A comprehensive homelab for learning advanced concepts primarily based on Red Hat OpenShift. In addition to providing services, it is an area to incorporate container technologies, and enterprise integration scenarios.

This implementation is built on easily accessible consumer based hardware and will focus heavily on GitOps practices and automation will be used wherever possible.

🎯 Project Goals

Multi-cluster OpenShift management with ACM
Hybrid cloud scenarios (bare metal + virtualized + containerized)
Enterprise integration testing (AD, SQL Server, SIEM)
GitOps and automation workflows
Red Hat certification preparation

📋 Documentation (Priority Order)

Phase 1: Foundation

Overview & Hardware Allocation - Complete architecture overview
Networking Plan - VLAN strategy and network design
Core Services Setup (TBD) - Ansible, DNS, monitoring
Storage Configuration (TBD) - Synology, democratic-csi

Phase 2: Proxmox Platform

Proxmox Installation (TBD) - Dell 7050 virtualization
VM Templates & Automation (TBD) - Template creation

Phase 3: Infrastructure Services

Recursive DNS (TBD) - ACM Hub Cluster
Authoritative DNS (TBD) - 3 Master/3 Worker node (production-like)
Identity Management (TBD) - Multi-cluster management
Matchbox (TBD) - External app cluster

Phase 4: OpenShift Clusters

OpenShift SNO + Worker (TBD) - ACM Hub Cluster
OpenShift Cluster (TBD) - 3 Master/3 Worker node (production-like)
ACM Configuration (TBD) - Multi-cluster management
HCP Cluster (TBD) - External app cluster

Phase 5: Container Platform

Container Registry Setup (TBD) - Harbor deployment
Git Repository Setup (TBD) - Gitea/GitLab on Synology
Artifact Repository (TBD) - Nexus/Artifactory

Phase 6: Advanced Services

Monitoring & Observability (TBD) - Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk
Security & Compliance (TBD) - ACS, certificates, auditing
Backup & DR (TBD) - Backup strategies

🚀 Quick Start Deployment

Prerequisites

Ubiquiti UDM Pro configured
Hardware powered and networked
Initial VLAN setup (see networking plan)

Ansible Collections

ansible-galaxy collection install freeipa.ansible_freeipa

Deployment Scripts

source ~/venv-ansible/bin/activate
# Phase 1: Foundation
./scripts/01-network-setup.sh
./scripts/02-core-services-deploy.sh

# Phase 2: Container Platform  
./deployment/synology/docker-compose.yml  # Git repo, Harbor, Nexus
./scripts/03-storage-setup.sh

# Phase 3: OpenShift
./deployment/openshift/compact-cluster/
./deployment/openshift/sno-cluster/

# Phase 4: Proxmox
./deployment/proxmox/

📁 Repository Structure

homelab/
├── README.md                    # This file
├── docs/                        # Documentation (numbered by priority)
│   ├── 01-overview.md
│   ├── 02-networking.md
│   └── ...
├── ansible/                     # Directory structure for Ansible 
├── deployment/                  # Deployment 
configurations
│   ├── synology/                # Docker Compose files for Synology
│   ├── k0s/                     # k0s cluster manifests
│   ├── openshift/               # OpenShift installation configs
│   └── proxmox/                 # Proxmox automation
├── scripts/                     # Automation scripts
└── .gitignore                   # Excludes sensitive data

🔧 Technology Stack

Infrastructure

Networking: Ubiquiti UDM SE
Storage: Synology DS1621+, Ubiquiti UNAS Pro
Compute: 3x Beelink S12 Pro, 5x Lenovo M710q, Dell T640

Container Platforms

OpenShift 4.14+: Two clusters (compact + SNO)
k0s: Core services cluster
vSphere: VM workloads

Core Services

Container Registry: Harbor
Git Repository: Gitea/GitLab CE
Artifact Repository: Nexus/Artifactory
Monitoring: Prometheus + Grafana
Logging: Splunk Enterprise
DNS: CoreDNS
Load Balancing: MetalLB + HAProxy

🔐 Security Notes

No sensitive data is stored in this repository
Secrets management via external-secrets-operator
Certificate management via cert-manager
Network segmentation via VLANs and firewall rules

🤝 Contributing

This is a personal homelab project, but feel free to:

Submit issues for questions or suggestions
Fork for your own homelab adaptations
Share improvements via pull requests

📞 Next Steps

Create GitHub repository for version control
Start with Phase 1 foundation setup
Build deployment automation as we go
Document lessons learned for future reference

Status: 🚧 Planning & Initial Development

Last Updated: June 2025

This repo is a mono-repo that is broken up into three sections:

infra-config
apps
cluster

Hardware

Dell 7050 SFF (7)
Minisforum TH60 (3)
Minisforum MS01 (2)
Synology 1621+

Software

Proxmox (Virtualization)
Cloudflare (Domain Hosting, Public DNS)
Unbound (Recursive DNS)
FreeIPA (Identity management, Authoritive DNS)
Matchbox (iPXE)
Red Hat OpenShift
OpenShift Agent Based Installer (Install OpenShift)

Prerequisites

Ansible user created
Ansible configured
Networking
Proxmox (In my homelab, internal DNS, identity manangement, and ipxe are hosted here.)
Matchbox
DNS
Domain Registration

Assumptions

There are a dozen different architectures you could use to deploy OpenShift in every which way. For the sake of this documentation we'll assume the following:

Getting Started

Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Hub Cluster

You'll need an OpenShift "Hub Cluster" with access to persistant storage. A Single Node OpenShift (SNO) instance, installed on bare metal, will act as a Hub cluster and run:

Advanced Cluster Management
Ansible Automation Platform
Vault
~~OpenShift GitOps~~

Network Prerequisites

The prerequisites for OpenShift in traditional and HCP patterns are largely the same - it just kind of depends on where your DNS records go to.

Cluster	Endpoint	VIP	DNS A Record	Notes
Hub Cluster (SNO)	App Ingress	192.168.0.10	*.apps.hub-cluster.example.com	SNO App VIP goes to IP of node
Hub Cluster (SNO)	API	192.168.0.10	api.hub-cluster.example.com	SNO API goes to IP of node

These DNS entries should be put in your Authoratitive DNS.

ACM & GitOps Configuration

Before you start creating clusters you may want to create some Policies, integrate ACM and ArgoCD, etc. This step is optional in case you're just interested in trying out Hosted Control Planes or copy/paste around a cluster for testing purposes.

Find additional details in the ./02-rhacm-config folder.

Creating a Cluster

With everything in its right place, you can now start to declaratively create clusters

./05-clusters/hcp-bmh - HCP to Bare Metal Hosts

Internal Cluster

Two additional bare metal nodes, to be added to Advanced Cluster Management (ACM) running on the SNO Hub. These will be used to create another HCP cluster. These servers have a BMC interface with Redfish - if not, then you'll need to manually manage the boot and installation of those servers. This makes it to where you just need 3 bare metal nodes. You could run one HCP Bare Metal cluster with both of the other nodes, but then you have a shared storage requirement that can't be satisfied by ODF since that needs at least 3 nodes.

External Cluster

You'll also either need you just need at least 2 bare metal nodes.

Credits

Ken Moini - As I used his repo as the baseline for this project.
Ryan Etten
Andrew Potozniak