u/xrothgarx

I bought a 3D printer mostly just to pull off this project 😅

Here are the specs for my home setup:
NAS: TrueNAS Community Edition (2x10TB main pool, 2x3TB backup pool, 64GB DDR4 RAM)
Compute Cluster: 3x HP Mini PCs (1x EliteDesk, 2x ProDesks) with i5-8500T CPUs and 32GB RAM on each node.
Hypervisor & K8s: Running a Proxmox cluster with a 3-node Talos Linux Kubernetes cluster inside, plus a few extra VMs.
Networking: TP-Link TL-SG105-M2 2.5 Gbps switch.

If you want a deeper look into the Kubernetes setup, I’ve documented it on GitHub: https://github.com/zarnautovic/kubernetes-homelab

edit:
Here are some 3d models i use to make this:
rack: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2139130-kws-rack-v-2-heavy-duty-10-inch-homelab-rack#profileId-2317125
hot swap bays: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2689222-hot-swappable-10-rack-drive-tray-2-5u-w-cradle#profileId-2979462
panel for atx psu: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1395747-10-inch-rack-mount-panel-for-the-atx-psu-2-ssd?from=search#profileId-1446712
mini itx motherboard: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2452767-2u-mini-itx-motherboard-pc-rack-tray-10-rack?from=search#profileId-2692953
mini pc mount: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1618704-hp-prodesk-mini-g3-4-5-10-rack-mount?from=search#profileId-1710049
switch mount: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1990494-tp-link-tl-sg105-m2-2-5g-10-inch-rack-mount?from=search#profileId-2142070
patch pannel: https://makerworld.com/en/models/825894-10-inch-keystone-patchpanel-x10-ports?from=search#profileId-769490

Long time reader, first time poster

Finally decided to pull the plug and rebuild my homelab before RAM and storage prices get any higher than they are now, as they sure don't seem to be coming down.

Biggest struggle was consolidation of storage into a dedicated NAS machine: I moved disks into it from my TrueNAS VM and a QNAP 4-bay NAS, plus some Exos X20 fell off the truck. That required doing a full copy of both my previous zpools back and forth to change the topology.

Sitting very comfortably now at 100TB usable of spinning rust, and 56TB of QLC flash, plus a DB machine for ClickHouse and a big data research hobby with 10TB usable SAS TLC flash. All acquired before the price hike, just never got around to building new machines to put this stuff into, but now I'm afraid that a drive failure will be my ticket to bankruptcy :D

Besides the storage, the whole lab underwent a major overhaul: my previous setup was one Proxmox machine that did everything, including TrueNAS in a VM with a controller passed through. It did well, but the RAM and CPU budget became tight. Plus, I've switched into a KubeOps role a few years back, and now this lonely Proxmox machine was getting neglected a bit, as maintaining it required extra effort on top of my day job.

I wanted to play around with Talos Linux for a while, so that's what I went with. I've restored everything I've set up over the years in about a week, and a few more weeks worth of evenings and weekends were spent fixing small issues with baremetal storage, networking, and VPN (I switched to Netbird from bare Wireguard).

I'll definitely say that the Kubernetes-first approach to homelabbing with such a minimal distro is a bit unique, and I would be reluctant to recommend it, unless you are a sicko like myself and do genuinely enjoy tinkering with Kubernetes. Networking is especially fun.

Now I'm a proud owner of a bare-metal Kubernetes cluster at home, consisting of whoping three computers: NAS, Database box, and the older homelab server, serving as a controlplane now.

And that's way more headroom than I know what to do with, but this is a nice problem to have!

Next project is definitely the networking upgrade, 1Gi worked fine with only the client traffic going through it, but as a cluster network backplane it's very tight...

P.S I also do astrophotography, and this is the biggest storage hog on the HDDs among the data I can't just refetch. Shameless plug, if that's allowed :)

P.P.S AI was used in creation of the gallery website, haha.

Physical Lab Diagram

Services Diagram

Hello,

I'm managing at least 10 Kubernetes clusters with the help of Talos Linux. To deploy applications, I use FluxCD which do perfectly the job. Now, I want to deploy a CI/CD pipeline software that will allow me to run various pipelines like image build and push to a repo and especially Ansible playbooks that need to be run periodically on some clusters.

Currently, a pretty barebones Helm Chart that only deploys a lot of cronjobs under a cronjobs: array is used but I believe it is not the good way and it will be tedious to manage it the more we add cronjobs.

I tried to deploy Concourse CI on Talos Linux with the official Helm Chart but something something with the OS container runtime doesn't work properly with Concourse even with the notorious label on the namespace to run privileged workloads for Talos and workarounds around it seems really tedious to do it on production clusters (https://github.com/concourse/concourse/pull/8791)

I wanted to deploy Concourse because it looks more simple and other IT teams could write easily their pipeline files with it.

I'm trying to find other solutions but since I have a lot of tasks to do, I lack some time to review some new apps that could fill this role.

So, do you know if there is a CI/CD application that works on Talos Linux?

Thanks.

EDIT: For all clusters, FluxCD sync resources from a GitLab Cloud repository, if it can help

Timestamps: https://imgur.com/a/4GfGdCZ

Local: 91786, Southern California for pickup or willing to ship within US 48 states

Used Framework 13" laptop chassis. No mainboard, CPU, RAM, or storage. Some wear on the lower frame. Comes with 3x USB-C adapters, 1x WiFi 6 adapter (standard with framework), 1x HDMI adapter.

Does not come with charging cables or power adapter.

Asking $300