ceds-homelab/README.md

🧠 Ced’s HomeLab (Enterprise Infrastructure & Monitoring Lab)

A production-style homelab designed to simulate real-world infrastructure, system monitoring, and service delivery.

This environment functions as a personal datacenter, combining virtualization, Kubernetes orchestration, observability, and secure external access.

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🚀 What This Lab Demonstrates

• Infrastructure design (Proxmox + virtualized services)
• Kubernetes orchestration (12-node K3s cluster)
• Network segmentation (VLAN architecture)
• Monitoring & observability (Grafana, Prometheus, Uptime Kuma)
• Secure service exposure (Cloudflare Tunnels + reverse proxy)
• Real-world system integration (data, services, automation)

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🏗️ Architecture Overview

This lab is built around three core layers:

🖥️ Infrastructure Layer

• Proxmox VE hypervisor
• Virtual Machines + LXC containers
• TrueNAS storage backend (ZFS, NFS, SMB)

☸️ Orchestration Layer

• 12-node K3s Kubernetes cluster
• Workload segmentation (ingress, data, monitoring)
• MetalLB + NGINX ingress

🌐 Access & Networking Layer

• VLAN segmented network (UDR)
• Nginx Proxy Manager
• Cloudflare Tunnel (zero port-forwarding)

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🎯 Purpose

This lab is designed to:

• Simulate production-style environments
• Build hands-on infrastructure experience
• Develop monitoring and system visibility skills
• Serve as a real-world engineering portfolio project

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📸 Key System Views

Screenshots and dashboard views will be added as the lab documentation expands.

• Grafana dashboards (Ced’s NOC)
• Proxmox cluster view
• K3s node status
• Dashy homepage
• Service monitoring panels

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🌐 Network & VLANs

The lab runs behind a UniFi Dream Router (UDR) with VLAN segmentation:

Network	Subnet	Purpose
Main	10.10.10.0/24	Daily-use devices
MyHomeIOT	10.10.20.0/24	IoT devices, TVs, consoles
HomeLab	10.10.30.0/24	Servers, services, K3s, storage
Guest	10.10.99.0/24	Guest Wi-Fi

The HomeLab VLAN (10.10.30.0/24) hosts all core infrastructure.

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🧱 Core Components

🖥️ Proxmox VE

• Main hypervisor for VMs and LXCs
• Future expansion to a Proxmox cluster (+5 nodes)
• Uses TrueNAS for shared storage (NFS / iSCSI)
  📁 See: proxmox/

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💾 TrueNAS (ZFS Storage)

• Manages ZFS pools and datasets
• NFS exports for Proxmox VM storage
• SMB / media dataset for Jellyfin & Arr stack
  📁 See: truenas/

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☸️ K3s Raspberry Pi Cluster

A 12-node K3s cluster built on Raspberry Pi hardware for orchestrating containerized workloads across the lab.

Current and planned uses include:

• Containerized applications
• Ingress-based routing
• Monitoring workloads
• Future GitOps and Helm-based deployments

📌 Full cluster repo:
https://github.com/ced4568/ced-k3s-homelab

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🌐 Reverse Proxy & Cloudflare Tunnel

• Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM)
• Cloudflare Tunnel (no port forwarding)
• Wildcard DNS: *.cedshomelab.com

Traffic Flow: Internet → Cloudflare Edge → Tunnel → NPM → Internal Services

📁 Docs: docs/Add_New_Service_Guide.md

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🏠 Home Automation

• Home Assistant (Proxmox VM)
• IoT isolated on MyHomeIOT VLAN
• Secure access via Cloudflare + NPM
• trusted_proxies configured

📁 Config: home-assistant/

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📊 Observability (Ced’s NOC)

The lab includes an observability stack built around:

• Prometheus for metrics collection
• Grafana for dashboards and visualization
• Uptime Kuma for service-level monitoring

Current and planned monitoring coverage includes:

• Proxmox performance
• K3s cluster health
• Service uptime
• Infrastructure visibility improvements over time

📁 See: monitoring/

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🧭 Documentation

• Add new service: docs/Add_New_Service_Guide.md
• Architecture diagrams: docs/Ced_Homelab_Diagrams.md
• Roadmap: docs/roadmap.md

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🚀 Future Plans

• Full Proxmox cluster
• Cloudflare Zero Trust integration
• GitOps for K3s deployments
• Internal container registry
• Advanced monitoring + alerting
• Portfolio site:
  • chasedumphord.com
  • cedshome.com

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⚠️ Security Practices

This repo never stores:

• API tokens
• Private keys
• Passwords
• Sensitive configs

All secrets are handled locally or via .example files.

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👤 Author

Chase Dumphord
Digital Systems Engineer | Infrastructure | Data Systems | Automation

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toochase-dumphord/
GitHub: https://github.com/ced4568