Infrastructure

TL;DR Today was the biggest infrastructure day yet. I migrated the entire k3s cluster from a flat network to a proper VLAN architecture: Server VLAN 20 for k3s nodes and services, Storage VLAN 30 for the NAS, and the existing default VLAN 1 for clients. This involved changing IPs on all VMs, updating MetalLB, reconfiguring Traefik, and recovering from an etcd quorum loss when I moved too many nodes at once. I also deployed the media stack (Jellyfin, Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, Jellyseerr) and configured Intel iGPU passthrough infrastructure. ...

TL;DR Running self-hosted GitHub Actions runners on the same k3s cluster they deploy to is a powerful pattern. GitHub Actions Runner Controller (ARC) manages runner pods as Kubernetes resources, scaling them based on workflow demand. This post covers the full setup, the RBAC model that makes it work, and every gotcha I encountered. Why Self-Hosted Runners? GitHub-hosted runners are convenient but have limitations: Cost: Free tier gives 2,000 minutes/month. With 5+ repositories doing multiple deploys per day, that burns fast. Speed: GitHub-hosted runners are shared infrastructure. Cold starts take 20-30 seconds, and you are competing with other users. Access: GitHub-hosted runners cannot reach my private cluster network. Every deployment would need a VPN or tunnel. Control: I want to install whatever tools I need (kubectl, helm, terraform, ansible) without Docker layer caching tricks. Self-hosted runners solve all of these: they run inside the cluster, have direct network access to all services, pre-configured tools, and no usage limits. ...

TL;DR Today was cluster genesis. Starting from 3 bare Proxmox hosts, I built the entire infrastructure-as-code pipeline: Terraform to provision VMs from cloud-init templates, Ansible to configure and bootstrap k3s, and a full GitOps deployment model with SOPS-encrypted secrets and S3-backed Terraform state. By end of day: 3 server nodes, 3 agent nodes, cert-manager with Route53 DNS-01 validation, and self-hosted GitHub Actions runners on the cluster itself. The Architecture The design goal was simple: everything as code, nothing manual, everything reproducible. ...

TL;DR After researching rack servers, NUCs, and mini PCs, I settled on the Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q as my homelab node of choice. At roughly $100-150 used, each unit packs an Intel 8th-gen Coffee Lake CPU, supports up to 64GB DDR4, has an NVMe slot, and sips around 15-25W. Three of these running Proxmox VE give me a proper HA cluster without the noise, heat, or power bill of traditional rack gear. ...