I'm working on creating a family cloud using Talos and I'm considering integrating Tailscale to connect 3-4 different homes on the same network. My goal is to achieve high availability for services like Pi-hole, Vaultwarden, and other self-hosted apps. I plan to use Longhorn on each worker node, likely in VMs. This setup is important to me because if one location loses power or internet, my family at other sites should remain unaffected. I already have a Talos cluster up and running, but I'm curious about how to adapt this to use Tailscale. I know there's a Talos Tailscale patch that I would need, but I'm unsure how to properly configure Talos for Tailscale integration. Also, is this a viable idea? Will Longhorn function correctly in this multi-location setup? My initial thought is to have one or two mini PCs at each site running Proxmox with Talos VMs. I'd love to hear suggestions on how to configure a self-hosted family cloud with failover capabilities for multiple locations, or if maybe just two locations would suffice instead.
3 Answers
This sounds like a fun challenge for tech enthusiasts! But keep in mind a couple of things: First, maintaining this setup can become a headache. Second, if your family starts relying on it for important stuff, you’ll turn into the single point of failure if something happens to you. I’ve got my home lab, and I’ve shown my wife how to access backups and handle important things. Just think about these factors as you move forward.
Consider your failure domain carefully. If you're sharing a control plane between multiple homes, think about how you'd split control nodes to ensure you can always failover. Also, etcd requires low latency, so if the locations are far apart, you could run into issues with elections and quorum. It's generally more stable to roll out one cluster per house and automate their configuration. Just remember, most family members aren't as interested in the setup as you are, so a local setup they can access might be more practical.
I set up Tailscale on my ASUS router as a subnet router and it's been working great. It keeps everything connected, and I can SSH into it and wake other devices. While this might not perfectly fit with your situation, having it as a central point in your home network is pretty handy.
That’s cool! I’ve been using Tailscale and Headscale too—it's super user-friendly. Connecting Talos nodes will be a bit different than just a standard subnet router, though. If you have access to the subnet where the devices are, waking them up just needs a device that can send magic packets over the network. There are various apps for that. I wonder if WOL works well across subnets; I know that can be hit or miss sometimes.
Absolutely, until your setup is rock solid, I wouldn’t advise letting family store anything crucial on it. Multi-location HA could mitigate the risks. As for the whole death thing, it’d be nice if they had some homelabbing skills, but if they don't, they might be in trouble! Hopefully, they'll manage to back things up while it's still running.