Technology Analysis

Technology Analysis

This section contains detailed research and analysis of various technologies evaluated for potential use in the home lab infrastructure.

Network Boot & Provisioning

• Matchbox - Network boot service for bare-metal provisioning
  • Comprehensive analysis of PXE/iPXE/GRUB support
  • Configuration model (profiles, groups, templating)
  • Deployment patterns and operational considerations
  • Use case evaluation and comparison with alternatives

Cloud Providers

• Google Cloud Platform - GCP capabilities for network boot infrastructure
  • Network boot protocol support (TFTP, HTTP, HTTPS)
  • WireGuard VPN deployment and integration
  • Cost analysis and performance considerations
• Amazon Web Services - AWS capabilities for network boot infrastructure
  • Network boot protocol support (TFTP, HTTP, HTTPS)
  • WireGuard VPN deployment and integration
  • Cost analysis and performance considerations

Operating Systems

• Server Operating Systems - OS evaluation for Kubernetes homelab infrastructure
  • Ubuntu Server analysis (kubeadm, k3s, MicroK8s)
  • Fedora Server analysis (kubeadm with CRI-O)
  • Talos Linux analysis (purpose-built Kubernetes OS)
  • Harvester HCI analysis (hyperconverged platform)
  • Comparison of setup complexity, maintenance, security, and resource overhead

Hardware

• HP DL360 Gen9 - Enterprise server hardware analysis
• UniFi Dream Machine Pro - Network gateway and controller

Future Analysis Topics

Planned technology evaluations:

• Storage Solutions: Ceph, GlusterFS, ZFS over iSCSI
• Container Orchestration: Kubernetes distributions (k3s, Talos, etc.)
• Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Tempo stack
• Service Mesh: Istio, Linkerd, Cilium comparison
• CI/CD: GitLab Runner, Tekton, Argo Workflows
• Secret Management: Vault, External Secrets Operator
• Load Balancing: MetalLB, kube-vip, Cilium LB-IPAM