⛵ Home Kubernetes

This my implementation of a home Kubernetes cluster based on Talos Linux. It was templated from cluster-template by onedr0p.

✨ Features

The stack includes:

• Talos Linux - base OS (Talos' documentation is utter trash, by the way)
• Flux - GitOps
• GitHub - Git repo
• sops - Local secrets management
• Cilium - Networking
• cert-manager - Automatic certificate provisioning
• spegel - Cluster local OCI registry mirror
• reloader - Watches changes in ConfigMaps or Secrets and does rolling upgrades on Pods
• ingress-nginx - Ingress controller
• external-dns - External DNS for exposed services
• cloudflared - Manages Cloudflare Tunnel
• Renovate - Generates PRs for updatates
• Longhorn - Distributed storage (not awesome, but it does the trick, given my crusty, old hardware)
• Rook-Ceph - Distributed storage (seemingly working better now that I don't have failing disks?)
• OpenEBS - This is/was configured by default from the cluster-template. I chose to replace it with Longhorn (for better or worse)

💻 Hardware

The hardware this runs on is a mix of 12th and 13th gen crusty, old 2U pizza-boxes from Dell and IBM. There's also another crusty, old 2U Dell that serves as a NAS for all this.

Each node has some "extra" storage that is used by Rook. It's nothing special, and honestly, probably the biggest hinderance to this being a "decent" cluster. But...storage is expensive.

🚀 Getting Started

(Leaving this all here for posterity, since I know I'm going to have to start all over again at some point.)

Installing Talos

You don't so much "install" Talos, as you just boot an ISO and when you run task talos:bootstrap (later), it will "just work".

That's not ot say that you don't have to do SOME preparation, specifically, you need to make sure the nodes have their networking "right". This might involve setting static DHCP reservations, or using a Talos ISO SPECIFIC to the node that you're working on, with the appropriate kernel parameters set.

Once you have installed Talos 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

Note

Honestly, don't even bother with this, because it's kinda hit or miss

1. Install the most recent version of task, see the installation docs for other supported platforms.

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

2. Install the most recent version of direnv, see the installation docs for other supported platforms.

   # Homebrew
   brew install direnv
   # or, Arch
   pacman -S --noconfirm direnv

3. 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 /path/to/repo/.envrc
   direnv: export +ANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_PATH ...  +VIRTUAL_ENV ~PATH

4. 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

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

   📍 This commands requires Python 3.11+ to be installed.

   task workstation:venv

6. 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

Note

At this point you may want to take long, hard look at the things that were actually written. Specifically, you may want to provision additional storage at this time.

4. Push your changes to git

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

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

⛵ Stage 4: Install Kubernetes

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 talos:bootstrap

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   INTERNAL-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   OS-IMAGE         KERNEL-VERSION   CONTAINER-RUNTIME
   kubernetes-0   Ready    control-plane   11h   v1.30.3   10.100.50.100   <none>        Talos (v1.7.6)   6.6.43-talos     containerd://1.7.18
   kubernetes-1   Ready    control-plane   11h   v1.30.3   10.100.50.101   <none>        Talos (v1.7.6)   6.6.43-talos     containerd://1.7.18
   kubernetes-2   Ready    control-plane   11h   v1.30.3   10.100.50.102   <none>        Talos (v1.7.6)   6.6.43-talos     containerd://1.7.18

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 1.30.1 >=1.18.0-0
   # ✔ Kubernetes 1.30.1 >=1.16.0-0
   # ✔ prerequisites checks passed

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

   📍 Run task flux:github-deploy-key first if using a private repository.

   task flux:bootstrap
   # 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

Mic check, 1, 2 - In a few moments applications should be lighting up like Christmas in July 🎄

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.

4. 🧠 Now it's time to pause and go get some motel motor oil ☕ and admire you made it this far!

📣 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).

I'm running AdGuard Home for my "main" network's DNS server. In order to get DNS working appropriately using split DNS, you have to set up a conditional forwarder to the gateway VIP, it will look something like this:

[/example.com/]192.168.1.150

This is assuming the domain name you're using is example.com, and your gateway VIP is at 192.168.1.150. If that's the case you'd add that line to your "Upstream DNS servers" in your AdGuard Home DNS settings. This has worked just fine for me.

DNS is almost always the problem...and it took me a long time to get it sorted.

🪝 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.

💥 Nuke

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:nuke

🤖 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.

⬆️ Upgrading Talos and Kubernetes

Manual

# Upgrade Talos to a newer version
# NOTE: This needs to be run once on every node
task talos:upgrade node=? image=?
# e.g.
# task talos:upgrade node=192.168.42.10 image=factory.talos.dev/installer/${schematic_id}:v1.7.4

# Upgrade Kubernetes to a newer version
# NOTE: This only needs to be run once against a controller node
task talos:upgrade-k8s controller=? to=?
# e.g.
# task talos:upgrade-k8s controller=192.168.42.10 to=1.30.1

👉 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.

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.

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

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