Homelab
Self-hosted infrastructure at home. Not a lab environment — this is where the real stuff runs.
The Stack
Proxmox VE — Hypervisor Layer
The foundation. Proxmox handles VM lifecycle, live migration, snapshots, and cluster
management. The web UI is good enough for day-to-day ops and the CLI (qm,
pvesh) means I can automate everything with Ansible. I take snapshots
before doing anything I might regret.
RHEL VMs — OS Layer
Every node runs RHEL — not a clone, actual RHEL on a free developer subscription.
This keeps the homelab mirroring what I work with professionally. I get proper package
repos, security advisories, and subscription-manager behaves exactly like
it does on a client engagement. Each VM is provisioned with Ansible from a template.
Kubernetes — Orchestration Layer
Kubernetes upstream on RHEL VMs. The cluster runs control plane and worker nodes spread across Proxmox hosts. I use it for everything deployed here: this website, internal tools, and whatever experiment I'm running this month. Namespaces keep things tidy. cert-manager handles TLS automatically.
GitOps — Delivery Layer
Every cluster manifest lives in Git. ArgoCD watches the repository and reconciles
cluster state automatically. When I push a new container image tag, ArgoCD detects
the drift and syncs. No kubectl apply from a laptop. Infrastructure as
code is a constraint I hold myself to even at home — it keeps things reproducible
and makes me document what I've done.
Ansible — Automation Layer
Provisioning, patching, configuration drift correction — all Ansible. The goal is
a single ansible-playbook site.yml that takes a fresh Proxmox host to
a functional Kubernetes node in under 10 minutes. I'm close. Writing it up for the
blog when it's done.
Why bother?
Honest answer: because breaking things at home is cheaper and more educational than breaking them at work. Every concept I've applied to enterprise Kubernetes deployments — RBAC design, GitOps workflows, security hardening, storage classes, ingress configuration — I've first made work, then broken, then fixed in the homelab.
There's also something satisfying about running your own infrastructure end-to-end. I know where every bit of data lives, I control the TLS certificates, and the only SLA is the one I set for myself. The power bill is real. The learning is worth it.