This is a mono repository for my home infrastructure and Kubernetes cluster. I practise using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and GitOps using tools like Kubernetes, Flux, Renovate, and GitHub Actions.
My Kubernetes cluster is deployed with Talos. This is a semi-hyper-converged cluster, workloads and block storage are sharing the same available resources on my nodes while I have a separate server with ZFS for NFS/SMB shares, bulk file storage and backups.
There is a template at onedr0p/cluster-template if you want to try and follow along with some of the practices I use here.
- actions-runner-controller: Self-hosted Github runners.
- cert-manager: Creates SSL certificates for services in my cluster.
- cilium: Internal Kubernetes container networking interface.
- cloudflared: Enables Cloudflare secure access to certain ingresses.
- external-dns: Automatically syncs ingress DNS records to a DNS provider.
- external-secrets: Managed Kubernetes secrets using 1Password Connect.
- rook: Distributed block storage for peristent storage.
- sops: Managed secrets for Kubernetes and Terraform which are commited to Git.
- spegel: Stateless cluster local OCI registry mirror.
- volsync: Backup and recovery of persistent volume claims.
Flux watches the clusters in my kubernetes folder (see Directories below) and makes the changes to my clusters based on the state of my Git repository.
The way Flux works for me here is it will recursively search the kubernetes/apps folder until it finds the most top level kustomization.yaml per directory and then apply all the resources listed in it. That aforementioned kustomization.yaml will generally only have a namespace resource and one or many Flux kustomizations (ks.yaml). Under the control of those Flux kustomizations there will be a HelmRelease or other resources related to the application which will be applied.
Renovate watches my entire repository looking for dependency updates, when they are found a PR is automatically created. When some PRs are merged Flux applies the changes to my cluster.
This Git repository contains the following directories under Kubernetes.
📁 kubernetes
├── 📁 apps # applications
├── 📁 components # commonly reused components e.g., status monitoring templates + volsync backed pvc
└── 📁 flux # flux system configurationThis is a high-level look how Flux deploys my applications with dependencies. In most cases a HelmRelease will depend on other HelmRelease's, in other cases a Kustomization will depend on other Kustomization's, and in rare situations an app can depend on a HelmRelease and a Kustomization. The example below shows that atuin won't be deployed or upgrade until the rook-ceph-cluster Helm release is installed or in a healthy state.
graph TD
A>Kustomization: rook-ceph] -->|Creates| B[HelmRelease: rook-ceph]
A>Kustomization: rook-ceph] -->|Creates| C[HelmRelease: rook-ceph-cluster]
C>HelmRelease: rook-ceph-cluster] -->|Depends on| B>HelmRelease: rook-ceph]
D>Kustomization: atuin] -->|Creates| E(HelmRelease: atuin)
E>HelmRelease: atuin] -->|Depends on| C>HelmRelease: rook-ceph-cluster]
While I self-host infrastructure and workloads where I can, I rely on cloud services for key parts of my setup.
| Service | Use | Cost (AUD) |
|---|---|---|
| 1Password | Secrets with External Secrets | ~$50/yr |
| Cloudflare | Domains and S3 | ~$30/yr |
| GitHub | Hosting this repository and continuous integration/deployments | Free |
| Pushover | Kubernetes Alerts and application notifications | $5 OTP |
| healthchecks.io | Monitoring internet connectivity and external facing applications | Free |
| Total: ~$7/mo |
In my cluster there are two instances of ExternalDNS running. One for syncing private DNS records to my Unifi UXG Ultra using ExternalDNS webhook provider for UniFi, while another instance syncs public DNS to Cloudflare. This setup is managed by creating ingresses with two specific classes: internal for private DNS and external for public DNS. The external-dns instances then syncs the DNS records to their respective platforms accordingly for split-horizon DNS.
| Device | OS Disk | Data Disk | Memory | OS | Function |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dell Optiplex 7050 | Samsung PM991 256GB | Samsung PM863 960GB | 32GB | Talos | Kubernetes |
| Dell Optiplex 7060 | Samsung PM991 256GB | Samsung PM863 960GB | 32GB | Talos | Kubernetes |
| Dell Optiplex 7060 | Samsung PM991 256GB | Samsung PM863 960GB | 32GB | Talos | Kubernetes |
| NAS (Repurposed PC) | 512GB | 1x12TB ZFS | 16GB | TrueNAS SCALE | NFS + Backup Server |
| UniFi UCG Ultra | - | - | - | - | Router |
Thanks to all the people who donate their time to the Home Operations Discord community. Be sure to check out kubesearch.dev for ideas on how to deploy applications or get ideas on what you could deploy.