Pando85's Homelab

This project utilizes Infrastructure as Code and GitOps to automate provisioning, operating, and updating self-hosted services in my homelab. Based in K3s, ArgoCD, Renovate and ZFS. It can be used as a highly customizable framework to build your own homelab.

What is a homelab?

Homelab is a laboratory at home where you can self-host, experiment with new technologies, practice for certifications, and so on. For more information about homelab in general, see the r/homelab introduction.

📖 Overview

This section provides a high level overview of the project. For further information, please see the documentation.

⛵ Kubernetes

This repo is focused in maintain in a GitOps practical way my home infrastructure. Ansible is used to deploy a simple K3s cluster. Managed by ArgoCD.

Installation

The cluster is running on Debian based distributions, deployed on bare-metal. We use custom Ansible playbooks and roles to setup the Kubernetes cluster.

Core components

external-secrets: External Secrets Operator reads information from a Vault and automatically injects the values as Kubernetes Secrets.
hashicorp/vault: A tool for secrets management, encryption as a service, and privileged access management.
kubernetes-sigs/external-dns: Automatically manages DNS records from my cluster in a cloud DNS provider.
jetstack/cert-manager: Creates SSL certificates for services in my Kubernetes cluster.
kubernetes/ingress-nginx: Ingress controller to expose HTTP traffic to pods over DNS.
openebs/zfs-localpv: CSI Driver for dynamic provisioning of Persistent Local Volumes for Kubernetes using ZFS.
kanidm: A simple, secure and fast identity management platform.
velero: Tool to safely backup and restore, perform disaster recovery, and migrate Kubernetes cluster resources and persistent volumes.

🔧 Hardware

Hostname	Device	Count	OS Disk Size	Data Disk Size	Ram	Operating System	Purpose
grigri	Supermicro Atom C2758 (A1SRi-2758F)	1	250GB SSD	3*4TB + 500GB (NVMe) RAIDZ + cache	32GB	Ubuntu 22.04	K3s server
prusik*	Ryzen 9 7950X (ASUS PRIME X670-P)	1	512GB	4*12TB + 2TB (NVMe) RAIDZ + cache	64GB	Ubuntu 24.04	k3s agent
k8s-odroid-hc4-3	Odroid-hc4	1	N/A	N/A	4GB	Armbian	K3s agent
prusik-ipmi	Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.5	1	16GB	N/A	4GB	PiKVM	ipmi
pfsense	PC Engines APU2e4	1	60GB	N/A	4GB	pfSense/FreeBSD	Router
gs724t	Netgear gs724t	1	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Switch
cerezo	Unifi UAP	1	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	AP
manzano	Unifi UAP	1	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	AP

* with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Images

⭐ Features

🌐 DNS

ExternalDNS is deployed in the cluster and configured to sync DNS records to Cloudflare.

All connections outside the cluster are handled with TLS using cert-manager with Let's Encrypt.

Load Balancer

Cilium is configured with BGP control plane, both on my router and within the Kubernetes cluster.

Ingress Controllers

For external access, port forwarding is configured for ports 80 and 443, directing traffic to the load balancer IP of the Kubernetes ingress controller.

There are also another ingress controller for internal use.

Internal DNS

internal.grigri.cloud domain is used. Configured as:

annotations:
  cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: letsencrypt-prod-dns
  external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/enabled: "true"

External DNS

grigri.cloud domain is used. Configured as:

annotations:
  cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: letsencrypt-prod-dns
  external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/enabled: "true"
  external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/target: grigri.cloud

🤝 Thanks

Thanks to all folks who donate their time to the Kubernetes @Home community. A lot of inspiration for my cluster came from those that have shared their clusters over at awesome-home-kubernetes.