Thib

I used to think Kubernetes was complex machinery solving scalability problems I would never have. I was wrong.

Kubernetes has less moving parts than my handmade deployments. It's sturdier than my hand written playbooks. It solves problems I already have.

https://ergaster.org/posts/2025/07/09-kubernetes-black-friday/

#kubernetes #selfHosting #homelab

Kubernetes is not just for Black Friday

I self-host services mostly for myself. My threat model is particular: the highest threats I face are my own incompetence and hardware failures. To mitigate those risks used to rely on podman containers to "standardize" my services, and on ansible to automate the deployment on my VPS.

Jul 9 at 11:10amWeb
Show threadMironJul 9

@thibaultamartin I agree with this so much. I'm so glad I picked Kubernetes for my small business instead of the home-made docker compose setup.

Even though I don't use most of K8S functionality right now and I still get a lot of value from the standardization.

Going into the future I know I'll have so much room to grow and I'll move fast because I'm not reinventing the wheel.

In conclusion: I have learned so much from my time in k8s world and it's mostly best practices. I call it a win!

Show threadMironJul 9

@thibaultamartin Next I'll do what you did with FluxCD and take my GitOps to another level.

Can't wait!

Show threadThibJul 9

@hmiron I have one draft post about how I set up Flux + SOPS with age, because I’ve found the online docs confusing.

And I have another one about Flux Kustomizations, because they’re not the same as Kubernetes native kustomizations and I struggled to wrap my head around it.

Stay tuned!

Show threadScott VE3QBZJul 9
@thibaultamartin k3s is indeed great. Maybe even a revelation.
Show threadJia Tan's momJul 9
@thibaultamartin I'm still don't get the value added, you have single node. Just run docker compose, lazydocker and dockge, bare minimum. For context I run mastodon at 1L lenovo pc 8400T 16G and a dozen of other containers just fine. And caddy is friendlier than traefik. Also I have a docker watchdog restarting unhealthy containers and messaging me in telegram.
Show threadJacob HallJul 9
@thibaultamartin great article, thanks! That long Ansible/Podman YAML incantation looks all too familiar.

One thing that makes me nervous about maintaining k8s at home is handling persistent volumes and databases. Do you know of any resources that could walk me through those, from a self-hosting angle?
Show threadThibJul 9

@jacob I’m currently documenting my self hosting journey with Kubernetes, coming from a podman + ansible land.

I want to cover why I don’t run k3s on baremetal, doing GitOps with Flux, backups with Velero, and monitoring with the kube-prometheus-stack.

Take a seat with us and follow along, I’ll publish those in the coming weeks!

Show threadJacob HallJul 9
@thibaultamartin awesome! I look forward to reading more about your journey. Greetings from Virginia 👋
Show threadAllan6d ago
@thibaultamartin I needed this article, and it landed in such a good timing x). I discussed this with a friend on Monday, I agreed with k8s being too complex for small projects, but I guess I was wrong, I'll reconsider my position now. Thanks :)
Show threadThib6d ago
@trya2l Happy it could bring new perspectives!