It's a joke. Going to give OP the benefit of the doubt that they're doing something substantial that warrants this complexity, but following the standard pihole install on just one raspberry pi will give 99.99% of average joe's a just fine setup.
what exactly you mean?
setting up an instance of pihole and managing filter list is easy. there are a lot of step by step tutorials handling every point until it's ready to go
How familiar are you with networking principles?
I learned a LOT from Cisco PacketTracer. If you are on windows, just block outbound traffic for that app, and you can use it for free.
Glad to DM you some more info if you need!
i didn't mean to be offensive...
wanted to say: just try it. especially when you have a pi lying around ... simply try it. you can't break anything and when you stuck, there are lot of people willing to help you
Completely agree here, can say so because that's what I finally did. You'll never look back. Start simple. It's not nearly as complicated or difficult as you imagine. And you'll be learning constantly in the beginning, and that's a really great feeling. No real downside to any of it. Have fun! 😊
You can set up pihole without running the DHCP component and manually point just your PC/laptop to the pihole for ad blocking on your personal devices without affecting your family member.
I have also played with kubernetes on my 5 pi cluster and just running the basic system without any other load than a web server took 25% constant load on all nodes, more on the head node.
I'm hoping to do something like this, but I was leaning toward Docker Swarm. I also wanted to run RetroPie and a Minecraft server, and maybe a media server later. What made you choose Kunernetes over Docker?
I tried to set microk8s up and found out it was unsupported. I still have my 6 pi cluster, collecting dust. What should I use them for? Also, what guide did you follow to setup your cluster?
Running two is not a bad idea for redundancy (I run two - I've had a couple SD cards give out over the years). Aside from that, experimenting, curiosity, maybe some fringe configuration. There is no practical reason for the average person just wanting to run basic DNS blocking at home to run more than that.
I had a single pihole for years, then one day the memory card failed and I had no DNS.
No DNS = no Internet =unhappy family.
That was the day I built 2 new piholes and installed gravity sync. (https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/gravity-sync-an-easy-way-to-keep-multiple-pi-hole-in-sync/33545)
DNS is mission critical and you need redundancy.
Totally agree. His setup costs 3x times more money, outputs 3x more heat and is 3x more likely to fail. The IQ level of the brain dead moron that did that is at least 3x less than the average frog
You can find PoE hats on Amazon, [here's the one I'm using](https://amzn.to/3xJGK3w). You pop the hat on, then you can use the existing LAN port for PoE. I like this one because it also has a PWM fan controller built-in.
Edit: It makes for a very clean setup.
https://preview.redd.it/gxi74g1qk2wc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1a5155fa7d9c8961916fbc46d309355f3af0659b
Sure, [here’s the case](https://amzn.to/4aLPUuG), and [here is the switch](https://amzn.to/3Qejd0U). I also ordered a couple of [these fans](https://amzn.to/3Uudtmc) and connected them to the PWM fan headers on the PoE hats. A simple script runs to control the fan speed based on the CPU temp on the Pis.
It's an anker 5 port USB hub. I think this model is a 40w version. Sorry it's double sidded tapped to everything and can't find the order invoice.
Just ensure the usbs provide enough power to your version of USB for your pi
Started a new site reliability engineer job and it reignited the fun I get out of doing 'homelab things'. So this cluster was a nice way to get back into homelab, increasing skills surrounding the k8s ecosystem, and then I get to deploy, learn and poke around with things we might use at work enhancing skills there and lastly, just prototype new software, apps and tech.
* Prometheus
* Grafana
* Alertmanager
* Pihole
* cloudflared
* ArgoCD
* Renovate
* Atlantis
* Random Steam game servers the wife and I play a lot
* Heimdall
* traefik
* longhorn
* metallb
* Some other random bits and bobs of tooling
Anything else im to lazy to write or find the helm charts for I just run as docker containers on a proxmox host or my homeassistant vm. I also run another k3s cluster in proxmox to do prototyping and testing, this is all done via terraform and ansible.
edit: Also in the process of moving some older things like joplin, freshrss, uptime kuma, unify network stuff etc. Just not had the time and currently building and rebuilding the cluster "tinkering".
Ah ok nice yeah I'm CloudOps looking after eks so love helm. Also got several pi models in a box somewhere and want to give it a go but no idea what to run on them. Cheers for this.
I wanted to understand kubernetes because we run GKE so yeh it was a black box at the time for me.
I'd look into k3s. Its a super small install of kubernetes and works out of the box, like you curl a .sh installer and you have a functional cluster you cant kubectl into. [https://k3s.io/](https://k3s.io/)
OP there are some great ansible projects out there for building and tearing down a K3S cluster. I use a modified version for my own home lab to learn and be curious.
Been wondering how all these work together. I’m guessing it’s the same OS install on all of them, but are connected via their own separate IPs? Or how does the shared space is used, are they all in some RAID form? Very cool project
I have the same setup! I have 5 Pi4Bs in a k3s cluster. Only recently got it setup with Grafana, Prometheus, and PiHole. I want to extend this further but looking for projects to include. Also eyeing the new Pi5s given the performance gains..
We should connect and collab! This isn't a common use case, furthermore my homelab is within a UDM ecosystem which adds some pros and cons.
Cheers!
Edit 1: I've got a 35-40% block rate with 6.9m domains on adlists. Happy to share with you.
Edit 2: Do you use GitOps/Flux or Ansible to manage your cluster, or purely terminal?
Nice, I used to have this kind of setup before but actually I was annoyed by the poe switch fan, and expensive to maintain the devices, then I switched to a mini pc instead for the home server (x300 asrock, 5600g, 64gb memory, 2tb ssd)
Strongly disagree. This is over-engineered. It's ok, because it's a pet project of OP's and who cares. As another dev, most of my side projects are basically over-engineered hypothesis testing and trying to POC production workflows with new tech, so I get it. There's a time and a place for it, and Reddit is certainly that time and place.
But nobody needs kubernetes (or anything like this) to run a DNS at a homeowner scale. It's over-engineered, which is ok, but call it what it is.
Most people assume it's purely for pihole so that is why there are some replies about over the top. Like you said my job is an sre, this is a test environment to enhance skills and reproduce and test prod methods and workflows.
You get it
DNS is a protocol that is served over "Internet" (Technically its TCP/IP). DNS will never "slow down" a connection. If you have bad hardware then DNS resolution will be slow at serving webpages. However I've never experienced a single ms of latency in loading pages when served via pihole and its technically impossible to throttle your bandwidth with pihole.
The problem comes in not understand the technology you're trying to roll out. When you dont know the tech, you cant properly troubleshoot or understand where your problem is. So, assumptions get made.
How much DNS do you need: Yes
each pi handles it's own filter list ...
as a lurker in this sub, i look forward to when ive learned enough to do this kind of thing
It's a joke. Going to give OP the benefit of the doubt that they're doing something substantial that warrants this complexity, but following the standard pihole install on just one raspberry pi will give 99.99% of average joe's a just fine setup.
what exactly you mean? setting up an instance of pihole and managing filter list is easy. there are a lot of step by step tutorials handling every point until it's ready to go
i appreciate the encouragement! im just lacking gumption
How familiar are you with networking principles? I learned a LOT from Cisco PacketTracer. If you are on windows, just block outbound traffic for that app, and you can use it for free. Glad to DM you some more info if you need!
Oh, the irony!
In reference to my direction of blocking outbound and recommending network training in the same statement? Lmao, took me a day to get it.
It’s like a Zachtronics video game, where the first tutorial teaches you how to hack the game….
🤣
i didn't mean to be offensive... wanted to say: just try it. especially when you have a pi lying around ... simply try it. you can't break anything and when you stuck, there are lot of people willing to help you
Completely agree here, can say so because that's what I finally did. You'll never look back. Start simple. It's not nearly as complicated or difficult as you imagine. And you'll be learning constantly in the beginning, and that's a really great feeling. No real downside to any of it. Have fun! 😊
And here’s the neat part: you don’t need four pi’s. You can do it all on one.
4 network interfaces, then when you update the OS all the DNS servers are down? Introducing wish-it-was-redudency lol
So well put!
Same, man. I'm mainly limited because a family member works at home with a stellar job so I don't have any room to experiment to the fullest.
You can set up pihole without running the DHCP component and manually point just your PC/laptop to the pihole for ad blocking on your personal devices without affecting your family member.
It's not worth it. If i fuck up, we lose a lot of money. Ty though
Fair enough :)
I have a single pi zero doing all the work, why do you need multiple? Am I missing something?
Its a kubernetes cluster. So its doing a bit more than just pihole but pihole is in there somewhere if you look closely
I need a higher resolution pic to tell that from the way the atoms are arranged on the SD card
So it's like if I posted a photo of my three bedroom house with the subject "my bathroom setup."
This person Kubenetes.
I have also played with kubernetes on my 5 pi cluster and just running the basic system without any other load than a web server took 25% constant load on all nodes, more on the head node.
For what? Very curious thanks.
> kubernetes cluster If there is a good amount of I/O make sure you have clones of your SD cards, one day thats all going to poof!
I mount storage for this reason.
Behold! My data centre.
I'm hoping to do something like this, but I was leaning toward Docker Swarm. I also wanted to run RetroPie and a Minecraft server, and maybe a media server later. What made you choose Kunernetes over Docker?
Somewhat relevant reply from OP: https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/s/ETQuXZzB7T
I tried to set microk8s up and found out it was unsupported. I still have my 6 pi cluster, collecting dust. What should I use them for? Also, what guide did you follow to setup your cluster?
I've tried to do kubernetes with Pis but I got distracted from the project. What are you using for storage?
Running two is not a bad idea for redundancy (I run two - I've had a couple SD cards give out over the years). Aside from that, experimenting, curiosity, maybe some fringe configuration. There is no practical reason for the average person just wanting to run basic DNS blocking at home to run more than that.
See OP’s other replies; it’s K8S running much more than Pi-Hole.
Same man same
I had a single pihole for years, then one day the memory card failed and I had no DNS. No DNS = no Internet =unhappy family. That was the day I built 2 new piholes and installed gravity sync. (https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/gravity-sync-an-easy-way-to-keep-multiple-pi-hole-in-sync/33545) DNS is mission critical and you need redundancy.
Totally agree. His setup costs 3x times more money, outputs 3x more heat and is 3x more likely to fail. The IQ level of the brain dead moron that did that is at least 3x less than the average frog
That's a rude thing to say about someone. They are having fun and aren't harming anyone with it. Let them have their fun.
You're first take is money, this reply oozes with envy. Sorry about your situation
I have a similar setup, but all of the pi’s are running on PoE.
What? Is that possible? Do you use an adaptor or the LAN port?
You can find PoE hats on Amazon, [here's the one I'm using](https://amzn.to/3xJGK3w). You pop the hat on, then you can use the existing LAN port for PoE. I like this one because it also has a PWM fan controller built-in. Edit: It makes for a very clean setup. https://preview.redd.it/gxi74g1qk2wc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1a5155fa7d9c8961916fbc46d309355f3af0659b
That is sick!! Looks so tough and solid!
[удалено]
What sort of things do you do with your cluster?
WOah! those OLED screens are awesome! Thanks for sharing! Motivation to up my homelab game!
Nice dude. I’ve the same setup. I run my controllers as 2 VMs on synology and use iSCSI and SSDs Longhorn on each node and then a USB3 for OS.
Can you give us some info on that rack and switch? I'd really like to have that setup.
Sure, [here’s the case](https://amzn.to/4aLPUuG), and [here is the switch](https://amzn.to/3Qejd0U). I also ordered a couple of [these fans](https://amzn.to/3Uudtmc) and connected them to the PWM fan headers on the PoE hats. A simple script runs to control the fan speed based on the CPU temp on the Pis.
Thank you!
What is POE hat for? I thought the pi3 and up have poe built in?
This is the same build I have! Nice!
Do you ever have problems with heat?
No actually, I’ve had this setup for two years and the fans have never ramped up. I also don’t do anything super taxing though.
This guy is blocking the internet.
He decided to blacklist most of internet individually instead of whitlisting just reddit
I have something similar, but the power is coming from a USB charging hub.
So is mine.
Oh, I see it at the bottom now. Black on black.
Can I get a link or a model number? I’ve been looking for one but all I find have mixed c and a ports.
It's an anker 5 port USB hub. I think this model is a 40w version. Sorry it's double sidded tapped to everything and can't find the order invoice. Just ensure the usbs provide enough power to your version of USB for your pi
What you running on the cluster that requires this?
Started a new site reliability engineer job and it reignited the fun I get out of doing 'homelab things'. So this cluster was a nice way to get back into homelab, increasing skills surrounding the k8s ecosystem, and then I get to deploy, learn and poke around with things we might use at work enhancing skills there and lastly, just prototype new software, apps and tech. * Prometheus * Grafana * Alertmanager * Pihole * cloudflared * ArgoCD * Renovate * Atlantis * Random Steam game servers the wife and I play a lot * Heimdall * traefik * longhorn * metallb * Some other random bits and bobs of tooling Anything else im to lazy to write or find the helm charts for I just run as docker containers on a proxmox host or my homeassistant vm. I also run another k3s cluster in proxmox to do prototyping and testing, this is all done via terraform and ansible. edit: Also in the process of moving some older things like joplin, freshrss, uptime kuma, unify network stuff etc. Just not had the time and currently building and rebuilding the cluster "tinkering".
Ah ok nice yeah I'm CloudOps looking after eks so love helm. Also got several pi models in a box somewhere and want to give it a go but no idea what to run on them. Cheers for this.
I wanted to understand kubernetes because we run GKE so yeh it was a black box at the time for me. I'd look into k3s. Its a super small install of kubernetes and works out of the box, like you curl a .sh installer and you have a functional cluster you cant kubectl into. [https://k3s.io/](https://k3s.io/)
Super cool! I’m actually trying to do something and was curious if you have a public repo for this setup?
Turn the volume up to 11. It’s one louder.
Grab some pi-hat POEs
It’s the club sandwich of Pi-Holes.
That looks clean :D
How are you powering them? Looks neat fair play.
I've got that same stack, but only 3 pis. A primary and backup pihole, and wireguard vpn on the third.
For the uninitiated on here, like myself, "k3s" is a lightweight, certified, Kubernetes (aka "k8s") distribution. Thanks for sharing, OP!
Being told or shown something is sometimes the best way to learn something new. Glad I could help!
OP there are some great ansible projects out there for building and tearing down a K3S cluster. I use a modified version for my own home lab to learn and be curious.
Yea I hacked together the official k3s playbook and a few roles from techno Tim. I'm not going to figure all this out when it's all there lol
Awesome :). Thats who I used too!!
Would you be able to show how you are powering all the PIs ? Do you have some kind of powered USB c hub ?
Nvm saw your previous answer. 40w Anker 5 hubs
looks neat
Been wondering how all these work together. I’m guessing it’s the same OS install on all of them, but are connected via their own separate IPs? Or how does the shared space is used, are they all in some RAID form? Very cool project
It’s a Kubernetes cluster; more specifically by way of K3S. See OP’s other replies ☺️
You must REALLY hate ads.
Now that's redundancy
I have alot of dockers running on my single pi5. It's quite powerfull this new little thing 🙂 Haven't had any reason yet to run more than one.
Very Impressive
This guy DNS’s
That’s cool! I run it on a pi 2b
I have the same setup! I have 5 Pi4Bs in a k3s cluster. Only recently got it setup with Grafana, Prometheus, and PiHole. I want to extend this further but looking for projects to include. Also eyeing the new Pi5s given the performance gains.. We should connect and collab! This isn't a common use case, furthermore my homelab is within a UDM ecosystem which adds some pros and cons. Cheers! Edit 1: I've got a 35-40% block rate with 6.9m domains on adlists. Happy to share with you. Edit 2: Do you use GitOps/Flux or Ansible to manage your cluster, or purely terminal?
At first glance i thought you used pencils as rods
Does the fan at the top of the stack actually accomplish any meaningful cooling?
Sexy
What is that?
Nice, I used to have this kind of setup before but actually I was annoyed by the poe switch fan, and expensive to maintain the devices, then I switched to a mini pc instead for the home server (x300 asrock, 5600g, 64gb memory, 2tb ssd)
That is way overkill lol. I had a single rpi3b for 6-7 years and then pi4 for the past couple and have never needed redundancy
Over engineering is a matter of opinion. Under engineering is a matter of fact. Edit: left out words
Strongly disagree. This is over-engineered. It's ok, because it's a pet project of OP's and who cares. As another dev, most of my side projects are basically over-engineered hypothesis testing and trying to POC production workflows with new tech, so I get it. There's a time and a place for it, and Reddit is certainly that time and place. But nobody needs kubernetes (or anything like this) to run a DNS at a homeowner scale. It's over-engineered, which is ok, but call it what it is.
Fair enough
Most people assume it's purely for pihole so that is why there are some replies about over the top. Like you said my job is an sre, this is a test environment to enhance skills and reproduce and test prod methods and workflows. You get it
Does having a pihole slow down your internet?
DNS is a protocol that is served over "Internet" (Technically its TCP/IP). DNS will never "slow down" a connection. If you have bad hardware then DNS resolution will be slow at serving webpages. However I've never experienced a single ms of latency in loading pages when served via pihole and its technically impossible to throttle your bandwidth with pihole. The problem comes in not understand the technology you're trying to roll out. When you dont know the tech, you cant properly troubleshoot or understand where your problem is. So, assumptions get made.