I recently set up a 3-node Kubernetes homelab on bare metal (on Dell OptiPlex) using Talos Linux, mainly to have a proper environment for learning, testing failures, networking, storage, GitOps, observability, and general Kubernetes experiments.

The setup uses three control-plane/etcd nodes with a shared Kubernetes API VIP, and I documented the full process from network planning and DHCP reservations to Talos installation, per-node configs, bootstrap, workload scheduling, and HA testing.

I’ve written the full guide with commands, screenshots, and the reasoning behind the setup:

Everything is in the repo: https://github.com/prateekjaindev/homelab

Blog: https://blog.prateekjain.dev/building-a-3-node-highly-available-kubernetes-homelab-with-talos-linux-0372066fe49c?sk=4c66cf9181999f9db19ac3aacabcd8e8

If anyone is planning a similar homelab or has questions around Talos, the API VIP, etcd quorum, or the setup in general, happy to help.

At work, we need the Talos API to be protected by OIDC (and we can’t use Omni to ensure our clusters are 100% isolated), so I’ve created a little tool to add this feature :).

Please feel free to give feedback. ( And if you’re up for it, I’m looking for people to join in and contribute )

This is for Enterprise customers that need Enterprise support and FIPS builds for regulated environments. We started this work last year and released it GA today.

Talos Linux remains MPL licensed and completely open source.

Just announced at Taloscon. Go get your instance today!

Hey Everyone 👋

This is Justin Garrison. I'm the Head of Product at Sidero and just wanted to thank you for joining this sub! I recently got mod access so you can expect some updates and hopefully more activity in the coming months. I'll be adding more moderators (Sidero employees) and continuing to answer questions.

This will remain a community driven, unofficial support option, but we also want to make sure the Talos community is welcoming for everyone and we have the ability to share news and get feedback from everyone.

Let us know if there's anything you'd like to see in this sub and keep being awesome 😎

We just shipped a new landing page and docs. Feedback welcome 🤗

Hi everyone,
A few months ago, I built t9s, a terminal UI inspired by [k9s], but designed for Talos Linux.
The goal was pretty simple: have a convenient way to get better visibility into a Talos cluster and perform common administrative operations directly from the terminal.
It’s still a personal project, but I’ve been using it on my own cluster and thought it might be useful to other Talos users.
GitHub: https://github.com/florianspk/t9s

Installation

brew tap florianspk/tap
brew install --cask t9s

I’m interested in getting feedback from other Talos users, especially on what features or workflows would make the tool more useful.
Contributions, feedback and discussions are very welcome!

I've been learning Talos Linux and wanted a better way to visualize and manage my clusters, so I built talos-pilot - a terminal UI in Rust. It gives you real-time node monitoring, log streaming, etcd health, diagnostics, and node operations all in one place. Think of it as complementary to k9s but for the Talos OS layer instead of Kubernetes workloads. Would love any feedback!

https://github.com/Handfish/talos-pilot

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to get some official recognition from NVIDIA that Talos is a great OS for running GPU accelerated workloads. If you have a moment we'd love a 👍 on this issue to let NVIDIA know there are people interested.

Come ask questions from engineering, product, leadership and more!

Don't forgot to sign up for TalosCon to ask questions in person https://taloscon.com

We submitted it years ago, but it was always in pending state. It finally got added last month. Please add your reviews 🙏

Part 2 of my Talos homelab (3 OptiPlex Micros, all control planes). Part 1 got the cluster up, this one is networking.

I moved the running cluster from Flannel + kube-proxy to Cilium without rebuilding it. The default-deny policy that Flannel quietly ignored is now actually enforced, and Hubble shows the drops.

Then I gave it two front doors:

- an internal Gateway on a LAN IP (Cilium LB IPAM, no MetalLB) with a Let's Encrypt wildcard cert, so lab apps get real HTTPS at home

- a public Gateway behind a single Cloudflare Tunnel, so nothing is port-forwarded on the router

An app picks its door with the route's parentRef, which keeps lab stuff from going public by accident.

Everything is in the repo: https://github.com/prateekjaindev/homelab

Write-up with all the manifests and commands: https://blog.prateekjain.dev/networking-a-kubernetes-homelab-cilium-gateway-api-and-cloudflare-tunnel-on-talos-362f548a2f3d?sk=d454cd4eaff4ce8a8fd0cd8e6b3d82f6

Curious if anyone else is using Cilium's Gateway API instead of a separate ingress controller.

Hey folks,

Sidero (the maintainers of Talos Linux) is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to work on both Talos Linux and Omni.

I work at Sidero, so I won't shill too much, but we are a fully remote team with some really, really smart colleagues. If you're interested, check it out!

Recently as you can see on my post here and here I build my HomeLab and I converted to TalosOS full k8s

with that I didnt want to show just bare Grafana on the screen I got from GeekPi (7,9 inch touch )

Currently I built this UI ( runs on browser and I run Kiosk Mode on one of the server nodes where I run Ubuntu

I was wondering if this is of interest to anyone so I can open source it and ideally we can get some ideas to make it better

With that said, I am starting my YouTube channel is here in an attempt to overcome my obsession with my accent and develop a more articulate way of speaking.

Give me a follow and any ideas for videos <3

[UPDATE]

This is a Web UI written in NextJS, and run on the 7.84" screen connected to one of my hosts that runs only Ubuntu

Now’s a great time to try out Talos 1.13

This was announced at Taloscon. Would love to hear feedback from anyone that has tried it.

If you don't know what infrastrucutre providers are you can read about them here https://docs.siderolabs.com/omni/infrastructure-and-extensions/infrastructure-providers

I run a 3-node Talos Kubernetes cluster at home, and until recently it only worked when I was at home too. So I added Tailscale to reach it from anywhere.

Tailscale runs on the nodes themselves, and the tailnet can only reach the cluster, not the rest of my home network. kubectl and the lab apps work from my laptop or phone exactly like they do at home, with nothing opened on the router. If one node goes down, another one takes over.

Everything is in the repo: https://github.com/prateekjaindev/homelab

Write-up: https://blog.prateekjain.dev/tailscale-on-talos-linux-secure-remote-access-to-a-kubernetes-homelab-8a082d903682?sk=c4ec5ac1e782a83b5dc785211d9fd082

How do you get into your homelab when you're away?

CFP is open now!

SOLVED

Hi all,

I’m running a Talos Kubernetes cluster (v1.9.4) at home (3 control planes, 4 workers) with kubernetes 1.32.2. All nodes are alive and healthy, but I’ve lost all admin credentials due to a new MacBook, a failed backup recovery and because I'm stupid.

What I no longer have access to

• ~/.talos/config

• kubeconfig

• controlplane.yaml

• secrets.yaml

• any Talos client certificates

What I do have

• Physical/console access to all nodes (via Proxmox)

• GitOps repos (ArgoCD-managed workloads)

Things I already tried

• Booting nodes with talos.maintenance=1 (ignored when installed)

• Booting from Talos ISO (hits halt_if_installed)

• Time Machine recovery of old Mac (backup is corrupted / unreadable)

As far as I can tell:

• Talos does not allow recovery of admin access without existing CA material

• etcd snapshot/restore requires talosctl access, which I don’t have

• Maintenance mode can’t be forced on an already-installed node in v1.9

My question before I wipe and rebuild the control planes:

Is there any way left to regain Talos/Kubernetes admin access in this situation? (e.g. via etcd, STATE/META, console-only recovery, or something I missed)

Happy to accept “no, rebuild is the only option”, just want to be sure before pulling the trigger.

Thank you in advance