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Homelab Sample

Homelab Sample

A generic, opinionated template for setting up a homelab with Terraform, Docker Compose, and monitoring. Everything codified from day one.

TerraformDockerHCLPrometheusGrafana

A generic, opinionated template for setting up a homelab with Terraform, Docker Compose, and monitoring. Everything codified from day one.

TerraformDockerHCLPrometheusGrafana
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Homelab Sample

A starter template for anyone building a homelab who wants to do it right from the start. Infrastructure as code, monitoring baked in, and sensible defaults for common self-hosted services.

The Problem

After rebuilding my own homelab multiple times, I kept solving the same problems. Directory structure, monitoring setup, Terraform modules, Docker Compose patterns. all reinvented from scratch each time. This template captures the patterns that survived.

Architecture

graph TB
    subgraph IaC["Infrastructure as Code"]
        TF[Terraform]
        TFMOD[Terraform Modules]
        STATE[State Backend<br/>Local or S3]
    end

    subgraph Services["Service Layer"]
        DC[Docker Compose]
        PROXY[Traefik<br/>Reverse Proxy]
        DNS[Cloudflare DNS<br/>via Terraform]
    end

    subgraph Apps["Application Stack"]
        APP1[Service Template A]
        APP2[Service Template B]
        APP3[Service Template C]
        DB[(Database Template)]
    end

    subgraph Monitor["Monitoring Stack"]
        PROM[Prometheus]
        GRAF[Grafana]
        ALERT[Alertmanager]
        NODE[Node Exporter]
        CADV[cAdvisor]
    end

    TF --> TFMOD
    TFMOD --> STATE
    TF --> DNS
    TF --> DC
    DC --> PROXY
    PROXY --> APP1
    PROXY --> APP2
    PROXY --> APP3
    APP1 --> DB
    NODE --> PROM
    CADV --> PROM
    PROM --> GRAF
    PROM --> ALERT

What’s Included

  • Terraform for provisioning and managing infrastructure state. DNS records, tunnel configs, and service definitions
  • Docker Compose templates for common services (reverse proxy, monitoring, databases)
  • Monitoring stack. Prometheus, Grafana, and alerting pre-configured with sensible dashboards
  • Opinionated structure. directory layout, naming conventions, and patterns that scale from 5 containers to 50
  • cAdvisor + Node Exporter. container and host metrics out of the box

Why a Template

The next homelab build starts at 80% instead of zero. Fork the repo, fill in your variables, and you’ve got a fully monitored, infrastructure-as-code homelab in an afternoon.