K3s Homelab: MetalLB, MikroTik & ExternalDNS! (PiHole, Code Server)

Hello and welcome back to the channel! In the last video, we built a homelab server using K3s and exposed applications to the internet with CloudflareD. But what if you want to expose services inside your local network? That’s where MetalLB and ExternalDNS come into play. In this video, we’ll use MetalLB to allocate IPs for local services and automate DNS updates with ExternalDNS. To demo those concepts, we’ll expose Pi-Hole DNS and Visual Studio Code to our local network. Let’s dive in!

Key Concepts Covered:

MetalLB: Load balancer implementation for Kubernetes on bare metal.
ExternalDNS: Automates DNS record creation and updates for Kubernetes services.
K3s: Lightweight Kubernetes distribution.
Pi-Hole: Network-wide ad blocker and DNS sinkhole.
Traefik: Modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy.
Code Server: Run VS Code on any machine with a web browser.
MikroTik: Router configuration for local DNS.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:44 Solution architecture
02:35 K3s installation
03:53 Setting up MetalLB (Layer2 mode)
06:13 Pi-Hole installation
09:01 DNS automation for local resolution
09:49 Mikrotik configuration
11:10 External-DNS install
12:33 External-DNS demo
13:53 Exposing Code Server via Ingress

Solution Architecture:

We'll be using a flat network (192.168.10.0/24) for simplicity, but discuss the benefits of using VLANs for better isolation and security. Our setup includes a MikroTik router (DHCP & DNS), a K3s homelab server, and a client machine. We'll reserve a specific IP range for MetalLB to avoid conflicts with DHCP.

GitHub Repo: github.com/filip-lebiecki/k3s-metal-dns

Links:
github.com/kubernetes-sigs/external-dns
metallb.io/
k3s.io/
github.com/mirceanton/external-dns-provider-mikrot…

Commands and configuration files used in this video are available in the GitHub repository linked above.

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#homelab #kubernetes #k3s #metallb #externaldns #pihole #traefik #codeserver #mikrotik #dns #automation #devops #networking