes of a 3 a.m. page.
Faith and Family
I’m a person of Christian faith, active in my church community, and I care a lot about the intersection of technology and ministry — from building tools that make church tech simpler to writing children’s ministry lessons and biblical research content. I try to keep that writing scripturally grounded and honest, without it feeling like a sermon.
I’m also a caregiver for my aging parents, which has shaped how I think about work, time, and priorities just as much as anything else on this page.
Why This Site Exists
This is a space for the overlap: infrastructure write-ups from the trenches, home lab projects, and an honest record of what it looks like to rebuild — career, faith, and self — one day at a time. If you’re in your own season of recovery or reinvention, I hope something here tells you it’s possible to come back from wherever you’ve been. Stick around.