Home Lab

Home lab architecture diagram

Hardware

  • Raspberry Pi4 8GB
  • TP-Link TL-SG105 Switch
  • 2x Raspberry Pi5 8GB
  • Beelink SER5 MAX Mini PC
  • DeskPi RackMate TT Rackmount

Cost ~$850

Power ~40–55W

Networking

DIY router (Pi4 + Switch)

  • Pi4 running OpenWRT - Firewall, DHCP, DNS
  • Pi4 running Tailscale as a subnet router for remote access
  • Switch connected to Pi4 for LAN
  • WAN connected to home ISP router, USB A to ethernet adapter to convert Pi4 USB port to ethernet
OpenWrt Tailscale

Mini PC

  • Runs self-hosted services and apps deployed as docker compose stacks
  • doco-cd for GitOps, renovate for dependency updates
  • SSO via Authentik
Caddy Authentik Glance Linkding Memos Uptime Kuma Beszel OpenBao Vikunja Doco-CD Renovate Distribution n8n

k3s Cluster

  • Both Pi5s running k3s in a master worker setup
  • falco for runtime monitoring
  • argo-cd for GitOps
  • Custom microservices in Istio service mesh
k3s Argo CD Falco Istio