VM-Centric Homelab Deployment on Proxmox 9

Overview

Implementation of the finalized architecture for a single-node Proxmox 9 homelab on Dell R240 (38GB RAM, 18TB ZFS, BOSS S1 SSD). Features:

4 isolated VMs: gw-01 (gateway), olares-01 (k3s orchestration), cosmos-01 (app hosting), ynh-01 (YunoHost services)
Pure single-node k3s in olares-01 (no multi-cluster/Flux)
Podman containers across VMs with dynamic service discovery
Tailscale mesh networking with MagicDNS
Cloudflared tunnels for public exposure with automator
iOS-friendly GitOps via Kustomize
Monitoring with Prometheus + ntfy/Pushover alerts
Declarative infrastructure via Pulumi

Project Structure

homelab-deploy/
├── README.md                    # This file
├── pulumi/                      # Infrastructure as Code
│   ├── Pulumi.yaml
│   ├── index.ts
│   └── proxmox-vms/
│       ├── index.ts             # VM definitions (gw-01, olares-01, etc.)
│       └── cloud-init/          # Bootstrapping templates
├── gateway/                     # gw-01 configuration
│   ├── compose.yaml             # Docker Compose for gateway services
│   ├── .env.template
│   └── systemd/                 # Systemd service files
├── olares/                      # olares-01 k3s manifests
│   ├── kustomization.yaml
│   └── monitoring/              # Prometheus + ntfy
├── cloud-init/                  # Shared cloud-init templates
│   ├── user-data-gw.yaml
│   ├── user-data-olares.yaml
│   └── user-data-common.yaml
└── .github/workflows/           # CI/CD pipelines
    ├── pulumi-infra.yml
    └── gateway-deploy.yml

Prerequisites

Proxmox VE 9.x installed on R240 (BOSS S1 SSD, ZFS pool configured)
Pulumi CLI installed (npm install -g pulumi)
Tailscale auth key (ephemeral for initial join)
Cloudflare API token for DNS/tunnels
GitHub repo with secrets configured (PROXMOX_ENDPOINT, TAILSCALE_AUTHKEY, etc.)

Quick Start

cd homelab-deploy && pulumi stack init dev
pulumi up - Creates VMs with cloud-init bootstrapping
Configure GitHub secrets and push workflows
Access services via Tailscale MagicDNS or Cloudflared subdomains

VM Specifications

VM	vCPU	RAM	Storage	Role
gw-01	2	4GB	50GB	Networking gateway, Cloudflared, service discovery
olares-01	4	8GB	100GB	Single-node k3s, Kustomize GitOps, Prometheus
cosmos-01	4	8GB	200GB	Podman/CasaOS, Cosmos Cloud, media apps
ynh-01	4	8GB	300GB	YunoHost, Nextcloud, Homepage dashboard

Total allocation: 14 vCPU, 28GB RAM (leaves headroom on 38GB total).

License

MIT - Free for personal homelab use.