homelab VS Ansible-NAS

K3s is great, I use it on all of my personal clusters (here and here). It's lightweight and very easy to manage.

https://github.com/khuedoan/homelab if you haven't come across it yet. To add to your bookmarks.

I have my Kubernetes homelab public on GitHub, everything is automated and defined as code. Hope it will help you get started and see what's possible.

So I 've got inspired by https://github.com/khuedoan/homelab and initially after lurking this sub for a while I came up with a plan to consider some of these solutions: - openmediavault as a VM to use 2x4TB /w ext4 & mergerFS or TrueNAS in RAID1 - I think mergerFS gives more options to increase storage with extra drives later, but I don't plan to hoard lots of data. Also rather opted for tiered cache via SSD to save some power but if such lot of VMs would write this would work? - nextcloud VM to easiely manage files via browser and have mobile app sync for photos with some kind of gallery plugins etc - I think this may be optional if there's other solution as nextcloud seems to not be light. Or something like Seafile would be enough? - kubernetes - k3s/microk8s single VM node or 2 VM nodes - would I need more? and so - can then openmediavault be used as a storage for it like TrueNAS? - Rancher - if used k3s - I quite liked the UI of rancher desktop, more than portainer when I tried with microk8s, but I don't pass on using something else, eg. Lens - Gitea - for hosting code - tekton / teamcity - for running tests and commit build hooks - fluxCD / argoCD - for deploying builds to kubernetes

khuedoan/homelab

Here's my project (running on 4 mini PC) that I'm using for learning and self-hosting https://github.com/khuedoan/homelab, it's fully automated from empty disk to operating services.

You can checkout my repo If you'd like to do the same for your homelab (it's also modular so you can just use the OS installation part)

Here're the links to the Markdown source and the web view.

You can checkout my Kubernetes homelab, it's fully automated from empty disk, very customizable and extensible.

You can view the code here: https://github.com/khuedoan/homelab (the ./metal folder)

Ansible-NAS

Tried it a few years ago. I had some strange error when simply trying to setup an SMB share on truenas. I immediately switched to https://github.com/davestephens/ansible-nas and haven't looked back. I feel a lot more safer and in control with ansible nas.

Ubuntu supports ZFS as well. I use this at the moment which works very well. https://github.com/davestephens/ansible-nas

Right now I manage docker mule with ansible. Traefik and dashboard is autopopulated with labels ( homepage is great, ansible-nas is sometimes outdated but can be easily fixed ) .

Never used this thing but it seems popular https://github.com/davestephens/ansible-nas freenas is fine for me

Nice UI ! I’m personally using Ansible nas , I have a private fork of it and it allowed me to custom things as I like in yaml files

- NAS software and solutions: -- FreeNas or TrueNas, I heard they are good file storage solutions, but I cross them out because I read there is limited Docker or VMs support; -- Unraid, I cross it out since needs paid license I am not sure if I need all the features. Maybe I am cheapscate, but I would like to see if I can get what I need using free software first. I probably would invest if I build a proper NAS from scratch, and not reporpusing old hardware; -- OpenMediaVault. Something I am considering, but I heard it is a decent open source NAS based on Linux, has it limitations, doesn't really like USB storage and so on. -- Synology hardware. Friend has it because he knows he has no time to mess around. Don't want to go this rout since I have the hardware already. -- Roling out your own solution or using ubuntu or ansible-nas. Sounds like a great learning experience. BUT for some reason, people who create their own solution end up switching to some different framework like this guy.