Khue's Homelab
Features • Get Started • Documentation
This project utilizes Infrastructure as Code and GitOps to automate provisioning, operating, and updating self-hosted services in my homelab. 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
Project status: ALPHA
This project is still in the experimental stage, and I don't use anything critical on it. Expect breaking changes that may require a complete redeployment. A proper upgrade path is planned for the stable release. More information can be found in the roadmap below.
Hardware
- 4 × NEC SFF
PC-MK26ECZDR(Japanese version of the ThinkCentre M700):- CPU:
Intel Core i5-6600T @ 2.70GHz - RAM:
16GB - SSD:
128GB
- CPU:
- TP-Link
TL-SG108switch:- Ports:
8 - Speed:
1000Mbps
- Ports:
Features
- Common applications: Gitea, Seafile, Jellyfin, Paperless...
- Automated bare metal provisioning with PXE boot
- Automated Kubernetes installation and management
- Installing and managing applications using GitOps
- Automatic rolling upgrade for OS and Kubernetes
- Automatically update apps (with approval)
- Modular architecture, easy to add or remove features/components
- Automated certificate management
- Automatically update DNS records for exposed services
- VPN without port forwarding
- Expose services to the internet securely with Cloudflare Tunnel
- CI/CD platform
- Private container registry
- Distributed storage
- Support multiple environments (dev, prod)
- Monitoring and alerting 🚧
- Automated offsite backups 🚧
- Single sign-on 🚧
- Infrastructure testing
Some demo videos and screenshots are shown here. They can't capture all the project's features, but they are sufficient to get a concept of it.
| Demo |
|---|
 |
| Deploy with a single command (after updating the configuration files) |
 |
| PXE boot |
 |
| Homepage with Ingress discovery powered by Hajimari |
 |
| Monitoring dashboard powered by Grafana |
 |
| Git server powered by Gitea |
 |
| Matrix chat server |
 |
| Continuous integration with Tekton |
 |
| Continuous deployment with ArgoCD |
 |
| Cluster management using Lens |
 |
| Secret management with Vault |
Tech stack
| Logo | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
 |
Ansible | Automate bare metal provisioning and configuration |
 |
ArgoCD | GitOps tool built to deploy applications to Kubernetes |
 |
cert-manager | Cloud native certificate management |
 |
Cloudflare | DNS and Tunnel |
 |
Docker | Ephemeral PXE server and convenient tools container |
 |
Docker Registry | Private container registry |
 |
ExternalDNS | Synchronizes exposed Kubernetes Services and Ingresses with DNS providers |
 |
Fedora Server | Base OS for Kubernetes nodes |
 |
Gitea | Self-hosted Git service |
 |
Grafana | Operational dashboards |
 |
Helm | The package manager for Kubernetes |
 |
K3s | Lightweight distribution of Kubernetes |
 |
Kubernetes | Container-orchestration system, the backbone of this project |
 |
Loki | Log aggregation system |
 |
Longhorn | Cloud native distributed block storage for Kubernetes |
 |
MetalLB | Bare metal load-balancer for Kubernetes |
 |
NGINX | Kubernetes Ingress Controller |
 |
Prometheus | Systems monitoring and alerting toolkit |
 |
Renovate | Automatically update dependencies |
 |
Tekton | Cloud native solution for building CI/CD systems |
 |
Vault | Secrets and encryption management system |
 |
ZeroTier | VPN without port forwarding |
Get Started
- Try it out locally without any hardware (just 4 commands!)
- Deploy on real hardware for production workload
Roadmap
See roadmap and open issues for a list of proposed features and known issues.
Contributing
Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.
Please see contributing guide for more information.
License
Copyright © 2020 - 2022 Khue Doan
Distributed under the GPLv3 License.
See license page or LICENSE.md file for more information.
Acknowledgements
References:
- Ephemeral PXE server inspired by Minimal First Machine in the DC
- ArgoCD usage and monitoring configuration in locmai/humble
- README template
- Run the same Cloudflare Tunnel across many
cloudflaredprocesses - MAC address environment variable in GRUB config
- Official k3s systemd service file
- Official Cloudflare Tunnel examples
- Initialize GitOps repository on Gitea and integrate with Tekton by RedHat
- SSO configuration from xUnholy/k8s-gitops
- Pre-commit config from k8s-at-home/flux-cluster-template
- Diátaxis technical documentation framework
- Official Terratest examples
Here is a list of the contributors who have helped to improve this project. Big shout-out to them!
@locmai
@MatthewJohn
@karpfediem
@linhng98
@BlueHatbRit
@dotdiego
@Crimrose
@eventi
@Bourne-ID
@akwan
@trangmaiq
If you feel you're missing from this list, feel free to add yourself in a PR.
