automated, self-contained, minimal VM setup; aka yelling at Alpine Linux
this is a work in progress
Yodeler is an opinionated, limited scope, orchestration framework. Yodeler's primary use case is standing up a new KVM host and all the associated VMs needed to run a small, moderate traffic network. The design is primarily based on home lab usage, but could be used for any configuration or network topology. It can automatically create and configure a set of KVM virtual machines running Alpine Linux.
Yodeler attempts to be as self-contained as possible. All that is needed is a single computer and an internet connection. Yodeler turns YAML configuration files into a set of static shell scripts. These scripts can then be run from bootable Alpine install media to setup a new host. The scripts will install Alpine, configure KVM & setup all the desired VMs.
Yodeler is a standalone Python 3 program and is run before system setup. No extra software is required to run configured systems. YAML configuration files can be created and Yodler can be on any system that has Python 3.
Systems are meant to be immutable. Configuration changes imply destroying the old VM and creating a new one. This is a manual process; there are no processes running on the KVM host that will trigger a VM rebuild.
Yodeler knows how to do the following:
- Setup an Alpine based KVM host
- Create minimal, basic Alpine VMs with small footprints and memory requirements
- Configure basic Awall firewalls
- Manage Open vSwitch vswitches with VLAN support
- Configure routers using Shorewall & iptables (eventually nftables)
- Configure DNS / DHCP servers based on PowerDNS and Kea for both IPv4 and IPv6
- Make IPv6 prefix delegation requests via dhcpcd and distribute to subnets via radvd
- Configure ZFS based Samba servers
- Configure metrics & monitoring using Grafana and Prometheus (in progress)
See the roadmap for plans & progress.