MiniRack 002.5 - K3s Homelab

[diogoazevedo15]

🏠 Homelab Pi‑Cluster Showcase

Motivation

I wanted to get sarted with homelabing and Project MiniRack conviced me to do it!

I wanted a portable, good‑looking mini‑rack where I can tinker with Kubernetes, Argo CD, local DNS, self‑hosted apps, and MLOps—without falling into analysis‑paralysis.

Three (or more) Pis, real network gear, and a gentle learning curve even if that meant abdicating of some computing power for the same price.

Hardware

Piece	What it is
Mini‑rack	DeskPi RackMate T0 (10″ 4U)
Router	GL.iNet Opal — OpenWRT, dual LAN + WAN
Switch	MikroTik CSS610‑8G‑2S+ — fanless L2+, 8×1 GbE, 2×10 Gb SFP+
Rack kit	MikroTik RMK‑2/10 — mounts the switch in the 10″ rack
Compute	3 × Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB)
Pi tray	DeskPi 2U PCIe NVMe mount — adds M.2 storage & looks slick
Power	300 W USB‑C charging station
PDU	1 U 10″ mini‑rack power strip

Pretty much the same as Jeff’s Mini Rack 002.

I haven't yet connected the fourth Pi since I am still messing with it. I added a router on top to experiment with DNS and VPN configurations, and to maintain a consistent network setup between home and work (preventing my Pis from getting different IP addresses on different networks).

Looking back, I have two minor regrets:

• This switch is probably overkill for my current needs 😅...
• Not purchasing patch cables... The ones i got right now are a bit two big and make the build look a bit less cool.

Special Thanks 🙌

• Jeff Geerling — “Project Mini Rack” for the hardware blueprint
• NetworkChuck — “Raspberry Pi Super Computer” for the K8s intro

[diogoazevedo15]

Update: Cluster Documentation & Setup Guide

Hi everyone!

I’ve put together some documentation for my mini-rack cluster that covers:

• Homelab docs
  Some pages documenting the Hardware, K3s Architecture and Networking. Nothing super in depth, but it touches on what I got setup right now.

• Guides
  Step-by-step instructions to flash and configure each Raspberry Pi from scratch, and how to get K3s running on the cluster.

Why I wrote this:
I couldn’t find the exact guide mentioned in Network Chuck’s video, and the Pi Imager UI has changed since then.

🔗 Check It Out

Feel free to explore the full docs here: My Cluster Documentation & Guides

---

I’d love to hear your feedback or suggestions! 🚀🙌

[geerlingguy]

Documentation FTW! Even if you were the only one to ever use it, it's already great... but I have a feeling other people can benefit from it too!

[ChrisKornaros]

This is awesome! I've been teaching myself server and homelab fundamentals using an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4. My end goal is experimenting with Kubernetes, Self-hosted Apps, DE pipelines, etc., so trying to figure out a server configuration was my next step. This seems like the exact thing I'm looking for, so thank you! I probably won't be able to start experimenting with this for few months, but I will definitely come back and reference this when I'm ready!

[diogoazevedo15]

This is awesome! I've been teaching myself server and homelab fundamentals using an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4. My end goal is experimenting with Kubernetes, Self-hosted Apps, DE pipelines, etc., so trying to figure out a server configuration was my next step. This seems like the exact thing I'm looking for, so thank you! I probably won't be able to start experimenting with this for few months, but I will definitely come back and reference this when I'm ready!

Yo,
Thats great to hear!

Did you ever get to it?
I would love to know :)

[eurusik]

Update: Cluster Documentation & Setup Guide

Hi everyone!

I’ve put together some documentation for my mini-rack cluster that covers:

• Homelab docs
  Some pages documenting the Hardware, K3s Architecture and Networking. Nothing super in depth, but it touches on what I got setup right now.
• Guides
  Step-by-step instructions to flash and configure each Raspberry Pi from scratch, and how to get K3s running on the cluster.

Why I wrote this:
I couldn’t find the exact guide mentioned in Network Chuck’s video, and the Pi Imager UI has changed since then.

🔗 Check It Out

Feel free to explore the full docs here: My Cluster Documentation & Guides

I’d love to hear your feedback or suggestions! 🚀🙌

Hey! Your site is so good that I straight up took it as a reference and made a similar one for my own homelab 😎
Not even gonna pretend I came up with the structure myself — you nailed it, so I just borrowed it.
Thanks for saving me like 10 hours of figuring things out 🤝🔥

https://homelab.eurusik.tech

Also, I put mine on GitHub — so if anyone wants to build a similar homelab site, feel free to grab it and use it 👍

https://github.com/eurusik/homelab-cluster

[ChrisKornaros]

This is awesome! I've been teaching myself server and homelab fundamentals using an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4. My end goal is experimenting with Kubernetes, Self-hosted Apps, DE pipelines, etc., so trying to figure out a server configuration was my next step. This seems like the exact thing I'm looking for, so thank you! I probably won't be able to start experimenting with this for few months, but I will definitely come back and reference this when I'm ready!

Yo, Thats great to hear!

Did you ever get to it? I would love to know :)

I haven't yet, unfortunately. It's still in my backlog of things I want to do though! I've been working on fleshing out the software side of my server more, before I start expanding the hardware. I will update here when I do!