Platform
Architecture
The diagrams that describe the platform, and the decision records that explain why it looks the way it does.
Diagrams
Physical architecture, network layout, and platform capability map — with descriptions of what each diagram shows.
Architecture Decision Records
Every significant platform choice is written down as an ADR: the alternatives I actually considered, the reasoning, and — importantly — the tradeoffs I accepted rather than solved. These are the closest thing here to a design review.
The records are ordered as the platform came together — foundational choices first — and each one links to the next at its foot, so you can read the set straight through.
| ADR | Decision | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 001 | GitOps with ArgoCD — App of Apps pattern | Jul 2025 |
| 002 | Self-hosted Gitea with in-cluster CI | Jul 2025 |
| 003 | Vault + External Secrets Operator as the only secrets path | Aug 2025 |
| 004 | Authentik as the identity provider | Aug 2025 |
| 005 | Synology iSCSI via CSI as primary storage | Oct 2025 |
| 006 | Kubernetes nodes as Proxmox VMs, not bare metal | Nov 2025 |
| 007 | Talos Linux as the Kubernetes OS | Nov 2025 |
| 008 | Cilium as the CNI, with kube-proxy replaced | Nov 2025 |
| 009 | Istio in ambient mode (not sidecar mode) | Nov 2025 |
| 010 | CloudNative PG for managed Postgres | Dec 2025 |
| 011 | Local LLM inference with Ollama on a dedicated GPU worker | Dec 2025 |
| 012 | A layered backup strategy | 2025–2026 |
| 013 | MCP servers as the AI-operations interface | Mar 2026 |
| 014 | vLLM for served generation, alongside Ollama | Aug 2026 |