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In my previous post I mentioned three NUCs sitting on a shelf waiting to become a Kubernetes cluster. This is part one: getting the nodes to boot and wiring up the cluster. CozyStack goes on top. That’s the next post.

Why PXE? #

I actually started with USB sticks, one per NUC, each flashed with the same Talos image. It works, but it’s a manual process every time: flash, plug in, boot, remove, repeat. I know I’ll be rebuilding this cluster more than once, and I didn’t want that to involve physical media each time.

Every homelab journey needs a place to live. Mine starts here.

I recently picked up three mini PCs — each running an AMD Ryzen 7430U with 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD — with the goal of building a proper Kubernetes cluster at home. The real appeal of owning the hardware is the freedom it gives you: instead of following a training, you can just try things out, break stuff, and learn from it. That hands-on freedom is what makes this worth doing. I want to learn, self-host things I actually use, and document the whole thing so others can follow along (or at least avoid my mistakes).