Talos Linux Cluster Setup

Its now time to get a production grade cluster running with Talos Linux!

Talos Linux

Talos Linux runs Kubernetes in a secure, immutable environment, you are not able to connect to the machines with SSH. It is all managed through talosctl (a cli application)

Talos Linux

I have 5 homelab machines running on my home network, I’ll be installing Talos Linux with the following setup:

Talos Linux has a unique (and very cool 😍) way of getting setup!

• Boot the machine from a USB (the OS is loaded into RAM)
• Remove the USB drive (so you don’t inadvertently install onto it)
• Configure network and host options (optional)
• Connect via talosctl from another machine (I’m using my main box)
• Init and configure the cluster, control plane and worker nodes

Custom Image download

I’ll be setting up a Synology NAS as an external storage device, which requires the image to include the iscsi-tools extension. You can download a custom image from the below site.

https://factory.talos.dev/

Cluster initialisation

Burn the image to a USB drive and boot up the first control plane box. Once the machine is booted, unplug the USB drive! You can configure a static ip and then from the host machine setup the node, and initialise the cluster.

export CONTROL_PLANE_IP=192.168.1.51   

talosctl get disks --insecure --nodes $CONTROL_PLANE_IP

export CLUSTER_NAME=cowctl
export DISK_NAME=sdb

# generate configs 
talosctl gen config $CLUSTER_NAME https://$CONTROL_PLANE_IP:6443 --install-disk /dev/$DISK_NAME

# applies configs
talosctl apply-config --insecure --nodes $CONTROL_PLANE_IP --file controlplane.yaml

# sets endpoints in config file
talosctl --talosconfig=./talosconfig config endpoints $CONTROL_PLANE_IP

# bootsrap etcd (once per cluster)
talosctl bootstrap --nodes $CONTROL_PLANE_IP --talosconfig=./talosconfig

# merge configs
talosctl kubeconfig --nodes $CONTROL_PLANE_IP --talosconfig=./talosconfig

# check cluster health
talosctl --nodes $CONTROL_PLANE_IP --talosconfig=./talosconfig health

Additional control plane or worker nodes

# additional control planes or workers
# you might need to check the drive if it differs from machine to machine

talosctl get disks --insecure --nodes [NODE IP]
export DISK_NAME=sda

talosctl apply-config --insecure \
    --nodes 192.168.1.52 \
    --file controlplane.yaml
#or 
talosctl apply-config --insecure \
    --nodes 192.168.1.52 \
    --file worker.yaml

Nice we have our cluster up and running!

kubectl get nodes -o wide

I plan to run my homelab with this setup for the foreseeable future! But things change, so lets see what happens 😅.

https://github.com/m4ttbr1tt/homelab