Intro
Part of what I love about software engineering is that there is always something to learn, but the workplace isn't always the most dynamic when it comes to new tech. So, I needed a sandbox to stay current and experiment. Hence, the home lab was born. And continues to grow. I plan to share Ansible playbooks and what have you, but those will be separate posts.
Components
Kubernetes Cluster
Back in 2020, I started working on a project that I plan to host on Kubernetes. For all my cloud services, I've used Akamai née Linode for years. Paying monthly for a cluster that will sit idle 99% of the time didn't sit right with me, so for development and learning purposes, I built a 4-node Raspberry Pi cluster using the latest 8GB models. These were configured with k3s using Ansible to orchestrate across the nodes.
NAS
This workhorse handles all of my media and backups, as well as Prometheus monitoring of the homelab. It ships the metrics to Grafana Cloud for visualization and alerting, where I'm able to stay within the confines of the free tier. I never thought I'd see the day where I get PagerDuty alerts from my house.
iOS Development
Two macOS machines for Xcode. One Mac Mini (I love those machines) and a Macbook Pro to be mobile.
Main Machine
I repurposed my older Mac Mini to be a Linux desktop and have since made that my main desktop. I really wish there were an official iMessage client for Linux.