This is a monorepository is for my home kubernetes clusters. I try to adhere to Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and GitOps practices using tools like Terraform, Kubernetes, Flux, Renovate, and GitHub Actions.
The purpose here is to learn k8s, while practicing Gitops.
My Kubernetes clusters are deployed with Talos. One is a low-power utility cluster, running important services, and the other is a semi-hyper-converged cluster, workloads and block storage are sharing the same available resources on my nodes while I have a separate NAS with ZFS for NFS/SMB shares, bulk file storage and backups.
There is a template over 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
- cilium: internal Kubernetes networking plugin
- cert-manager: creates SSL certificates for services in my cluster
- external-dns: automatically syncs DNS records from my cluster ingresses to a DNS provider
- external-secrets: managed Kubernetes secrets using 1Password.
- ingress-nginx: ingress controller for Kubernetes using NGINX as a reverse proxy and load balancer
- longhorn: Cloud native distributed block storage for Kubernetes
- rook-ceph: Cloud native distributed block storage for Kubernetes
- sops: managed secrets for Kubernetes, Ansible, and Terraform which are committed to Git
- spegel: stateless cluster local OCI registry mirror
- tf-controller: additional Flux component used to run Terraform from within a Kubernetes cluster.
- 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/${cluster}/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. Those Flux kustomizations will generally have a HelmRelease or other resources related to the application underneath it 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
├── 📁 main # main cluster
│ ├── 📁 apps # applications
│ ├── 📁 bootstrap # bootstrap procedures
│ ├── 📁 flux # core flux configuration
│ └── 📁 talos # talos configuration
├── 📁 shared # shared cluster resources
└── 📁 utility # utility cluster
├── 📁 apps # applications
├── 📁 bootstrap # bootstrap procedures
├── 📁 flux # core flux configuration
└── 📁 talos # talos configurationClick to see a high-level network diagram
While most of my infrastructure and workloads are self-hosted I do rely upon the cloud for certain key parts of my setup. This saves me from having to worry about two things. (1) Dealing with chicken/egg scenarios and (2) services I critically need whether my cluster is online or not.
The alternative solution to these two problems would be to host a Kubernetes cluster in the cloud and deploy applications like HCVault, Vaultwarden, ntfy, and Gatus. However, maintaining another cluster and monitoring another group of workloads is a lot more time and effort than I am willing to put in.
| Service | Use | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1Password | Secrets with External Secrets | Free - Work |
| Cloudflare | Domain and R2 | ~$30/yr |
| GitHub | Hosting this repository and continuous integration/deployments | Free |
| Healthchecks.io | Monitoring internet connectivity and external facing applications | Free |
| Total: ~$3/mo |
In my cluster there are two instances of ExternalDNS running. One for syncing private DNS records to my UDM Pro-SE 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.
| Name | Device | CPU | OS Disk | Data Disk | RAM | OS | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ayaka | Dell 7080mff | i5-10500T | 480GB SSD | 1TB NVME | 64GB | Talos | k8s control-plane |
| Eula | Dell 7080mff | i7-10700T | 480GB SSD | 1TB NVME | 64GB | Talos | k8s control-plane |
| Ganyu | Dell 3080mff | i5-10500T | 500GB SSD | 1TB NVME | 64GB | Talos | k8s control-plane |
| HuTao | Dell 3080mff | i5-10500T | 480GB SSD | 1TB NVME | 64GB | Talos | k8s worker |
| Navia | Dell 3080mff | i5-10500T | 240GB SSD | 1TB NVME | 64GB | Talos | k8s worker |
| Yelan | Dell 3080mff | i5-10500T | 240GB SSD | 1TB NVME | 64GB | Talos | k8s worker |
Total CPU: 76 threads Total RAM: 384GB
| Name | Device | CPU | OS Disk | Data Disk | RAM | OS | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Celestia | Bosgame P1 | Ryzen 7 5700U | 480GB SSD | 1TB NVME | 32GB | Talos | k8s control-plane |
Total CPU: 16 threads Total RAM: 32GB
| Name | Device | CPU | OS Disk | Data Disk | RAM | OS | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voyager | MS-01 | i5-12600H | 32GB USB | 1.92TB U.2 | 96GB | Unraid | NAS/NFS/Backup |
| DAS | Lenovo SA120 | - | - | 72TB | - | - | ZFS - Raidz2 |
| PiKVM | Raspberry Pi4 | Cortex A72 | 64GB mSD | - | 4GB | PiKVM (Arch) | KVM |
| Device | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Unifi UDM-SE | Network - Router |
| USW-Pro-24-POE | Network - Switch |
| Back-UPS 600 | Network - UPS |
| Unifi USW-Enterprise-24-PoE | Server - Switch |
| Tripp Lite 1500 | Server - UPS |
Big shout out to original cluster-template, and 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 may deploy.
See my awful commit history
See LICENSE
