Welcome to the first official documentation post for Cheerio Lab. This lab isn’t just a hobby; it’s a professional-grade testing environment used to simulate complex infrastructure scenarios.

The Hardware

My primary compute power comes from a distribution of pcs. Main components include a NVME-NAS, a Deep backup disk based fileserver, a Proxmox Host, and a Dell PC with a graphics card.

• Host: Proxmox VE
• Storage: Multi-terabyte NAS utilizing ZFS for data integrity and Sanoid and Syncoid for deep storage backups.
• Networking: Full UniFi stack with VLAN segmentation for IoT, Trusted, and Lab traffic.

The Software Stack

I prioritize containerization and orchestration to keep services portable and reproducible.

1. Virtualization & Orchestration

I use Proxmox to manage a mix of LXC containers and VMs. At the center of the lab is a K3s (Kubernetes) cluster for hosting highly available services. Various VMS also provide edvelopment environments for building and testing dockerized services intended for K3S deployment.

2. Networking & Security

All external traffic is handled by Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM). I use Tailscale as my primary WireGuard-based VPN for secure remote access, ensuring no management ports (like Proxmox or SSH) are ever exposed to the public internet.

3. Self-Hosted Services

• Gitea: Local Git repository for script version control and container package registry.
• Frigate: NVR with AI object detection.
• Ollama/Stable Diffusion: Running local LLMs and image generation.

Why Document?

In a lab this complex, “tribal knowledge” is a risk. This blog serves as my external memory—a place to store snippets, troubleshooting logs, and deployment guides.

Search Tip: You can use the search bar in the header to find specific technical terms like ZFS, VLAN, or K3s across all future posts.