4.7 KiB
🧠 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.
🚀 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)
🏗️ 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)
🎯 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
📸 Key System Views
🖥️ Proxmox Infrastructure
🖥️ Proxmox Infrastructure
☸️ K3s Cluster Nodes & Pods
🌐 Reverse Proxy (Nginx Proxy Manager)
📊 Service Monitoring (Uptime Kuma)
🌐 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.
🧱 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/
💾 TrueNAS (ZFS Storage)
- Manages ZFS pools and datasets
- NFS exports for Proxmox VM storage
- SMB / media dataset for Jellyfin & Arr stack
📁 See:truenas/
☸️ 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
🌐 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
🏠 Home Automation
- Home Assistant (Proxmox VM)
- IoT isolated on MyHomeIOT VLAN
- Secure access via Cloudflare + NPM
trusted_proxiesconfigured
📁 Config: home-assistant/
📊 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/
🧭 Documentation
- Add new service:
docs/Add_New_Service_Guide.md - Architecture diagrams:
docs/Ced_Homelab_Diagrams.md - Roadmap:
docs/roadmap.md
🚀 Future Plans
- Full Proxmox cluster
- Cloudflare Zero Trust integration
- GitOps for K3s deployments
- Internal container registry
- Advanced monitoring + alerting
- Portfolio site:
- chasedumphord.com
- cedshomelab.com
⚠️ Security Practices
This repo never stores:
- API tokens
- Private keys
- Passwords
- Sensitive configs
All secrets are handled locally or via .example files.
👤 Author
Chase Dumphord
Digital Systems Engineer | Infrastructure | Data Systems | Automation
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toochase-dumphord/
GitHub: https://github.com/ced4568