Build guide
K3s homelab, part 1: three Ubuntu VMs on VMware Workstation
Planning and creating the three VMs, and why I dropped the automated install.
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K3s homelab, part 2: bootstrap, SSH keys and a lab agent
One command per VM so the rest of the build can run over SSH.
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K3s homelab, part 3: preparing Ubuntu 26.04 for Kubernetes
Patching, swap, kernel modules and sysctl, and the three bugs the checks caught.
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K3s homelab, part 4: a three-node K3s cluster
Server, agents and a smoke test, plus a DNS check that was wrong instead of the DNS.
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K3s homelab, part 5: Prometheus and Grafana on 4 GB workers
kube-prometheus-stack sized for a small cluster, with 21 of 21 targets up.
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K3s homelab, part 6: choosing a dashboard (Headlamp and K9s)
Six dashboard options compared, two installed, two script bugs explained.