The Journey
From concept to production: The evolution of an automated bare-metal Kubernetes infrastructure.
The Beginning
Every great infrastructure starts with a vision. The goal was clear: create a fully automated system that could transform bare-metal servers into production-ready Kubernetes clusters with zero manual intervention. What began as an experiment in automation evolved into a comprehensive infrastructure ecosystem.
The Initial Vision
- • Build a home lab that rivals enterprise infrastructure
- • Automate everything from power-on to application deployment
- • Learn by doing: hands-on experience with cutting-edge technologies
- • Create documentation to help others on the same journey
Key Milestones
Phase 1: Research & Planning
Months 1-2Deep dive into technologies, architecture decisions, and hardware selection. Countless hours reading documentation, watching tutorials, and designing the infrastructure blueprint.
- • Evaluated Kubernetes distributions and deployment methods
- • Researched storage solutions: Ceph, GlusterFS, NFS
- • Compared networking solutions: Calico, Flannel, Cilium
- • Selected hardware components for optimal price-performance
Phase 2: Hardware Assembly
Month 3Unboxing, building, and racking the servers. The excitement of physical infrastructure coming together, cable management challenges, and the first successful power-on.
- • Assembled 4 high-performance server nodes
- • Configured 10GbE network with MikroTik switch
- • Installed NVMe drives for storage performance
- • Set up management network and remote access
Phase 3: Provisioning Automation
Months 4-5Building the foundation: PXE boot infrastructure, DHCP/TFTP/HTTP services, and cloud-init configurations. The first successful automated OS installation was a magical moment.
- • Developed Ansible roles for provisioning server
- • Configured network boot and autoinstall
- • Created cloud-init templates for Ubuntu
- • Achieved zero-touch server provisioning
Phase 4: Kubernetes Deployment
Months 6-8The heart of the project: automated Kubernetes cluster creation. Learning kubeadm, wrestling with networking, and celebrating when the first pod successfully started.
- • Built Ansible playbooks for Kubernetes installation
- • Configured high-availability control plane
- • Deployed Calico for pod networking
- • Implemented automated cluster initialization
Phase 5: Storage Layer
Months 9-10The most challenging part: deploying Rook Ceph for distributed storage. Debugging OSD initialization, learning Ceph internals, and achieving stable 3x replication.
- • Deployed Rook operator and Ceph cluster
- • Configured storage pools and replication rules
- • Created storage classes for dynamic provisioning
- • Ran performance benchmarks and optimizations
Phase 6: Production Hardening
Months 11-12Making it production-ready: monitoring, logging, backups, and disaster recovery. Adding the operational excellence layer that separates a hobby project from enterprise infrastructure.
- • Implemented monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana
- • Set up centralized logging with ELK stack
- • Configured automated backups and restore procedures
- • Documented runbooks and troubleshooting guides
Lessons Learned
What Worked Well
- ✓ Infrastructure as Code: Ansible made everything repeatable and version-controlled
- ✓ Incremental approach: Building in phases allowed for focused learning
- ✓ Documentation: Writing everything down helped solidify understanding
- ✓ Community: Open source communities provided invaluable support
Challenges Overcome
- ! Networking complexity: Understanding CNI plugins and network policies took time
- ! Storage debugging: Ceph has a steep learning curve but worth it
- ! Version compatibility: Keeping all components compatible required careful planning
- ! Performance tuning: Identifying bottlenecks required systematic testing
Current State
Today, the infrastructure is a fully functional, production-ready Kubernetes platform. It has successfully hosted numerous applications, survived multiple hardware failures without downtime, and continues to evolve with new features and optimizations.
Uptime achieved
Successful deployments
Data loss incidents
The Future
The journey never truly ends. There are always new technologies to explore, optimizations to implement, and lessons to learn. Upcoming improvements include:
- → Upgrading to 25GbE networking for improved performance
- → Implementing GitOps with ArgoCD or Flux
- → Adding service mesh with Istio or Linkerd
- → Expanding to multi-cluster federation
- → Implementing chaos engineering practices
- → Contributing improvements back to open source
This project stands as a testament to what's possible when passion meets persistence. May it inspire others to embark on their own infrastructure journey.