Kubernetes Cluster#

The time has come!

My homelab ecosystem will grow to include a kubernetes cluster. 💪

Additional Hardware#

Sure, I could use virtualization to simulate more machines.

But I think its cooler to have the real thing.

Additions:

1 Netgear 5 Port Gigabit Network Switch ($25)
2 HP Prodesk 400 G3 Mini PCs off Ebay ($170 for the pair)
- Pentium G4400T CPU (2.9Ghz)
- 8 GB RAM
- 256 GB SSD
3 Cat6 cables to wire it all together ($15)

Total homelab hardware cost now sits at $310.

I’ll leave my ‘homelab’ host dedicated to all non-kubernetes services.

The 2 HPs will become the cluster.

This maintains a clean separation of concerns.

I repeat similar steps in Ch 1 to install Debian on both new machines.

They are given the host names ‘control-plane’ and ‘worker1’ respectively.

The DHCP IP reservations are added, just like I did for my main box.

IP reservations

Same as in Ch 2, I set up my SSH keys and update my laptop’s ssh config:

ssh config update

Many distributions of kubernetes are available for different uses.

While I do initially consider full-blown k8s with kubeadm,

I decide on k3s instead for a few reasons:

The architecture does diverge somewhat from k8s, but I’m ok with that.

I’ll follow along with the quick start documentation.

I start with the installation on the control-plane host and verify the k3s service is running:

k3s running

I copy-paste the token value from the control-plane host into a .txt file on the worker1 host.

Then I run a modified install command using the IP of my control-plane host and the join token value.

worker install

From my control-plane host, I verify the cluster is up.

cluster ready

I copy the contents of /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml file from the control-plane to ~/.kube/config on both my homelab and laptop hosts.

Now I can access my cluster externally from those machines:

external cluster access

Awesome!