Welcome to my Kubernetes Homelab repository! This is where I document my journey about cloud-native technologies and self-hosting applications. This homelab is more than a playground—it's a platform where I explore ideas, automate workflows, and solve complex challenges while having fun.

As a Cloud Solutions Architect, Kubernetes is part of my daily toolkit. This homelab represents my passion for learning and experimenting with technology, focusing on scalability, backup strategies, and operational simplicity.

The purpose of this homelab is:

1. Learning by Doing: By self-hosting, I tackle the complexities of deploying and managing real-world applications.
2. All-in-One Environment: This Kubernetes cluster manages all the applications of my home setup, serving as a single, integrated environment for testing, developing, and automating cloud-native workflows.

To keep things simple yet powerful, my homelab runs on the following hardware:

• Beelink Mini PC 12 Pro: Powered by an Intel N100, with 16GB RAM and 500GB NVMe SSD.
• Raspberry Pi 4: A lightweight option for testing Kubernetes in constrained environments (4GB RAM with 120GB SSD).

This combination offers flexibility and low energy consumption while supporting diverse workloads.

The homelab runs a variety of applications, deployed using Kubernetes and managed declaratively through GitOps. Here’s an overview of the setup:

• Kubernetes: The backbone for workload orchestration, ensuring high availability and scalability.
• ArgoCD: Automates deployments and updates via GitOps workflows, keeping the cluster state consistent with repository configurations.
• Longhorn: Distributed storage solution for resilient and scalable data management.
• Prometheus and Grafana: Monitoring and observability for tracking cluster performance and health.
• Home Assistant: An open-source home automation platform to manage smart devices in the homelab.
• Uptime Kuma: A modern uptime monitoring tool for tracking the status of services and websites.
• Homarr: A sleek and customizable dashboard to centralize access to various applications.
• Kube-Prometheus-Stack: Comprehensive monitoring and alerting stack with Prometheus, Grafana, and Alertmanager.

This repository is structured to organize and simplify the management of my Kubernetes homelab:

• apps/: Contains deployment configurations (Helm charts or raw manifests) for each application.
• argocd-apps/: Includes ArgoCD-specific application manifests and GitOps configurations for managing deployments declaratively.
• cluster/: Defines Kubernetes cluster-wide configurations, such as networking, storage, and infrastructure setup.

• Deepen Kubernetes Knowledge: Dive deep into advanced Kubernetes concepts, such as networking, GitOps or federation.
• Enhance Resilience: Design a self-hosted environment with reliable backups and minimal downtime.
• Share Knowledge: Document my progress and learnings to help others interested in setting up their own homelab.