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Ced's HomeLab (Architecture Portfolio)
A cloud-connected, multi-node homelab replicating modern datacenter design patterns for learning, experimentation, and portfolio work.
🔎 Summary
Ced’s HomeLab is a fully segmented, container-first infrastructure designed to simulate the architecture, security, and operational practices found in modern production environments.
It brings together virtualization, distributed storage, Kubernetes, infrastructure networking, reverse proxy routing, cloud edge security, observability, and home automation — all interconnected through a clean DNS and identity entrypoint.
This environment powers:
- A Proxmox virtualization platform
- A 12-node Raspberry Pi K3s cluster for Kubernetes
- TrueNAS ZFS storage with NFS media datasets
- Cloudflare Tunnel for remote access (no open ports)
- NGINX Proxy Manager for internal routing
- Grafana + Prometheus observability
- Home Assistant automation
- Media stack (Arr suite + Jellyfin)
The result is a compact, self-hosted environment that mirrors the systems used in enterprise IT and cloud-native deployments.
🏗️ Architecture Overview
The lab is built around three pillars:
1) Virtualization Layer
Proxmox VE hosts all core infrastructure VMs/LXCs:
- Nginx Proxy Manager
- Home Assistant
- Grafana / Prometheus / Uptime Kuma
- Arr suite + Jellyfin
- etc.
It is the compute layer for workloads that benefit from full system isolation.
2) Kubernetes Layer
A 12-node Raspberry Pi K3s cluster provides a distributed environment for:
- container deployments
- ingress-based routing
- GitOps automation (future)
- service-oriented workloads
This is where “cloud-native” architecture lives.
K3s is documented here: 👉 https://github.com/ced4568/ced-k3s-homelab
3) Storage Layer
TrueNAS SCALE provides:
- ZFS pools for reliability
- NFS shares for Proxmox VM storage
- Snapshots for versioning
- SMB for media datasets
Storage is intentionally kept external from compute to mirror modern datacenter patterns.
🔐 Zero-Trust Access
All external access uses Cloudflare Tunnel, not port forwarding.