Homelab Kubernetes with Kubespray, Tooling (Velero, Hubble | Homelabird Blog

UpdatedJan 23, 20265 min read

Homelab K8s Part 4: Velero & Tooling

Part 4: Day-2 tooling—Velero backups, Hubble UI, Jaeger/Kiali, Tailscale, K9s, and ops.

Homelab K8s Part 4: Velero & Tooling

Tags#homelab #kubernetes #devops #observability

Homelab Kubernetes with Kubespray, Part 4: Velero, Observability UIs, and Cluster Tooling

One-line summary: Backup (Velero), network visibility (Hubble UI), Istio tracing/mesh views (Jaeger/Kiali), remote access (Tailscale), and day-2 ops (K9s) in one place.

Goals

Build a backup/restore baseline with Velero.
Visualize Cilium network flows with Hubble UI.
Use Jaeger and Kiali for Istio tracing and mesh health.
Simplify remote access with Tailscale Operator.
Speed up day-2 operations with K9s.

Series outline

Part 1 — Architecture and bootstrap
Part 2 — Cilium, Istio, and ExternalDNS baseline
Part 3 — Storage with Rook (Ceph) and Local Path Provisioner
Part 4 — Tooling: Velero, Hubble UI, Jaeger, Kiali, Tailscale, K9s
Part 5 — ECK Stack (Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes)

Planned next (optional):

Monitoring Stack (Prometheus/Grafana)
GitOps with Argo CD
Security, backup, and upgrades

This part focuses on the tools that make a homelab sustainable: backups, visibility, and fast operations. Without these, troubleshooting drags on and recovery gets risky. The goal is to keep the cluster observable and recoverable while still easy to operate.

Recovery drill (do this once) Backups are not real until you can restore.

bash

velero backup create demo-$(date +%Y%m%d) --include-namespaces default
velero restore create --from-backup demo-$(date +%Y%m%d)

yaml

apiVersion: velero.io/v1
kind: Schedule
metadata:
  name: daily-backup
  namespace: velero
spec:
  schedule: "0 2 * * *"
  template:
    includedNamespaces:
      - kube-system
      - istio-system
      - default
    ttl: 720h

bash

helm repo add vmware-tanzu https://vmware-tanzu.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update
 
kubectl create namespace velero
 
helm install velero vmware-tanzu/velero \
  -n velero \
  --set configuration.backupStorageLocation[0].name=default \
  --set configuration.backupStorageLocation[0].provider=aws \
  --set configuration.backupStorageLocation[0].bucket=homelab-velero \
  --set configuration.backupStorageLocation[0].config.region=us-east-1 \
  --set configuration.backupStorageLocation[0].config.s3ForcePathStyle=true \
  --set configuration.backupStorageLocation[0].config.s3Url=https://s3.example.com \
  --set credentials.useSecret=true

bash

cat > credentials-velero <<'EOF'
[default]
aws_access_key_id=YOUR_ACCESS_KEY
aws_secret_access_key=YOUR_SECRET_KEY
EOF
kubectl -n velero create secret generic cloud-credentials --from-file=cloud=credentials-velero

bash

helm get values cilium -n kube-system -o yaml > cilium-values.yaml
helm upgrade --install cilium cilium/cilium \
  -n kube-system \
  -f cilium-values.yaml \
  --set hubble.relay.enabled=true \
  --set hubble.ui.enabled=true

bash

ISTIO_VERSION=1.24
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/release-${ISTIO_VERSION}/samples/addons/jaeger.yaml
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/release-${ISTIO_VERSION}/samples/addons/kiali.yaml

bash

helm repo add tailscale https://pkgs.tailscale.com/helmcharts
helm repo update
 
kubectl create namespace tailscale
 
helm install tailscale-operator tailscale/tailscale-operator \
  -n tailscale \
  --set oauth.clientId=TS_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID \
  --set oauth.clientSecret=TS_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET \
  --set operatorConfig.hostname=homelab-operator