# Thinking Out Loud 🤔💭

Hey there 👋

Welcome back, after a long time 😊. I thought its about time for me to share some thoughts.

First a bit of background. A friend of mine wanted a router with built in features like [Adguard](https://adguard.com/en/welcome.html) and I promised him that I will build him an [OPNSense](https://opnsense.org/) router. After some looking around for a suitable micro PC, I ended up buying 4 [Dell Optiplex 7050 Micro](https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-au/optiplex-7050-desktop/optiplex-7050-desktop-micro-owners-manual/processor-specifications?guid=guid-8ca53ab2-a85d-42d5-9106-5214220306aa&lang=en-us) thingys (yeah, my home lab badly needed some ❤️ ) for $80 a pop. Obviously the total cost went up a bit more as I upgraded 3 of them to the brim. Each home lab candidate micro server got 32GB RAM, 240GB SSD as the boot disk and 1TB NVMe for storage. Also to give those tired CPU’s some relief, I replaced their thermal paste with some Noctua NT-H2. Obviously, I built the OPNSense router first and soon started planing my Home Lab 2.0. This time I took the liberty to treat myself with a shiny new [Synology DS-224+ NAS](https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS224+) with 2x4TB drives as a birthday gift ( I think that was my 2nd birthday in 2025, but who is counting 😜 ). I debated about buying a Synology vs building a TrueNAS server for a few days and settled with the DS-224+. I hope that it will give me the freedom to focus on learning things that matters the most ☸️ at the moment.

Below is the desired **end state** of my **Home Lab 2.0**.

As usual, I intend to automate 🤖 all (pos|sen)sible things as I go on.

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1744201629293/2a0d02f3-a3e9-45da-b6bc-0bf085fe888d.png align="center")

My plan is to deploy the resources in the following order. I will try to write about each step as it comes. The code will still be with the [trusty Github](https://github.com/jayanath) as I will certainly break things when poking around 😅.

### Order of Deployments 🏗️

1. [Proxmox](https://www.proxmox.com/en/) Cluster and [CEPH](https://ceph.io/en/) Cluster - Manual setup. All VMs run on Proxmox cluster use CEPH storage.
    
2. Reverse Proxy (LXC) - Thinking of using [Traefik](https://traefik.io/traefik/). This will eliminate that pesky browser warning and give me the freedom to use nice URLs. I will be using my test domain, jayforweb.com for this purpose.
    
3. [Keycloack](https://www.keycloak.org/) (VM) - This will be my central auth provider for SSO.
    
4. [HashiCorp Vault](https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault?product_intent=vault) (VM) - This is going to manage my secrets.
    
5. [GitLab](https://about.gitlab.com/) (VM) - Manage some code with replication to Github. Also I can use the built-in Container Registry.
    
6. [Proxmox Backup Server](https://www.proxmox.com/en/products/proxmox-backup-server/overview) (LXC) - Great way to backup all the Proxmox resources into NAS.
    
7. Kubernetes Cluster ( [Talos Linux](https://www.talos.dev/) VMs ) - I always wanted to try out Talos and this is the time.
    
8. [Synology CSI Driver](https://www.synology.com/en-au/dsm/solution/kubernetes) - proper storage for the Kubernetes Apps.
    
9. Applications in the cluster.
    

Thats about it.

Next, I will write a bit about the initial Proxmox cluster setup.

Until next time ✌!