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, please see the r/homelab introduction and the Home Operations Discord community (formerly known as k8s-at-home).
If you encounter an issue, please create a bug report (avoid asking for support about issues specific to this project in other communication channels).
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
- RAM:
- CPU:
- TP-Link
TL-SG108switch:- Ports:
8- Speed:
1000Mbps
- Speed:
- Ports:
Features
- Common applications: Gitea, 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 (Tailscale or Wireguard)
- 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 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.
| Demo |
|---|
| Deploy with a single command (after updating the configuration files) |
 |
| PXE boot |
 |
| Observe network traffic with Hubble, built on top of Cilium and eBPF |
 |
| Homepage powered by… Homepage |
 |
| Monitoring dashboard powered by Grafana |
 |
| Git server powered by Gitea |
 |
| Matrix chat server |
 |
| Continuous integration with Woodpecker CI |
 |
| Continuous deployment with ArgoCD |
 |
| ntfy displaying received alerts |
 |
| Self-hosted AI powered by Ollama (experimental, not very fast because I don’t have a GPU) |
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 | |
| Cilium | eBPF-based Networking, Observability and Security (CNI, LB, Network Policy, etc.) | |
| Cloudflare | DNS and Tunnel | |
| Docker | Ephemeral PXE server | |
| ExternalDNS | Synchronizes exposed Kubernetes Services and Ingresses with DNS providers | |
| Fedora Server | Base OS for Kubernetes nodes | |
| Gitea | Self-hosted Git service | |
| Grafana | Observability platform | |
| Helm | The package manager for Kubernetes | |
| K3s | Lightweight distribution of Kubernetes | |
| Kanidm | Modern and simple identity management platform | |
| Kubernetes | Container-orchestration system, the backbone of this project | |
| Loki | Log aggregation system | |
| NGINX | Kubernetes Ingress Controller | |
| Nix | Convenient development shell | |
| ntfy | Notification service to send notifications to your phone or desktop | |
| Prometheus | Systems monitoring and alerting toolkit | |
| Renovate | Automatically update dependencies | |
| Rook Ceph | Cloud-Native Storage for Kubernetes | |
| Tailscale | VPN without port forwarding | |
| Wireguard | Fast, modern, secure VPN tunnel | |
| Woodpecker CI | Simple yet powerful CI/CD engine with great extensibility | |
| Zot Registry | Private container registry |
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 - 2024 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
- Self-host an automated Jellyfin media streaming stack
- App Template Helm chart by bjw-s
- Various application configurations in onedr0p/home-ops
Here is a list of the contributors who have helped to improve this project. Big shout-out to them!
- @locmai
- @MatthewJohn
- @karpfediem
- @linhng98
- @elliotblackburn
- @dotdiego
- @Crimrose
- @eventi
- @Bourne-ID
- @akwan
- @trangmaiq
- @tangowithfoxtrot
- @raedkit
- @ClashTheBunny
- @retX0
- @zalsader
- @serpro69
- @llajas
- @zalsader
If you feel you’re missing from this list, please feel free to add yourself in a PR.
Summary
Fully automated homelab from empty disk to running services with one command (9.6k stars, GPL-3.0): PXE bare-metal provisioning + automated Kubernetes + GitOps app management on 4x cheap SFF nodes.
Learnings
- The canonical lifecycle-complete homelab blueprint; see Homelabs for the genre and the contrast with the KRZ single-node Podman approach.
Gotchas
- (none yet)
Hands-on
(research only)