Homelab Part 4 - k3s Automation

cw@wagner.org.za (Chrisando Wagner) — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In Part 3 we deployed k3s manually — great for understanding what each piece does, but not something you want to repeat. This post automates the entire thing: Terraform provisions the VMs, Ansible configures them and installs k3s + Cilium, and ArgoCD bootstraps itself and takes over GitOps management of the full cluster stack.

Source: git.wagner.org.za/homelab/k3s-proxmox-automation

Architecture
#

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Proxmox Host │
│ │
│ ┌─────────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ │
│ │ k3s-controller │ │ k3s-worker-01 │ │ k3s-worker-02 │ │k3s-worker │ │
│ │ 172.16.10.1 │ │ 172.16.10.2 │ │ 172.16.10.3 │ │172.16.10.4 │ │
│ │ 8 cores / 16 GB │ │ 16c / 32 GB │ │ 16c / 32 GB │ │16c / 32 GB │ │
│ │ vda: 200 GB │ │ vda: 200 GB │ │ vda: 200 GB │ │vda: 200 GB │ │
│ │ │ │ vdb: 512 GB │ │ vdb: 512 GB │ │vdb: 512 GB │ │
│ │ k3s server │ │ vdc: 512 GB │ │ vdc: 512 GB │ │vdc: 512 GB │ │
│ │ Cilium / ArgoCD │ │ k3s agent │ │ k3s agent │ │k3s agent │ │
│ └────────┬────────┘ └──────┬────────┘ └──────┬────────┘ └─────┬──────┘ │
│ └───────────────-──┴──────────────────┴────────────-────┘ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

graph TB subgraph Proxmox["Proxmox Host"] C["k3s-controller-01
172.16.10.1
8c / 16 GB
vda: 200 GB OS
─────────────
k3s server
Cilium · ArgoCD"] W1["k3s-worker-01
172.16.10.2
16c / 32 GB
vda: 200 GB OS
vdb: 512 GB DirectPV
vdc: 512 GB Longhorn
─────────────
k3s agent"] W2["k3s-worker-02
172.16.10.3
16c / 32 GB
vda: 200 GB OS
vdb: 512 GB DirectPV
vdc: 512 GB Longhorn
─────────────
k3s agent"] W3["k3s-worker-03
172.16.10.4
16c / 32 GB
vda: 200 GB OS
vdb: 512 GB DirectPV
vdc: 512 GB Longhorn
─────────────
k3s agent"] end C -->|k3s API :6443| W1 C -->|k3s API :6443| W2 C -->|k3s API :6443| W3 C & W1 & W2 & W3 -->|eBGP AS 65000| R["Router
172.16.10.254"] R -->|advertises LB pool
172.16.1.0/24| NET["Network"]

Each worker gets three disks:

Homelab Part 3 - Kubernetes

cw@wagner.org.za (Chrisando Wagner) — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Kubernetes
#

Kubernetes is a popular open-source container orchestration platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerised applications. It provides a robust and scalable infrastructure for running microservices and containerised applications across multiple nodes.

Kubernetes is a powerful tool that enables developers to deploy, manage, and scale containerised applications across multiple nodes. It provides a declarative way to define the desired state of the application, and automatically manages the deployment, scaling, and health of the application.

Homelab Part 2 - Cloud Images

cw@wagner.org.za (Chrisando Wagner) — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Proxmox Cloud Images
#

We will now create our base VM cloud images and using cloudinit to configure them.

Ubuntu image using CLI
#

These steps can be followed for any cloud image of your choice and will work with for example Rocky linux, etc.

Choose your image at Ubuntu Cloud

Homelab Part 1 - HCI

cw@wagner.org.za (Chrisando Wagner) — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction
#

Welcome to the first part of my homelab series! In this part, we will explore the architecture of my homelab infrastructure and introduce the tools we will be using.

Homelab Architecture
#

In this part we will get our hands dirty and get our host operating system ready for deployment.

HCI on Chris Wagner

Homelab Part 4 - k3s Automation

Architecture #

Homelab Part 3 - Kubernetes

Kubernetes #

Homelab Part 2 - Cloud Images

Proxmox Cloud Images #

Ubuntu image using CLI #