Kiwilab

One Server to Rule Them All

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been slowly stripping my homelab down. Kubernetes to Docker was the first move. Three servers to one is the second.

For a while, I had it split on purpose. One box for monitoring, one for Ansible, one for everything else I test at home. Different environments, different blast radius. Break something on the Ansible box, the rest doesn’t care.

Then I actually looked at what the hardware was doing.

Homelab: Network & Virtualization Setup

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My homelab behind OPNsense — WireGuard access from anywhere, an admin PC in front, and Proxmox for building and breaking things.

Why I Went Back to Docker

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I ran a full Kubernetes cluster with RKE2 and Flux in my homelab. Then I tore it down and went back to plain Docker. Here's why.

The Monitoring Alert That Was Just Time Machine

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Standard setup. Node Exporter and cAdvisor running on the servers, feeding metrics to the monitoring server over Wireguard.

Nothing exotic. I wasn’t chasing a specific failure mode when I set it up. I just wanted numbers to look at.

The alert

Disk usage on the Samba share on the NAS kept tripping the threshold. Almost full, every time.

First reaction: something’s wrong. Logs filling up? A backup job stuck in a loop? I went looking for a problem.

Pterodactyl Panel: Installing Game Servers the Easy Way

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I kept hearing about Pterodactyl but never actually tried it.

So I spun up a fresh Debian 13 VM and followed the official docs from scratch.

No shortcuts. No prior setup. Just the guide.

What Is Pterodactyl?

An open-source game server management panel.

Every game server runs in an isolated Docker container. The architecture splits into two parts:

Panel — the web UI and API
Wings — the daemon that runs and manages the containers on the node

Panel and Wings don’t need to be on the same machine. That separation matters when you want to scale.

Why I Moved My Game Servers from Homelab to Hetzner

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

Running game servers at home worked — until it didn’t.

What started as a learning project slowly became a real workload with real users. Friends were connecting daily, sessions got longer, and expectations grew. At the same time, my home network was being used normally: streaming, downloads, updates, and general traffic.

Eventually it became clear:

Kubernetes was stable. My storage was stable. My home network was not.

The Real Problem: Home Network Limitations

Game servers are extremely sensitive to:

Flux GitOps Setup with GitHub

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

This post documents how I manage my Kubernetes cluster using Flux and a GitHub repository, and why I chose this approach.

The short version: Git is the source of truth. The cluster continuously reconciles itself toward whatever is declared in the repo.

Why I Chose GitOps

Before GitOps, managing Kubernetes often turns into:

applying YAML manually
losing track of what changed
“it worked yesterday” debugging
differences between environments

GitOps fixes that by enforcing a clean workflow:

My Kubernetes Setup with OPNsense and RKE2

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

This post documents my current Kubernetes architecture running in my homelab. The goal was not just “make it work”, but build something that is structured, secure, reproducible, and close to how I would design it in a small production environment.

The stack is built around:

OPNsense as firewall and entry point
HAProxy for load balancing
RKE2 as the Kubernetes distribution
Proxmox as virtualization layer
Dedicated database VMs (PostgreSQL and MariaDB)
WireGuard for secure access
Restic for encrypted S3 backups
Traefik + CrowdSec for ingress and security
MetalLB for static service IPs

Network Design

The internal cluster network runs on:

From Proxmox & Docker to Kubernetes

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background

My homelab started in a fairly classic way.

I was running Proxmox as a hypervisor with:

one main VM running Docker
one NAS for storage
two additional Mini PCs

Across these systems, I hosted:

game servers for friends
internal websites
a personal wiki
monitoring and small helper services

At the time, this setup worked well. It was flexible, easy to understand, and fast to get running.

How the Old Setup Worked

Each host had a clear role:

About

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dominik — Linux System Administrator from Germany. Webservers, containers, and practical infrastructure that runs 24/7.

Impressum

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Name: Dominik Mehlhorn
Adresse: Rudolf-Virchow-Str. 7
Ort: 58300 Wetter
E-Mail: dominik.mehlhorn@gmail.com

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