Before diving into the technical details, understand, this documentation is for ME. The answers or guidance you might be looking for may not and mostly likely will not be here.
The following is a form a version control outside my Gitea repos. If you want to give it a read, by all means, have at it. Maybe it will help you. Maybe you just need reading material while sitting on the toilet 🚽. Whatever your reason is for reading, just know, at the end of the day, this is for me. I am just sharing it with you.
That Being Said:
This technical handbook documents a production Docker Swarm cluster designed for homelab use, consisting of four nodes running 18 containerized services across mixed ARM64 and x86_64 hardware. The documentation provides comprehensive coverage of architecture decisions, operational procedures, and maintenance practices developed through real-world deployment and management experience.
The handbook serves as both a reference manual and operational guide, containing actual configuration files, deployment procedures, and troubleshooting workflows used in a functioning multi-node cluster. All examples and procedures have been tested in the documented environment and reflect practical solutions to common homelab challenges.
The cluster architecture emphasizes reliability, maintainability, and cost-effectiveness while providing enterprise-class services including authentication, file storage, document management, monitoring, and web applications. The documentation captures the rationale behind architectural decisions and provides guidance for adapting these patterns to similar environments.