Alex's Homelab

Overview

Project status: ALPHA

This project is still in the beginning stages. I will be SLOWLY adding to this repository, as I want to be sure I don't accidentally add any keys or screts that should not go to the public.

Hardware

• 3 × Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 USFF:
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-4570T
  • RAM: 4GB
  • SSD: 512GB
• TP-Link TL-SG105 switch:
  • Ports: 5
  • Speed: 1000Mbps

Features

• Common applications: Gitea, Jellyfin, Paperless...
• Automated Kubernetes installation and management
• 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 (Tailscale or Wireguard)
• Expose services to the internet securely with Cloudflare Tunnel
• Private container registry
• Distributed storage
• Monitoring and alerting
• Automated backup and restore
• 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.

Current Services
Cluster/Node management UI in Rancher
Distributed storage across nodes in LongHorn
Network access point monitoring and notifications with Traefik
Homepage for quick access and hyperlinks to tools
Locally hosted Git service for private repositories

Tech stack

Logo	Name	Description
	Ansible	Automate bare metal provisioning and configuration
	cert-manager	Cloud native certificate management
	Cloudflare	DNS and Tunnel
	Docker	Ephemeral PXE server
	Debian	Base OS for Kubernetes nodes
	Helm	The package manager for Kubernetes
	K3s	Lightweight distribution of Kubernetes
	Kubernetes	Container-orchestration system, the backbone of this project
	NGINX	Kubernetes Ingress Controller
	Tailscale	VPN without port forwarding
	Wireguard	Fast, modern, secure VPN tunnel
	MetalLB	Load-balancer implementation for bare metal Kubernetes clusters
	Rancher	Open-source platform for Kubernetes management
	LongHorn	Cloud native distributed block storage for Kubernetes
	Traefik	Open source reverse proxy and ingress controller
	Ngrok	TCP Gateway for MC server
	Gitea	Self-hosted Git service
	Homepage	Self-hosted dashboard with hyperlinks and tools

License

Copyright © 2024 - 2025 Alex Warda

Acknowledgements

References:

• README template