Tutorials

Step-by-step guides for homelab automation, infrastructure management, and self-hosted services.

Ansible for the Homelab

A complete series covering Ansible from first install through automating a full homelab stack - inventory, playbooks, roles, secrets management, Docker deployments, Cloudflare integration, and deploying your own code.

• Series Introduction
  What is Ansible · what we'll build · prerequisites
• Part 1 - Installation and Your First Inventory
  Installing Ansible · inventory files · groups · ansible.cfg
• Part 2 - Your First Playbook
  Writing playbooks · bootstrapping a new host · running ad-hoc commands
• Part 3 - Roles and Structure
  Refactoring playbooks into roles · defaults vs vars · organizing large projects
• Part 4 - Secrets Management with Ansible Vault
  Vault encryption · split vars pattern · vault_password_file · encrypt_string
• Part 5 - Deploying Services with Docker
  Docker deployment pattern · Portainer · secrets · health checks
• Part 6 - Cloudflare Integration
  Automating DNS records · Cloudflare Tunnel · adding new services end-to-end
• Bonus - Deploying Your Own Code
  Deploying custom APIs and services · dev vs prod vault secrets · Cloudflare expose