This repository contains every possible (non-sensitive) configuration file I'll be using in building up my homelab. It is a constant work in progress, and will hopefully supersede my k0s cluster.
Setting stuff up for people to use and watching them thrive while doing so is something I have enjoyed doing for a long time. With my k0s cluster, it's been no different. However, the I/O performance on the small-time provider I'm renting the VMs from is not the best, and I've had to deal with corrupted files and crashing services more times than I'd like to. Dedicated hardware hopefully won't exhibit the same kind of behaviour.
Renting an entire server on the cloud is a bit too expensive, and I wouldn't get any return on investment from it. So, I've decided to build a homelab instead. While the upfront cost is high, the long-term benefits are worth it: at the very least I'll learn from it.
This list will be updated as changes are made to this project's hardware configuration.
- 1x Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro (i5-10500T, 64 GB RAM, 256 GB NVMe SSD)
- 1x Dell Optiplex 7070 Micro (i5-8500T, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB NVMe SSD)
- 3x Lenovo Tiny M920q (i5-8500T, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB NVMe SSD)
- 1x NETGEAR GS308 8-port 1Gbps switch
A NAS is planned for the near future, since 256 GB of NVMe storage is certainly not enough. It would also be good to separate the operating system from the data we're storing, so that we can easily move the data around.
The cluster control plane is currently on a single node that also allows scheduling of workloads. This isn't ideal, but it's a start. Perhaps in the future I'll add a couple more nodes to the cluster to make it more resilient.
A less powerful machine to act as a load balancer would be nice, but it's not a requirement at the moment. It would be good to have it configured by the cluster automatically, so I can just forget about it.
The networking equipment could be upgraded to at least 2.5 Gbps, but 1 Gbps hardware is much more affordable and speeds above 1 Gbps are unlikely to be needed in the near future.
The cluster has been set up using Talos, an immutable Linux distribution built specifically for Kubernetes. It's production ready and its configuration files are declarative. Given this project exists and is as mature as it is, I luckily don't have to deal with NixOS or maintaining both OS and cluster.