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Getting Started

Prerequisites​

  • Ubuntu 20.04 (or newer) server
  • A domain name
  • Basic knowledge of Linux commands
  • CPU: 8+ cores
  • RAM: 32+ GB

Running only a few services should work on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB of RAM.

Setup your server​

In a freshly installed Ubuntu 20.04 (or newer) server, begin by ensuring your system is up to date:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install some useful tools:

sudo apt install -y curl git gettext-base nano

RAID storage​

If you plan on using local storage and configuring a RAID array, you may want to do this now. We recommend using ZFS to create a RAIDZ1 array 3+ disks (at least, RAIDZ2 preferred). See this guide.

Install K3s​

k3s is a lightweight Kubernetes distribution. It's a great choice for our home server because it has a small resource footprint, supports single-node clusters, and supports mounting a local path as a persistent volume.

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -

Install Helm​

Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes. It allows us to easily install and manage applications on our cluster.

curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3
chmod 700 get_helm.sh
./get_helm.sh

Clone this UltimateHomeServer repository​

Clone UHS directory containing the Helm charts. It is recommended to clone this repository to /opt/<your domain> or /opt/uhs:

git clone https://github.com/TechSquidTV/UltimateHomeServer /opt/<your domain>

Configure a domain name​

We will use a domain to access our server locally with a valid SSL certificate.

Before we begin, we will need to know the local IP address of our server. We can find this by running:

ip addr

You should configure your router to assign a static IP address to your server if you have not already.

  1. Once you have your server's IP address, you can configure a domain name. You can obtain a domain name from a registrar of your choice.
  2. In the DNS settings for your domain, create an A record that points to your server's IP address.
  3. Create a CNAME record of * that points to your domain, this will be used as a wildcard alias for your subdomains.

DNS Settings

Configure SSL​

Read the SSL guide for instructions on how to configure SSL for your domain using certbot. This step is required.

Configure Services​

Read the Configure guide for instructions on how to customize the services you want to deploy.

Deploy Services​

Read the Deploy guide for instructions on how to deploy the services.

Verify Services​

Read the Troubleshooting guide for instructions on how to verify that the services are running correctly.