Alpine Linux Home Lab
A self-hosted, minimal, and fully automated homelab for learning and experimentation.
Description
This home lab project is built on Alpine Linux for a lightweight and efficient base. Core monitoring is handled using Prometheus and Grafana, with system metrics collected via Node Exporter. Services are orchestrated using OpenRC and automated tasks run via Cron.
The lab demonstrates full DevOps practices:
- Automated service deployment and monitoring
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with scripts for provisioning, configuration, and system updates
- Version-controlled configurations using Git
- Background process management and startup optimization
Every component is designed to be minimal, maintainable, and observable:
- Prometheus: Scrapes metrics from Node Exporter and other endpoints.
- Grafana: Visualizes metrics, trends, and alerts.
- Node Exporter: Collects CPU, memory, disk, and network metrics from the host.
- Docker: Runs lightweight containers for experimental apps.
- K3s: A light weight version of Kubernetes (K8s) for resource constrained environments.
- Cron & OpenRC: Automates routine maintenance and ensures services start correctly after reboot.
This project serves both as a personal playground for DevOps experimentation and a showcase of applying modern operational best practices to a compact, real-world environment.