Homelab Series:

Kubernetes Cluster (Infrastructure Setup)

Table of contents:

Helm Installation - a package manager for Kubernetes cluster
MetalLB Installation - enables LoadBalancer Service
Nginx Ingress Controller Installation - enables Ingress
Rook Installation - enables resilient storage
Cert-Manager Installation - handles SSL certs with ease

Helm Installation

Helm is like a package manager for Kubernetes. This will help make installation of k8s containers easier.

curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3
chmod 700 get_helm.sh
./get_helm.sh

Based on: https://helm.sh/docs/intro/install/

MetalLB Installation

We will install MetalLB to handle LoadBalancer Service.

Based on: https://metallb.universe.tf/installation/

I’ve opted for the Installation by Manifest method via this command:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metallb/metallb/v0.15.2/config/manifests/metallb-native.yaml

Next I’ve created the YAML file with the following contents

apiVersion: metallb.io/v1beta1
kind: IPAddressPool
metadata:
  name: my-ip-address-pool-1
  namespace: metallb-system
spec:
  addresses:
  - 192.168.111.100-192.168.111.199 # CHANGE THIS ACCORDING TO YOUR NETWORK

Next apply this to your k8s cluster

kubectl apply -f my-ip-address-pool-1.yaml

Create another YAML file with the following contents

apiVersion: metallb.io/v1beta1
kind: L2Advertisement
metadata:
  name: my-l2-advertisement-1
  namespace: metallb-system

Apply this as well

kubectl apply -f my-l2-advertisement-1.yaml

You can verify LoadBalancer works by creating one accordingly.

Nginx-Ingress-Controller Installation

Inginx Ingress Controller enables Ingress

Based on: https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx/deploy/

I’ve once again opted for the Installation by Manifest method via this command:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/controller-v1.12.3/deploy/static/provider/cloud/deploy.yaml

Rook Installation

Kubernetes is great for stateless applications. However, deploying stateful applications requires some storage redundancy and Rook greatly simplifies this.

Rook is essentially Ceph underhood for Kubernetes. Ceph is a resilient storage solution.

Rook installation is based on: https://rook.github.io/docs/rook/latest-release/Getting-Started/quickstart/#prerequisites

I’ve just followed that and only configured the Shared Filesystem part.

Cert-Manager Installation

Cert Manager helps ease our SSL management.

Based on: https://cert-manager.io/docs/installation/

Install Cert Manager via

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.17.2/cert-manager.yaml

Next create the following file with:

kind: ClusterIssuer
metadata:
  name: letsencrypt-prod
spec:
  acme:
    server: https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
    email: marcuschiu9@gmail.com
    privateKeySecretRef:
      name: letsencrypt-prod
    solvers:
    - http01:
        ingress:
          class: nginx

Apply it

kubectl apply -f cluster-issuer.yml

Conclusion

This pretty much sums up the infrastructure needed to run my future applications :)