Hasty Briefsbeta

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Over engineering my homelab so I don't pay cloud providers

9 months ago
  • #homelab
  • #proxmox
  • #automation
  • Author moves self-hosted services from a VPS to a home setup using a Minisforum UM880 Plus mini PC.
  • Objectives include experimenting safely without disrupting production, learning Kubernetes, and ensuring data security with disk encryption and backups.
  • Threat model considers burglary, hardware failure, and personal fallibility, leading to needs like disk encryption, automated setup, versioned configuration, and Wake on LAN capability.
  • Proxmox Virtual Environment chosen as hypervisor for flexibility, with VMs considered disposable but service data and configurations backed up.
  • Implementation involves Proxmox on Debian with disk encryption, static IP configuration, and bridged networking for VM connectivity.
  • Automation tools include Opentofu for VM provisioning, cloud-init for VM configuration, and Ansible for server state management.
  • Detailed steps for installing Debian with encryption, configuring SSH for secure access, and setting up Proxmox with troubleshooting for boot issues.
  • Ansible playbook created to automate Proxmox installation and configuration, including network setup, package installation, and system reboots.
  • Future plans include using Opentofu, cloud-init, and Ansible for reproducible VM setups and exploring Kubernetes on the homelab.