// the hive / current platform
Built to run.
Documented to learn.
The homelab is not a list of products I installed. It is a platform I operate: physical failure domains, declarative delivery, durable state, observable workloads, private inference, and tools for humans and agents.
Platform map
Hardware → runtime → operation.
01
Hardware
The physical failure domains: compute, storage, and GPU capacity.
02
Runtime
The substrate that schedules workloads, persists state, and exposes services.
03
Delivery
Git-owned desired state and the systems that reconcile it.
04
Operations
Telemetry, secrets, and the feedback needed to operate safely.
05
AI + Tools
Private inference and typed capabilities exposed to people and agents.
01 / Hardware
The physical failure domains: compute, storage, and GPU capacity.
45Drives HL15
The physical home for durable bulk storage and the ZFS failure domain behind the platform.
RTX 5090 AI workstation
Alpha-5 turns dedicated GPU hardware into a complete private inference and retrieval platform.
02 / Runtime
The substrate that schedules workloads, persists state, and exposes services.
k3s
A heterogeneous nine-node cluster turns commodity Linux machines into one programmable workload platform.
Longhorn
Kubernetes-native replicated volumes for workloads that need node-independent persistent state.
TraefUI
A human-readable view into routing and service exposure around the Traefik edge.
03 / Delivery
Git-owned desired state and the systems that reconcile it.
Argo CD
The continuous reconciliation loop between declared state in Git and workloads running in the cluster.
Gitea
The self-hosted Git service holding application source, platform definitions, and the history behind operational change.
04 / Operations
Telemetry, secrets, and the feedback needed to operate safely.
OpenTelemetry
A vendor-neutral instrumentation layer connecting application behavior to metrics, logs, and traces.
Vault
A central authority for sensitive configuration that keeps credentials out of repositories and workload definitions.
05 / AI + Tools
Private inference and typed capabilities exposed to people and agents.
The flagship case study
The catalog shows the parts. The Hive shows the system.
Read the complete architecture →