Building a Production Homelab: Multi-Node Proxmox Cluster with Kubernetes

Most homelab content stops at "I installed Proxmox on a NUC." This post goes further — how I built a multi-node cluster running a full Kubernetes platform with GPU inference, GitOps, automated backups, and dozens of services. No cloud. No monthly bill. Real production patterns on consumer hardware. This isn't a step-by-step tutorial. It's a field report — what worked, what broke, and what I'd do differently if I started over. Why Build This I wanted to understand infrastructure at a level that cloud platforms deliberately abstract away. Running your own cluster forces you to deal with networking, storage, scheduling, and failure modes firsthand. There's no "open a support ticket" when your node freezes at 3 AM. Beyond the learning, the homelab actually runs things I use daily — AI agent development, media management, home automation, workflow orchestration. Every service runs on hardware I own, on a network I control. The Hardware All AMD Ryzen, mostly mini PCs. The whole cluster fits