homecloud-ansible

homecloud provides a ready-to-use set of resources to bootstrap a cloud at home mainly based on Kubernetes and Syncthing.

This is the version 2 of the library.

The version 1 of the library is available in the v1.x branch.

Presentation

homecloud aims to provide a cloud like environment, especially an internal cloud, at home. The underlying infrastructure is primarily based on low cost ARM boards, like Raspberry Pi, and powered by open source solutions like Kubernetes or Syncthing.

The main artifact is an Ansible collection designed to bootstrap a ready to use cloud like environment as well as a couple of end-users services.

An in-depth explanation is available in the paper.

Overview

The Ansible collection provides the following features:

• a Kubernetes cluster
• a modern reverse proxy for UDP, TCP and HTTP handled by Traefik
• a distributed block storage system handled by Longhorn
• the native Kubernetes dashboard
• a support of high availability handled by Keepalived
• a decentralized solution to synchronize files between local/remote nodes, dnas, powered with Syncthing, NFS and Samba

Additionally, Armbian images can be created for each host of the inventory.

Finally, once homecloud is bootstrapped, then end-user applications can be deployed on the Kubernetes cluster. Some of them are available as Kustomize resources in another repository tmorin/homecloud-kustomize.

Requirements

Each hosts must fulfill the following constraints:

• Operating System: Ubuntu (18.04, 20.04) and Debian (Stretch, Buster)
• CPU Architecture: amd64 or arm64
• Memory: at least 2Go

When longhorn is enabled, the data are stored a block device, i.e. /dev/???. The collection handles the preparation of two kinds of block devices: the hardware component like a Sd-Card or a Loop Device based on a .img file.

When dnas is enabled, the data are stored a block device, i.e. /dev/???. The collection handles the preparation of only block devices based on a hardware component like a Sd-Card, USB disk ...

Dependencies

In order to build the custom Armbian images, additional dependencies are required:

apt-get install jq qemu-system-arm qemu-user-static

Local environment setup

Install dependencies for Vagrant and VirtualBox

sudo apt-get install -y vagrant virtualbox virtualbox-ext-pack
vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest

Create the Python virtual environment

virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Install the dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

The collection dependencies are bundled in ./molecule/resources/collections.yml.

ansible-galaxy collection install -r molecule/resources/collections.yml

Lint the Ansible collection

./lint

Testing

Several cases are tested using molecule, vagrant and the plugin vagrant-libvirt.

Tested layouts

The test suite targets the following operating systems:

• Ubuntu
• Debian

	k1	k1ha	k1lo	k2	k2ha	armbian	ubuntu_raspi
servers	1	1	1	1	2	0	0
agents	0	0	0	1	0	0	0
keepalived	no	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no
longhorn	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no
traefik	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no
dashboard	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no
dnas	yes	yes	no	no	no	no	no
hardening	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
Armbian image	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no
Ubuntu image	no	no	no	no	no	no	yes

Test the scenario k1

source venv/bin/activate
molecule test -s k1

Configure local (Ansible agent) kubectl for k1

export KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/k1
kubectl get all --all-namespaces

Configure local (Ansible agent) kubectl for k1ha

export KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/k1ha
kubectl get all --all-namespaces

Configure local (Ansible agent) kubectl for k2

export KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/k2
kubectl get all --all-namespaces

Configure local (Ansible agent) kubectl for k2ha

export KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/k2ha
kubectl get all --all-namespaces

Tested playbooks

The test suite plays several playbooks to configure the cluster nodes, to deploy the stacks and to perform restore operations.

They are located in the molecule directory: molecule/resources/playbooks.

Hardening

Presently, the repository doesn't provide playbooks for OS hardening. However, an existing initiative may help you to build your own: devsec.hardening.

Bootstrap the cluster

The playbook cluster-bootstrap.yml bootstraps the cluster, i.e. the Kubernetes cluster and the Decentralized NAS.

Deploy the Kubernetes deployment manifests

The playbook k3s-deploy.yml deploys the Kubernetes deployment manifests.