My student homelab project

>>> Since I started software development I always wanted to have a home server to host projects for much cheaper than AWS or Azure or Oracle options. My student budet didnt really allow that, so I was stuck migrating between AWS and Azure free plans, until I finally found 3 used machines on a local auction, paying under $50 for all of them.

Fig.1 - My auction haul

>>> In total I netted 32GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB HDD 1TB SSD storage and 3 Intel 4-core processors. Not much but enough to run a website and some selfhosted services. Due to the resource constraint I opted for installing a UEFI image of Alpine Linux on all machines, as it leaves the smallest RAM footprint, and networking them into a cluster via K3S + Nginx and some tricky cable managemenet.

Fig.2 - Running neofetch on Alpine Linux is anathema to the small RAM footprint

>>> After setting up a SHA256 SSH access to the machines I could use and manage it from anywhere. I have decided to use a Reverse Proxy using Nginx and after also installing a Cloudflare Proxy for doubled security and setting up DNS for the server I can properly proclaim my website at https://ljzcvs.dev! Finally having control over my servers feels liberating, as no longer do I have to dread accidental AWS credit drainage.

Fig.3 - Rough flowchart of my homelab

>>> Further improvements to the server would include adding a NAS server dedicated for storage and possibly some better network management to IP-range block some unwanted attention.

>>> Thank you for reading - Ilja Zaicevs.