1. PROD NODE DNS = 8.8.8.8 + 1.1.1.1 (operator, 2026-09-01). Two INDEPENDENT public
upstreams, so the single-upstream SPOF that broke containerd pulls and CoreDNS
forwarding on dev cannot recur. Prod deliberately differs from dev, which is
PiHole-first because dev needs the local jackson.lan zone.
SCOPE CORRECTED IN THE COMMENTS. Three resolvers answer *.home.keithjackson.dev and
only one is configured here:
pods -> CoreDNS -> platform/coredns/coredns-custom.yaml, whose `template` plugin
answers the WHOLE zone with ${GATEWAY_VIP}. Self-contained in-cluster;
PiHole is NOT in this path. Prod is already correct (.20).
LAN -> PiHole. Not a cluster concern.
nodes -> THIS FILE.
The one thing public node DNS breaks: the k3s API SERVER is a node process carrying
oidc-issuer-url=https://keycloak.home.keithjackson.dev/realms/homelab and reaches the
issuer through the NODE resolver, so prod would get the PUBLIC record instead of the
prod Gateway VIP — breaking kubectl OIDC SSO. Dev avoids this only because its node
resolver IS PiHole. Not blocking (prod has no cluster or Keycloak yet); options are
recorded in PROD-PROVISIONING.md §4 for the operator to pick.
2. SERVICE VIPs DECIDED: UNIFI_L4_VIP 192.168.2.21, CRAFTY_L4_VIP 192.168.2.22 — the
first two addresses after GATEWAY_VIP (.20), mirroring dev's .53/.54/.55 ordering
within the .20-.30 pool. S3_BACKUP_ENDPOINT stays TBD-PROD-* : no prod backup target
exists, and dev's versitygw is across the pfSense boundary on the dev host, so it is
not DR for prod.
3. PROD BECOME VAULT committed, ansible-vault encrypted, matching the hypervisor and
proxmox_hosts pattern. Verified working: `ansible k3s_prod -m command -a 'id -un'
--become` returns root. The L0 no-plaintext-secrets check asserts every ansible
vault.yml starts with $ANSIBLE_VAULT, so this stays honest by gate.
4. TOOLCHAIN GAP FIXED: the devcontainer image does NOT ship the Galaxy collections, so
EVERY ansible play died at parse time on community.general.modprobe. ansible.cfg now
sets collections_path = collections, and the collections are installed there from the
existing collections/requirements.yml (gitignored — pinned by requirements, fetched at
setup, vendored bytes are not source).
5. DRIVE HEALTH MEASURED and recorded in §2 with the raw attribute table so the numbers
are auditable. Verdict: usable, but not for production etcd/Longhorn state — 31% of
rated life consumed, 15 grown bad blocks, 187 erase failures, and 32 unexpected power
losses on a consumer drive with NO power-loss protection, in a single failure domain.
etcd is the worst possible tenant: it fsyncs constantly and unclean power loss without
PLP is exactly how a member corrupts.
6. NON-ECC RAM: RISK ACCEPTED by the operator, recorded as a CLOSED decision, not an open
item — do not re-litigate. Rationale: 3-node k3s homelab, not enterprise; corruption on
one node is outweighed by the other two and causes node ejection. That holds for the
dominant mode (etcd raft CRC + quorum; Longhorn 3 replicas + hard anti-affinity +
rebuild). Recorded residual: corruption introduced UPSTREAM of replication replicates
faithfully to all three replicas, so quorum sees no disagreement — low probability, and
the only mitigation is different hardware. Follow-up noted: Longhorn's
snapshotDataIntegrity is left at the chart default rather than set explicitly, and it
is the mechanism that operationalises the operator's own argument.
Serves: R-DNS-01, R-DNS-03, R-ENV-02, R-ENV-03, R-SEC-01. Task: T-7.1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
clusters/
Flux entrypoints and the environment-overlay model (R-ENV-02, R-GITOPS-01/02/03).
Governing spec: docs/05-gitops-and-delivery.md,
docs/02-environments-and-provisioning.md,
ADR-0004 (Flux).
Phase 0 scaffolding only. These are structurally-correct stubs. No cluster exists — nothing here reconciles until WS-INFRA delivers a cluster and bootstraps Flux (roadmap Phase 1).
Layout — base + overlay (never fork the base)
clusters/
base/ shared Flux objects (one authoring, both environments)
flux-system.yaml GitRepository — the reconciliation source (bootstrap → Gitea)
platform.yaml Flux Kustomization → ./platform (reconciles first)
apps-wave-0.yaml Flux Kustomization → ./apps/wave-0 (dependsOn platform-config)
apps-wave-1.yaml Flux Kustomization → ./apps/wave-1 (dependsOn apps-wave-0)
apps-wave-2.yaml Flux Kustomization → ./apps/wave-N (dependsOn apps-wave-N-1)
cluster-vars.yaml ConfigMap of overlay knobs (BASE defaults)
kustomization.yaml
dev/ ACTIVE build target — patches cluster-vars with dev values only
kustomization.yaml
prod/ DESIGN-ONLY until roadmap Phase 7 — patches cluster-vars with prod values only
kustomization.yaml
How the overlay model satisfies R-ENV-02
The base authors the reconciliation graph once. platform.yaml and the app-wave Kustomizations
(apps-wave-0/1/2.yaml — the single apps.yaml was retired; apps-vms.yaml deliberately omits it,
see below) declare postBuild.substituteFrom the cluster-vars ConfigMap. Platform and
app manifests use ${TOKEN} placeholders for every value that legitimately differs between
environments (issuer, replica counts, storage sizes, retention, node placement).
clusters/dev and clusters/prod differ ONLY by the values they patch into cluster-vars —
they add no resources of their own and never copy/fork a base manifest. Promotion to prod
(docs/02) is a change to the
prod overlay's variables, nothing else.
LAN addressing is a knob, not a literal (fixed 2026-08-31)
Until 2026-08-31 the base manifests hardcoded the dev LAN: the k3s API host Cilium dials, the
Cilium LB IP pool range, the pinned crafty/unifi L4 VIPs and the off-cluster S3 backup endpoint. That
broke R-ENV-02 outright — clusters/prod would have rendered dev addresses (192.168.1.x) onto the
prod LAN (192.168.2.x). They are now the cluster-vars "LAN addressing" block
(K3S_API_HOST, CILIUM_LB_POOL_START/_STOP, UNIFI_L4_VIP, CRAFTY_L4_VIP,
S3_BACKUP_ENDPOINT, alongside the pre-existing GATEWAY_VIP), set explicitly by BOTH overlays.
Two rules when touching that block:
- Substitution coverage. A
${TOKEN}only resolves in a path whose Flux Kustomization declarespostBuild.substituteFrom: cluster-vars; anywhere else the literal string${TOKEN}ships to the cluster.apps-vmswas the one path without it and now has it — which means every shell${...}in a VM manifest's cloud-init must be escaped$${...}(seeclusters/base/apps-vms.yamlfor the full envsubst escape contract). GATEWAY_VIPmust be insideCILIUM_LB_POOL_START..STOP, and in practice equal to START: thesharedGateway pins no address, so Cilium LB-IPAM gives it the pool's first free IP while split-horizon CoreDNS answers with${GATEWAY_VIP}. A VIP outside the pool blackholes in-cluster hairpin traffic while the Gateway still looks healthy.
Values the operator has not decided are TBD-PROD-* placeholders, not guesses: prod inherits the
DEV base defaults if an overlay op is simply omitted, so an invalid value that fails loudly is
strictly safer than a plausible one that quietly comes up on the wrong network.
How Flux is pointed at an environment
flux bootstrap (run by WS-INFRA in Phase 1) targets one environment's path per cluster:
# dev cluster
flux bootstrap ... --path=clusters/dev
# prod cluster (Phase 7 only — design-only until then)
flux bootstrap ... --path=clusters/prod
Bootstrap materializes the flux-system Kustomization that renders the chosen overlay, which pulls
in base/ and applies the env-scoped cluster-vars.
Reconciliation order
GitRepository (flux-system)
│
▼
Kustomization: platform (./platform, substituteFrom cluster-vars)
│ healthy
▼
Kustomization: apps-wave-0 (./apps/wave-0, dependsOn platform-config, substituteFrom cluster-vars)
│ healthy
▼
Kustomization: apps-wave-1 (./apps/wave-1, dependsOn apps-wave-0)
│ healthy
▼
Kustomization: apps-wave-N (./apps/wave-N, dependsOn apps-wave-N-1)
Wave 0 dependsOn platform-config (transitively platform) so CNI/storage/TLS/DNS/gateway
exist before any workload reconciles. The app tier is split into dependency-ordered WAVES
(catalog/render.py --emit-waves): each apps-wave-<N> health-gates (wait:true) ONLY its own
wave, so a crashloop in a later wave can no longer stall an earlier wave or block new revisions.
See DESIGN-waves.md for the wave table + cutover runbook.
TODOs (later phases — do not action in Phase 0)
- Source cutover (WS-GITOPS, Phase 6):
base/flux-system.yamlcurrently points at the bootstrap source. After Gitea is onboarded, repointspec.urltogitea.home.keithjackson.devand keep an off-cluster mirror (specdocs/05"Source-of-truth",CONTRIBUTING.md). - SOPS decryption (WS-SEC, Phase 1): add
spec.decryption.provider: sops(age secret name only, never plaintext) to the platform/apps Kustomizations once the age key is bootstrapped (ADR-0007). - Split ordered Flux Kustomizations if intra-platform ordering needs to be explicit (e.g. a
separate
cilium/longhornKustomization othersdependsOn).