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Work in progressThis site is unfinished, and it is also a test case: a company of AI agents in Paperclip builds it, while I answer the questions and decide what reaches the page.

D. De bie

Thailand — working remotely since 2017

Danny De bie

IT Infrastructure & Cloud Specialist | AI Solutions Builder

Thirty years of working professionally with servers, Linux and Windows — from single-server Windows NT environments to cloud platforms, virtualization and cybersecurity. I design, build and maintain infrastructure, and increasingly put it to the test to uncover weaknesses and strengthen its resilience. A one-stop solution provider: for every problem there is a solution that fits the budget as well, and proof of concept work is the part I enjoy most. Where I want to go from here is deeper into that technical side — architecture, security and engineering.

01

Expertise

A mixed estate: part on premise, part in Azure. Linux carries the back end, Microsoft carries the users, and most of my time goes to keeping both running and moving them forward.

Cloud and virtualization

  • Microsoft Azure — IaaS, web servers, identity, cloud backup
  • Azure Container Apps
  • Hyper-V
  • Docker containers, replacing traditional VMs

Servers and operating systems

  • Windows Server 2016 through 2025 — domain controllers, file servers, gateway servers
  • Linux — back-end applications and web servers
  • Windows Server 2016 to 2025 migrations
  • Windows 10 to Windows 11 endpoint migrations
  • Datto RMM — remote monitoring and management of servers and endpoints

Identity and collaboration

  • Microsoft 365
  • Entra ID — identity, MFA and privileged access
  • Hybrid Exchange
  • Microsoft 365 licensing
  • Microsoft Teams telephony, replacing legacy communications

Network

  • WAN, and the move to a Tailscale mesh VPN
  • VLAN design and managed switches
  • TP-Link Omada and Ubiquiti UniFi wireless
  • Telecom, M2M and 4G/5G SIM management
  • IoT and edge — Raspberry Pi media players, building management for HVAC and access control

A WAN across sixteen shops and sites, with a direct link into Azure.

Security and continuity

  • Huntress — managed detection and response for endpoints and Microsoft 365
  • Veeam Backup & Replication on premise
  • Azure Recovery Services vault for the cloud side
  • Penetration testing and vulnerability assessment — Kali Linux, with AI tooling
  • Certificate management, password policy, security audits
  • Technical risk analysis, and turning incidents into structural fixes

Self-taught and hands-on. I hold no security certifications, so I will not pretend otherwise. What I do have is the other half of the job: designing, building and running the kind of infrastructure that gets attacked.

Architecture and engineering

  • Technical design and platform standards
  • Lifecycle planning, and paying down technical debt
  • Server migrations and integrations
  • PowerShell and automation
  • Runbooks and technical documentation
  • Backup and restore testing, disaster recovery
  • Root cause analysis on complex escalations

AI and self-hosting

  • Proxmox — two servers, one carrying a DMZ zone and one a lab zone
  • Self-hosted AI infrastructure on Docker, moving to Azure Container Apps
  • Multi-agent orchestration — open-source PentAGI
  • AI assistants built on the Anthropic API
  • Locally hosted models via Ollama, with cloud models as fallback
  • AI tooling in the workflow — Claude Code, Gemini, Copilot
  • Small automations that take work off people’s hands — daily price synchronisation, a translation and summarisation portal, voice bots for reception calls

The home lab is an isolated network: experiments and training happen there first, and only then move to the operational environment. Docker in the lab makes that move to Azure Container Apps straightforward.

How I work

  • Fully remote since 2017, on infrastructure built to be managed that way, with occasional client visits in Belgium
  • Technical guidance for developers — code review and architecture
  • Third-line support, where the first-line partner runs out of road
  • Technical evaluation of SaaS products and suppliers — security, integration, manageability
  • Proof of concept work — the part I enjoy most

Languages

Dutch
Native language
English
Fluent, including for business
French
Adequate
German
Basic
Thai
Basic

Grouped by domain, with no levels: a self-assessed percentage says more about confidence than about skill, so this page does without.

02

Experience

  1. June 1997 — present

    ICT manager

    Dockx Group · Belgium — remote since 2017

    Responsible for the IT infrastructure of the Dockx Group: keeping the company up to date with technology that lets it focus on being competitive in the rental, removal and logistics market. I was and still am the only admin in the company. I started in general IT support, moved on to system and network administration, and have been ICT manager since.

    1. 1997

      Started. One Windows NT server and one IBM RS6000 running AIX, with branches connected over leased lines and multiplexing modems. The NT server was mainly a file sharing box.

    2. 2011

      Merging and consolidating the subsidiary companies onto the new business site in Wilrijk: network infrastructure for the new storage, technical and administrative buildings, and one operations centre on a fibre uplink.

    3. 2017

      Moved to Thailand for good and went fully remote, switching from employee to freelance through my own one-person company to make that work. Same infrastructure, same responsibility, managed from the other side of the world.

    4. 2017 →

      Work centred on Azure, on moving unified communications and users to the Microsoft cloud, and on the IT infrastructure for each new branch.

    5. — — — —

      Milestone slot — the years attached to the job titles, and the more recent migrations: Entra ID, Teams telephony, the move to a mesh VPN. To be supplied.

    6. Today

      Virtual servers on premise and in the cloud, a high-speed WAN between the branches, and two 40 000 m² warehouses, all on current technology. No expensive consultants, no dependency on support companies.

  2. January 1997 — June 1997

    Windows Server Administrator

    Innet nv · Former Belgian ISP

    Member of the engineering and administration group of a major Belgian ISP, responsible for the Windows NT server park.

    • Updates and upgrades of both software and hardware.
    • Migrating from Windows Server 3.51 to Windows Server 4.0.
    • Internal Windows support and third-line support for customers.
    • Deployment of terminal services.
    • Management of IIS customer websites.

  3. September 1995 — December 1996

    Web Developer

    Globe nv · Former Belgian ISP

    Programming the logic behind customer websites, mainly Perl with MySQL as a backend, working closely with the graphical designers.

Education

  • 1992 — 1995

    Bachelor degree in Information Technology, with honours

    Name of the institution still to be supplied.

03

Projects

Infrastructure work at the Dockx Group. What is on the workbench now comes first; the earlier work the current environment was built on follows below.

  • Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams

    Running

    Migrating unified communications to Microsoft Teams, telephony included, and retiring the Skype for Business platform that replaced the classic PABX systems a decade earlier.

    • Microsoft Teams
    • Teams telephony
    • Skype for Business

  • Windows Server 2016 to 2025

    Running

    Migrating the server estate to Windows Server 2025 — domain controllers, file servers and gateway servers.

    • Windows Server 2025
    • Active Directory
    • Hyper-V

  • Windows 10 to Windows 11

    Running — final machines

    Endpoint migration across the sites, down to the last machines.

    • Windows 11
    • Endpoint management

  • One surveillance system for the shops

    Running

    Rolling out a new surveillance system across the shops.

  • From MPLS WAN to a mesh VPN

    Next

    Replacing the MPLS WAN with a Tailscale mesh VPN, for cost and for performance.

    • Tailscale
    • Mesh VPN
    • WAN

  • Active Directory to Entra ID

    Planned for 2027

    Moving identity from on-premise Active Directory to Entra ID.

    • Entra ID
    • Active Directory

  • Platform upgrades

    Thirty years, continuous

    Keeping platforms current is the thread that runs through all thirty years. Every migration in the list above is another instalment of the same work.

    • Windows Server, from NT in 1997 to 2025 today.
    • Linux distributions, release after release.
    • Windows clients, from 95 through to 11.
    • SQL Server, version after version — 2014 to 2016 among them.
    • Dynamics CRM 2011 to 2015.
    • Windows Server
    • Linux
    • Windows clients
    • SQL Server

  • One site, one network

    2011

    Dockx Group started merging and consolidating its subsidiary companies onto a new 40 000 m² business site in Wilrijk, with new storage, technical and administrative buildings. I was and still am responsible for the network infrastructure and for merging the different companies’ systems into one new operations centre, connected to the existing network over a fibre uplink.

    • LAN / WAN
    • Fibre uplink
    • Systems consolidation

  • Coherent Wi-Fi across the branches

    Implemented one coherent Wi-Fi environment across the main site and the remote sites with Extreme Networks IdentiFi equipment, formerly known as Enterasys/HiPath.

    • Extreme Networks IdentiFi
    • Multi-site Wi-Fi

  • VoIP and unified communications

    Rolled out VoIP and unified communications with Microsoft Lync to replace the classic PABX systems, and later upgraded the Lync 2013 infrastructure to Skype for Business Server 2015.

    • Microsoft Lync
    • Skype for Business Server 2015

  • Mail and collaboration to the cloud

    Migrated the on-premise Exchange infrastructure to Exchange Online using a hybrid configuration, and replaced SharePoint Foundation with SharePoint Online.

    • Exchange hybrid
    • Exchange Online
    • SharePoint Online

  • Azure and the branches

    2017 →

    From 2017 onwards the work centred on:

    • Moving on-premise servers to Microsoft Azure and deploying new ones there.
    • Moving unified communications and the users to the Microsoft cloud.
    • Expanding the IT infrastructure for each new branch.
    • One coherent video surveillance system across the branches.
    • SQL databases towards Azure SQL.
    • Video conferencing between the meeting rooms on different sites.
    • A digital signage solution for the branches.
    • Microsoft Azure
    • Azure SQL
    • Microsoft 365

The ones at the top are running, planned or continuous. The ones after them are earlier work and several still carry no date — a missing year rather than a guessed one.

04

AI and self-hosting

PentAGI lab — self-hosted multi-agent security testing in an isolated lab

September–October 2026 (running)My own lab, as a playground for autonomous agents.

A self-hosted open-source environment (PentAGI) in which an AI system carries out security testing largely autonomously. A single orchestrator splits an assignment into subtasks and distributes them across specialised agents — planning, execution, refinement, enrichment, and a dedicated memory agent backed by vector storage. The agents work in an isolated lab: deliberately vulnerable images that I own (including Metasploitable), separated from my real network by an explicit firewall rule. The findings are not the story; the setup is the story.

  • Docker (self-hosted)
  • PentAGI (open source)
  • Specialised agents with shared vector memory
  • Kali Linux container as the executor
  • Local models via Ollama, cloud models as fallback

Technically interesting

  • Multiple specialised agents behind one orchestrator, with a separate memory agent so knowledge is shared between runs and between agents.
  • Local-first. The default engine runs on Ollama; the token statistics show most usage ran locally or via free endpoints, with paid cloud models only as fallback.
  • Real execution, not simulation: several hundred to over a thousand tool calls per run, the overwhelming majority terminal commands inside the Kali container; some runs went on for 6+ hours.
  • Honest reporting: a partially successful exploitation was recorded by the system itself as “failed” because the requested proof of access was missing — it reports partial failure rather than claiming success.
  • Operator-in-the-loop between runs: where a run stalled on network access, a manual firewall change and a restart of the target resolved it; the logs show exactly where the human was needed.
  • Scope discipline as an observation: asked for a “quick scan”, the agent delivered considerably more than requested. Great for the client — and it underlines why a lab of deliberately vulnerable images is the right playground.

StatusRunning; six completed runs against three lab images in two weeks.

This site — built by AI agents, fact-checked by me

October 2026The page you are reading.

This page was not hand-written. It was built inside Paperclip, where a small company of AI agents took the job on: one planned the work and cut it into tasks, one built the site in Next.js, one reviewed it independently. The content came out of a structured interview — they asked, I answered, and anything I did not confirm did not reach the page. The work I did was deciding and correcting. The building was theirs.

  • Paperclip — agent orchestration
  • Claude agents — planning, build, review
  • Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
  • Static export, no CMS and no backend
  • Content as code, in Git

Technically interesting

  • A company, not a prompt. Three roles with different jobs: one agent plans and splits the work, one builds, one reviews without having built anything. The review agent is the point — an agent checking its own work is not a review.
  • The interview is the content pipeline. Instead of being handed a CV to rewrite, the agents asked questions in rounds and built the page from the answers. The old site turned out to contradict itself on three figures; those were left blank until I settled them rather than picking one.
  • Nothing invented, and that was enforced. Where I said “etc”, nothing was added. A migration planned for next year was not written up as finished work. An item that could read as if I had built something somebody else built was rewritten the moment I flagged it.
  • The human stays the editor. Every round ended with a proposal I could accept or reject, with a reason. Several were rejected and reworked — that is the loop, not a failure of it. What I do is answer questions and say no.
  • Everything visible is traceable. The page is a static export from a Git repository: every sentence has a commit, and every commit has a reason written in it.

StatusLive on my own server. The page you are reading is the static export of that repository.

Two items: a lab I run myself, and this page.

05

Personal

I was eight when I got my first computer, and that was that. An Atari 800XL, then a 130XE, then a 1040STFM — which also gave me my first taste of telecom: a 2400 baud modem and the BBS days of FidoNet. The hobby became the work, and the work is still the hobby.

I have lived in Thailand since 2017 and work from there. Outside work there is the motorbike and the swimming, but most of my spare time goes into the lab: two Proxmox servers carrying a DMZ zone and a lab zone, where the experimenting and the training happen before anything goes near a production network. These days that is mostly AI.

Down to earth, loyal and hard to rattle. I have been a gamer since childhood — World of Warcraft, where I am a guild officer and raid leader, Elite Dangerous, Microsoft Flight Simulator, poker, and Dungeons & Dragons around a real table. When there is time left I read, mainly fantasy and science fiction, always in English. "The black knight enters the gloomy castle" sounds much more powerful than the Dutch translation.

06

Contact

Email is the fastest way to reach me. I read everything and I answer.

Email

danny@dannydebie.com

LinkedIn

linkedin.com/in/dannydb

There is no phone number on this site, on purpose: I travel and the number changes with the country, I still work full time, and it gives me a bit more privacy. Email or LinkedIn works, and we set up a call from there.

Curriculum vitae

Download CV (PDF)

A current CV is still being prepared. The file on the existing site dates from 2016 and contradicts this page on several points, so it is deliberately not linked here.