Hello! I’m Darren Maverick

Spinning up a fresh Kubernetes cluster is a multi-step process that quickly becomes tedious and error-prone when repeated often. Tasks like enabling IP forwarding, disabling swap, configuring sysctl parameters, installing Kubernetes components, initializing the control plane, and manually joining nodes can become a serious time sink—especially in a homelab or testing environment. To streamline this process, I built a reproducible infrastructure setup using Terraform, Ansible, and Kube-VIP on a Libvirt-based virtualized environment. This setup lets me spin up a multi-master HA Kubernetes cluster with minimal manual effort, enabling consistent and reliable deployments across environments.

In the middle of developing my DevSecOps pipeline, I realized that my database was going to be a single-node server, that was initially the thought process. But after digging a lot more into database design, it was fascinating, hence I decided to build my database cluster.

This guide documents a hands-on approach to migrating Docker Compose projects to Kubernetes. It outlines everything from fundamental concepts to practical examples—ideal for homelabbers, DevOps engineers, or anyone scaling from local dev to production-grade clusters.

In this blog, I will thoroughly explain my initial DevSecOps Pipeline Plan and how I would orchestrate all of these tools to build an automation machine for enterprise-level deployments. Company GitHub I’ve created a mock virtual company in the name of Paragon Corp to simulate a real GitHub account and repository structure for corporations. While the existing repositories and codebase are currently placeholders, I’m planning to build a microservice-based application using Go in the future.

After weeks of endless kubectl applying and cluster troubleshooting, and then finding out how much harder the exam would be after the February changes, I hereby declare passed the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) exam!