This is a personal blog focused on computer software and hardware. Most
projects are implementing software and hardware for a homelab. What is a
homelab? I would say a homelab could be a single computer or dozens of
computers connected in a network. You can also integrate with computers
in the Cloud.
When it comes to running containers, docker is the most widely used tool with millions of container images available on the public docker hub. If you are not familiar with docker, check out a previous post to get an introduction. I am looking at Alternatives since docker is no longer used as a container runtime in the kubernetes platform. I use kubernetes in my homelab to orchestrate container based services accross multiple computers. If you are not familiar with kubernetes, check out a previous post for an introduction.
I will be using nginx to serve as a reverse proxy for my network. With Nginx, I can manage my proxy configurations in a single server. Nginx is one of the most widely used web servers and can also function as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy, and HTTP cache. Nginx is free and open-source software.
Linux example
On Linux distributions, nginx should be available in the software repositories. Once installed and enabled, you will need to open port 80 and/or 443 to access from other systems.
Once you have a kubernetes environment running, a tool like argoCD can help you manage applications that you want to deploy on kubernetes. ArgoCD expects a pattern of using git repositories as the source of truth for defining the state of your applications. You can communicate with the kubernetes API by submitting requests in YAML or JSON format. I am going to be focusing on managing applications with helm charts.
ArgoCD automates the deployment of applications in kubernetes. Application deployments can track updates to git branches, tags, or pinned to a specific version of manifests at a specific commit.
Kubernetes, also known as k8s, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and managment of containerized applications. For more of an overview, take a look at a previous post getting started with a simple kubernetes environment. This post is looking at a tool to deploy a kubernetes cluster with multiple nodes and most importantly it can be used on physical computers, a virtual machine, or a cloud based virtual server. To get started, you need SSH access to systems that you want to use as kubernetes nodes and install ansible on your workstation.
My homelab has evolved quite a bit over time. After implementing a wiki, I have tracked servers and services deployed there. This blog will serve as a nice location to periodically record the state of the homelab.
The lab all started in 2016. After the first hardware failure (a z270 asus motherboard), the lab shrunk to one raspberry pi.
2016
homelab_2016
In 2018 I acquired some Dell Poweredge R510 servers. One of the mainboards died when I attempted to change the CPUs. The other Dell ran until late 2021 when it was powered off due to noise and power consumption.
Grafana Loki was introduced in a previous post. If you do not have grafana and loki, check out that post to get started. Today we will set up a grafana dashboard to explore log files that are collected by Loki. As mentioned in the previous post, logs are sent to grafana loki using an agent called promtail. This agent can securely forward logs over HTTPS so all log messages will be encrypted in transit.
