Baseline Setup, Part 1 – Rebuilding My Homelab from the Ground Up

At some point, my homelab stopped feeling like a lab and started feeling like a pile of duct tape.

Too many half-updated containers, overlapping services, and “I’ll clean this up later” moments added up. So I decided to wipe it clean and rebuild with purpose.

This post kicks off my Baseline Setup series, documenting the core of my homelab re-deploy. What I chose, why I chose it, and how it’s all coming together—config files included.

⚙️ What I Wanted This Time Around

• A clean, modular layout that’s easy to maintain
• Core services deployed in Kubernetes (using MicroK8s)
• Reverse proxy with TLS and sane routing
• SSO across everything
• A simple dashboard I’d actually use
• Infra-as-code from the jump

🧱 Stack Overview

• MicroK8s – Lightweight, fast to set up, and plays nice with small clusters
• Traefik – Reverse proxy and router with Let's Encrypt
• Authentik – Identity provider and SSO glue
• Homepage – Dashboard for quick access and health visibility

Each of these gets its own deep-dive post in this series.

🧠 Why Rebuild at All?

Honestly? Because I want to enjoy running this stuff. I like building. I like experimenting. I like having a system that works because I understand it, not in spite of how much I’ve hacked it together.

And when the power goes out, or the network flakes, I want to know why—and have logs to prove it.

🔜 What’s Next

In Part 2, I’ll walk through how I set up MicroK8s as the base of the stack—how I handled networking, node prep, and cluster formation.

Until then, here’s the summary:
I tore it all down so I could build it better.
Let’s see how far this version goes.