Enterprise Hybrid IaC Homelab: Version 2 🚀

THis is my Homelab Version 2. This project is an advanced, expanded, and more secure iteration of the private cloud architecture first built in Homelab v1.

Version 2 upgrades the OS baseline, scales the virtual infrastructure from 3 to 5 virtual machines, shifts from experimental Podman Quadlets to robust system-level sytemd service wrappers, and introduces secure, zero-config WAN networking (Cloudflare Tunnels & Playit.gg) to bypass local NAT limitations.

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1. What's New in Version 2? (V1 vs V2 Comparison)

Engineering Metric	Homelab V1	Homelab V2 (Current Project)
Control Laptop OS	Nobara Linux	Bazzite (Atomic/Immutable Fedora-based OS)
Physical Host OS	RHEL 10	AlmaLinux 10 (Network Bridge br0)
VM Capacity	3 Virtual Machines	5 Virtual Machines (Scaled & Isolated workloads)
Container Engine	User-level Podman Quadlets	System-level systemd Podman wrappers (compatible with Debian 12 Podman 4.3.1)
Identity Management	None (Local files/User lists)	FreeIPA Identity Manager (freeipa.lab.local)
Web Reverse Proxy	Local Nginx bindings	Cloudflare Zero Trust Tunnel (--net=host container)
Game Server Hosting	None	Minecraft & Palworld Dedicated VMs router port-forwarding
Shared Storage	None	Rclone FUSE Google Drive Mount (user_allow_other enabled)

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2. Infrastructure Architecture

This lab runs on a dedicated physical BOSGAME PC acting as our baremetal KVM hypervisor. The VMs are bridged directly to the local LAN, allowing them to act as first-class network devices.

graph TD
    Laptop["Laptop: Bazzite OS"] -->|SSH / IaC Control| Hypervisor["Hypervisor Host: AlmaLinux 10"]

    subgraph Host ["Hypervisor Host (172.30.1.200)"]
        Bridge["Physical Bridge: br0"]
        KVM["KVM / QEMU Hypervisor"]
        Cloudflared["cloudflared container (--net=host)"]

        Bridge --- Cloudflared
        Bridge --- VM1["freeipa (172.30.1.85)"]
        Bridge --- VM2["portfolio (172.30.1.93)"]
        Bridge --- VM3["minecraft (172.30.1.91)"]
        Bridge --- VM4["palworld (172.30.1.90)"]
        Bridge --- VM5["navidrome (172.30.1.92)"]
    end

    subgraph Cloudflare ["Cloudflare Edge (WAN)"]
        CF_Edge["Cloudflare Proxy"]
        CF_Edge -->|Secure Tunnel| Cloudflared
        CF_Edge -->|portfolio.shooey.xyz| VM2
        CF_Edge -->|hampter.shooey.xyz| VM2
        CF_Edge -->|ipa.shooey.xyz| VM1
    end

    subgraph Playit ["Playit.gg Edge (WAN)"]
        Playit_Edge["Playit Relays"]
        Playit_Edge -->|UDP Tunnel| VM4
        Playit_Edge -->|TCP Tunnel| VM3
    end

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3. Project Documentation Directory

To keep the project clean, the documentation is modularized as below:

• Hypervisor & Bridge Networking Setting up AlmaLinux 10, KVM, storage pools, bridge interface (br0), and DHCP MAC reservation sweeps.

• IaC Provisioning (Terraform & Ansible) Declarative VM deployments using Terraform cloud-init templates, and Ansible playbooks to install Podman, mount drives, and configure files.

• Secure Remote Access (Cloudflare Tunnels) Configuring the cloudflared agent container in host network mode to expose web services privately with Host Header overrides for FreeIPA.

• Dedicated Game Servers *Setting up Minecraft Java server (wuith auto-pause and RCON console) and Palworld UDP server, tunneled through Playit agents using custom SRV records.

• Shared Cloud Storage (Rclone & FUSE) *Configuring Rclone to mount Google Drive, adjusting /etc/fuse.conf permissions, and setting up the Navidrome music server.

• Custom Web Hosting (Hammie's Y2K Card Deck) *A dedicated early-2000s pink hamster website on port 8080 with 3D flippable cards, local loopable .webm background audio, and click-sparkle JS.