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My homelab bare metal k8s cluster using Talos linux

... automated via Flux, Renovate and GitHub Actions 🤖

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Devin Buhl for providing the initial template for my amazing home lab Kubernetes cluster.

⛵ Cluster Template

Welcome to my opinionated and extensible template for deploying a single Kubernetes cluster. The goal of this project is to make it easier for people interested in using Kubernetes to deploy a cluster at home on bare-metal or VMs.

At a high level this project makes use of makejinja to read in a configuration file which renders out templates that will allow you to install and manage your Kubernetes cluster with.

✨ Features

The features included will depend on the type of configuration you want to use. There are currently 2 different types of configurations available with this template.

  1. "Flux cluster" - a Kubernetes cluster deployed on-top of Talos Linux with an opinionated implementation of Flux using GitHub as the Git provider and sops to manage secrets.

  2. "Flux cluster with Cloudflare" - An addition to "Flux cluster" that provides DNS and SSL with Cloudflare. Cloudflare Tunnel is also included to provide external access to certain applications deployed in your cluster.

Other features include:

💻 Machine Preparation

Hopefully some of this peeked your interests! If you are marching forward, now is a good time to deploy a Kubernetes cluster with Talos.

Hardware

Note

  1. The included behaviour of Talos is that all nodes are able to run workloads, including the controller nodes. Worker nodes are therefore optional.
  2. Do you have 3 or more nodes? It is highly recommended to make 3 of them controller nodes for a highly available control plane.
Device Role Cores Memory System Disk
Minisforum U820 Control 4 16GB 500GB NVMe
GEEKOM Mini IT12 Worker 10 32GB 1TB NVMe

Talos

  1. Download the latest stable release of Talos from their GitHub releases. You will want to grab metal-amd64.iso.

  2. Take note of the OS drive serial numbers you will need them later on.

  3. Flash the iso or raw file to a USB drive and boot to Talos on your nodes with it.

🚀 Getting Started

Once you have installed Talos or Debian on your nodes, there are six stages to getting a Flux-managed cluster up and runnning.

Note

For all stages below the commands MUST be ran on your personal workstation within your repository directory

🎉 Stage 1: Create a Git repository

  1. Create a new public repository by clicking the big green "Use this template" button at the top of this page.

  2. Clone your new repo to you local workstation and cd into it.

  3. Continue on to 🌱 Stage 2

🌱 Stage 2: Setup your local workstation

You have two different options for setting up your local workstation.

  • First option is using a devcontainer which requires you to have Docker and VSCode installed. This method is the fastest to get going because all the required CLI tools are provided for you in my devcontainer image.
  • The second option is setting up the CLI tools directly on your workstation.

Devcontainer method

  1. Start Docker and open your repository in VSCode. There will be a pop-up asking you to use the devcontainer, click the button to start using it.

  2. Continue on to 🔧 Stage 3

Non-devcontainer method

  1. Install the most recent version of task and direnv

    # Homebrew
brew install direnv go-task
# or, Arch
pacman -S --noconfirm direnv go-task \
  && ln -sf /usr/bin/go-task /usr/local/bin/task

  2. Hook direnv into your preferred shell, then run:

    task workstation:direnv

    📍 Verify that direnv is setup properly by opening a new terminal and cding into your repository. You should see something like:

    cd /path/to/repo
direnv: loading ... .envrc
direnv: export +VIRTUAL_ENV ... ~PATH

  3. Install the additional required CLI tools

    📍 Not using Homebrew or ArchLinux? Try using the generic Linux task below, if that fails check out the Brewfile/Archfile for what CLI tools needed and install them.

    # Homebrew
task workstation:brew
# or, Arch with yay/paru
task workstation:arch
# or, Generic Linux (YMMV, this pulls binaires in to ./bin)
task workstation:generic-linux

  4. Setup a Python virual environment by running the following task command.

    📍 This commands requires Python 3.11+ to be installed.

    task workstation:venv

  5. Continue on to 🔧 Stage 3

🔧 Stage 3: Bootstrap configuration

Note

The config.sample.yaml file contains config that is vital to the bootstrap process.

  1. Generate the config.yaml from the config.sample.yaml configuration file.

    task init

  2. Fill out the config.yaml configuration file using the comments in that file as a guide.

  3. Run the following command which will generate all the files needed to continue.

    task configure

  4. Push you changes to git

    📍 Verify all the ./kubernetes/**/*.sops.* files are encrypted with SOPS

    git add -A
git commit -m "Initial commit :rocket:"
git push

Talos

  1. Deploy your cluster and bootstrap it. This generates secrets, generates the config files for your nodes and applies them. It bootstraps the cluster afterwards, fetches the kubeconfig file and installs Cilium and kubelet-csr-approver. It finishes with some health checks.

    task bootstrap:talos

  2. ⚠️ It might take a while for the cluster to be setup (10+ minutes is normal), during which time you will see a variety of error messages like: "couldn't get current server API group list," "error: no matching resources found", etc. This is a normal. If this step gets interrupted, e.g. by pressing Ctrl + C, you likely will need to nuke the cluster before trying again.

Cluster validation

  1. The kubeconfig for interacting with your cluster should have been created in the root of your repository.

  2. Verify the nodes are online

    📍 If this command fails you likely haven't configured direnv as mentioned previously in the guide.

    kubectl get nodes -o wide
# NAME           STATUS   ROLES                       AGE     VERSION
# k8s-0          Ready    control-plane,etcd,master   1h      v1.29.1
# k8s-1          Ready    worker                      1h      v1.29.1

  3. Continue on to 🔹 Stage 6

🔹 Stage 6: Install Flux in your cluster

  1. Verify Flux can be installed

    flux check --pre
# ► checking prerequisites
# ✔ kubectl 1.27.3 >=1.18.0-0
# ✔ Kubernetes 1.27.3+k3s1 >=1.16.0-0
# ✔ prerequisites checks passed

  2. Install Flux and sync the cluster to the Git repository

    task bootstrap:flux
# namespace/flux-system configured
# customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/alerts.notification.toolkit.fluxcd.io created
# ...

  3. Verify Flux components are running in the cluster

    kubectl -n flux-system get pods -o wide
# NAME                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
# helm-controller-5bbd94c75-89sb4            1/1     Running   0          1h
# kustomize-controller-7b67b6b77d-nqc67      1/1     Running   0          1h
# notification-controller-7c46575844-k4bvr   1/1     Running   0          1h
# source-controller-7d6875bcb4-zqw9f         1/1     Running   0          1h

🎤 Verification Steps

  1. Output all the common resources in your cluster.

    📍 Feel free to use the provided kubernetes tasks for validation of cluster resources or continue to get familiar with the kubectl and flux CLI tools.

    task kubernetes:resources

  2. ⚠️ It might take cert-manager awhile to generate certificates, this is normal so be patient.

  3. 🏆 Congratulations if all goes smooth you will have a Kubernetes cluster managed by Flux and your Git repository is driving the state of your cluster.

📣 Flux w/ Cloudflare post installation

🌐 Public DNS

The external-dns application created in the networking namespace will handle creating public DNS records. By default, echo-server and the flux-webhook are the only subdomains reachable from the public internet. In order to make additional applications public you must set set the correct ingress class name and ingress annotations like in the HelmRelease for echo-server.

🏠 Home DNS

k8s_gateway will provide DNS resolution to external Kubernetes resources (i.e. points of entry to the cluster) from any device that uses your home DNS server. For this to work, your home DNS server must be configured to forward DNS queries for ${bootstrap_cloudflare.domain} to ${bootstrap_cloudflare.gateway_vip} instead of the upstream DNS server(s) it normally uses. This is a form of split DNS (aka split-horizon DNS / conditional forwarding).

Tip

Below is how to configure a Pi-hole for split DNS. Other platforms should be similar.

  1. Apply this file on the Pihole server while substituting the variables
# /etc/dnsmasq.d/99-k8s-gateway-forward.conf
server=/${bootstrap_cloudflare.domain}/${bootstrap_cloudflare.gateway_vip}
  1. Restart dnsmasq on the server.
  2. Query an internal-only subdomain from your workstation (any internal class ingresses): dig @${home-dns-server-ip} echo-server-internal.${bootstrap_cloudflare.domain}. It should resolve to ${bootstrap_cloudflare.ingress_vip}.

If you're having trouble with DNS be sure to check out these two GitHub discussions: Internal DNS and Pod DNS resolution broken.

... Nothing working? That is expected, this is DNS after all!

📜 Certificates

By default this template will deploy a wildcard certificate using the Let's Encrypt staging environment, which prevents you from getting rate-limited by the Let's Encrypt production servers if your cluster doesn't deploy properly (for example due to a misconfiguration). Once you are sure you will keep the cluster up for more than a few hours be sure to switch to the production servers as outlined in config.yaml.

📍 You will need a production certificate to reach internet-exposed applications through cloudflared.

🪝 Github Webhook

By default Flux will periodically check your git repository for changes. In order to have Flux reconcile on git push you must configure Github to send push events to Flux.

Note

This will only work after you have switched over certificates to the Let's Encrypt Production servers.

  1. Obtain the webhook path

    📍 Hook id and path should look like /hook/12ebd1e363c641dc3c2e430ecf3cee2b3c7a5ac9e1234506f6f5f3ce1230e123

    kubectl -n flux-system get receiver github-receiver -o jsonpath='{.status.webhookPath}'

  2. Piece together the full URL with the webhook path appended

    https://flux-webhook.${bootstrap_cloudflare.domain}/hook/12ebd1e363c641dc3c2e430ecf3cee2b3c7a5ac9e1234506f6f5f3ce1230e123

  3. Navigate to the settings of your repository on Github, under "Settings/Webhooks" press the "Add webhook" button. Fill in the webhook URL and your bootstrap_github_webhook_token secret in config.yaml, Content type: application/json, Events: Choose Just the push event, and save.

💥 Reset

There might be a situation where you want to destroy your Kubernetes cluster. The following command will reset your nodes back to maintenance mode, append --force to completely format your the Talos installation. Either way the nodes should reboot after the command has run.

task talos:reset # --force

🛠️ Talos and Kubernetes Maintenance

⚙️ Updating Talos node configuration

📍 Ensure you have updated talconfig.yaml and any patches with your updated configuration.

# (Re)generate the Talos config
task talos:generate-config
# Apply the config to the node
task talos:apply-config HOSTNAME=? MODE=?
# e.g. task talos:apply-config HOSTNAME=k8s-0 MODE=reboot

⬆️ Updating Talos and Kubernetes versions

📍 Ensure the talosVersion and kubernetesVersion in talhelper.yaml are up-to-date with the version you wish to upgrade to.

# Upgrade the whole cluster to a newer Talos version
task talos:upgrade-cluster
# e.g. task talos:upgrade-cluster
# Upgrade node to a newer Talos version
task talos:upgrade-node HOSTNAME=?
# e.g. task talos:upgrade HOSTNAME=k8s-0
# Upgrade cluster to a newer Kubernetes version
task talos:upgrade-k8s
# e.g. task talos:upgrade-k8s

🤖 Renovate

Renovate is a tool that automates dependency management. It is designed to scan your repository around the clock and open PRs for out-of-date dependencies it finds. Common dependencies it can discover are Helm charts, container images, GitHub Actions, Ansible roles... even Flux itself! Merging a PR will cause Flux to apply the update to your cluster.

To enable Renovate, click the 'Configure' button over at their Github app page and select your repository. Renovate creates a "Dependency Dashboard" as an issue in your repository, giving an overview of the status of all updates. The dashboard has interactive checkboxes that let you do things like advance scheduling or reattempt update PRs you closed without merging.

The base Renovate configuration in your repository can be viewed at .github/renovate.json5. By default it is scheduled to be active with PRs every weekend, but you can change the schedule to anything you want, or remove it if you want Renovate to open PRs right away.

🐛 Debugging

Below is a general guide on trying to debug an issue with an resource or application. For example, if a workload/resource is not showing up or a pod has started but in a CrashLoopBackOff or Pending state.

  1. Start by checking all Flux Kustomizations & Git Repository & OCI Repository and verify they are healthy.

    flux get sources oci -A
flux get sources git -A
flux get ks -A

  2. Then check all the Flux Helm Releases and verify they are healthy.

    flux get hr -A

  3. Then check the if the pod is present.

    kubectl -n <namespace> get pods -o wide

  4. Then check the logs of the pod if its there.

    kubectl -n <namespace> logs <pod-name> -f
# or
stern -n <namespace> <fuzzy-name>

  5. If a resource exists try to describe it to see what problems it might have.

    kubectl -n <namespace> describe <resource> <name>

  6. Check the namespace events

    kubectl -n <namespace> get events --sort-by='.metadata.creationTimestamp'

Resolving problems that you have could take some tweaking of your YAML manifests in order to get things working, other times it could be a external factor like permissions on NFS. If you are unable to figure out your problem see the help section below.

👉 Help

  • Make a post in this repository's Github Discussions.
  • Start a thread in the #support or #cluster-template channels in the Home Operations Discord server.

❔ What's next

The cluster is your oyster (or something like that). Below are some optional considerations you might want to review.

Ship it

To browse or get ideas on applications people are running, community member @whazor created Kubesearch as a creative way to search Flux HelmReleases across Github and Gitlab.

DNS

Instead of using k8s_gateway to provide DNS for your applications you might want to check out external-dns, it has wide support for many different providers such as Pi-hole, UniFi, Adguard Home, Bind and more.

Storage

The included CSI (openebs in local-hostpath mode) is a great start for storage but soon you might find you need more features like replicated block storage, or to connect to a NFS/SMB/iSCSI server. If you need any of those features be sure to check out the projects like rook-ceph, longhorn, openebs, democratic-csi, csi-driver-nfs, and synology-csi.

🙌 Related Projects

If this repo is too hot to handle or too cold to hold check out these following projects.

  • khuedoan/homelab - Modern self-hosting framework, fully automated from empty disk to operating services with a single command.
  • danmanners/aws-argo-cluster-template - A community opinionated template for deploying Kubernetes clusters on-prem and in AWS using Pulumi, SOPS, Sealed Secrets, GitHub Actions, Renovate, Cilium and more!
  • ricsanfre/pi-cluster - Pi Kubernetes Cluster. Homelab kubernetes cluster automated with Ansible and ArgoCD
  • techno-tim/k3s-ansible - The easiest way to bootstrap a self-hosted High Availability Kubernetes cluster. A fully automated HA k3s etcd install with kube-vip, MetalLB, and more

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