My Homelab

This project was created to automate my personal homelab, following GitOps principles.

This is not a framework. However, you can customize and extend it in any way you want.

💡 What is a homelab?

"Simply put, a home lab consists of one or more servers (or normal PCs acting as servers), that you have in your home and you use them to experiment and try out stuff." -techie-show

Requirements

Software

• kubernetes-cli
• helm
• ansible
• kompose
• kustomize
• age
• sops
• k9s - for cluster management

Using MacBook, I installed these with Homebrew.

Hardware

• A laptop or desktop, for bootstrapping the cluster.
• Mini PCs, like an Intel NUC, for the actual cluster.
• A Linux OS installed on each mini PC. I use Ubuntu Server.

Stack

System

Logo	Name	Description	Version
	K3s	Lightweight Kubernetes	v1.29.0+k3s1
	Flannel	Layer 3 network fabric designed for Kubernetes
	MetalLB	Network load-balancer implementation for Kubernetes
	Ingress Nginx	Ingress controller for Kubernetes
	Ansible	Automate bare metal provisioning and configuration
	Argo CD	Declarative Continuous Deployment for Kubernetes
	Helm	The Kubernetes Package Manager
	cert-manager	Automatically provision and manage TLS certificates in Kubernetes
	NFS CSI driver	Allows Kubernetes to access NFS server
	Longhorn	Block storage system for Kubernetes
	Cilium	eBPF-based Networking, Observability, Security solution	⛵ Optional
	Hubble	Networking and security observability platform	⛵ Optional

Getting Started

1. Make sure you have ssh access to your servers.
2. Change ansible_username in metal/group_vars/all.yml to your username that has server access.
3. Using a command line, run:

> make

4. It will ask for user password and Cloudflare API Token. The token is needed to perform a DNS challenge with Lets Encrypt (TLS certificate generation).

❄️ You're done! Yes, that's the only command you'll need. 😄

Roadmap

• Automated Kubernetes installation and management
• Automated certificate management
• Automated installation of applications with GitOps
• Distributed block storage
• Network security and observability
• Bare metal load balancer
• Homepage view
• Automated Docker installation and management
• Prompts for global variables (user, ip pools etc)
• Secure external access via Cloudflare Tunnel
• Full-stack monitoring and alerting system
• Private code repository
• Private container registry
• Private artifactory
• Private code static analysis tool
• Identity Access and Management
• Automated backups
• Private CI/CD platform
• CI with Github Actions
• VPN without port forwarding
• Static site documentation
• Automated requirements installation (using brew)

Acknowledgements

This project was heavily-inspired by Khue's Homelab