Description

Components

This homelab includes the following components:

• GitLab – separate VM

Two Kubernetes clusters on Talos Linux VMs with:

• Local Path Provisioner – storage
• MetalLB – ip addresses for load balancers
• Traefik Ingress Controller – ingress
• Istio – service mesh
• GitLab Runner – executes GitLab CI jobs
• ArgoCD – GitOps continuous delivery
• Kargo – GitOps continuous promotion
• Cert-manager – automated TLS certificate issuing for ingress
• External DNS – automated DNS records creation for ingress
• OpenBao – secrets storage (fork of Vault)
• External Secrets Operator – syncs secrets from OpenBao to Kubernetes
• VictoriaMetrics – metrics storage and monitoring
• Grafana – metrics visualization and dashboards
• Zalando Postgres Operator – PostgreSQL database management on Kubernetes

System Requirements:

This was tested on Debian 13 laptop with 16 cores, 32 GB RAM, and 200 GB disk space.

Installation

Follow instructions in these files:

01_install_k8s.md

02_create_ca_and_cert.md

03_install_gitlab.md

04_install_argocd.md

05_install_argocd_apps.md

06_connect_eso_to_openbao.md

07_install_kargo_apps.md