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Environments

The homelab supports multiple deployment environments, each with isolated configuration and network ranges.

Overview

Environment Purpose Network Range Proxmox Node
WIL Development / Primary 10.2.20.0/24 proxmox
LDN Production (London) 10.3.20.0/24 pve-lon
External VPS (Uptime Kuma) N/A N/A

Every task command takes an ENV= variable that threads through to Terraform, Ansible, and Packer:

task ansible:deploy-all ENV=wil
task terraform:deploy ENV=ldn
task packer:build-ubuntu ENV=wil

Directory Structure

Each environment has its own configuration under both Ansible and Terraform:

ansible/environments/
├── wil/
│   ├── hosts.ini                    # Inventory
│   └── group_vars/
│       ├── all/
│       │   ├── vars.yml             # Shared variables
│       │   ├── apps.yml             # App registry
│       │   ├── secrets.sops.yml     # Encrypted secrets
│       │   └── proxy/               # Service definitions per domain
│       ├── infra_networking/        # Networking-specific vars
│       ├── infra_ca/               # CA-specific vars
│       └── app_mediastack/         # Media stack vars
├── ldn/
│   ├── hosts.ini
│   └── group_vars/
└── external/
    ├── hosts.ini
    └── group_vars/

terraform/environments/
├── wil/
│   ├── main.tf                      # Calls VM module
│   ├── variables.tf                 # Variable definitions
│   ├── providers.tf                 # Proxmox provider
│   ├── vms.auto.tfvars              # VM definitions
│   └── terraform.tfstate            # State file
├── ldn/
└── nyc/

packer/
├── templates/
│   ├── ubuntu-server-base.pkr.hcl   # Ubuntu template
│   └── debian-bookworm-base.pkr.hcl # Debian template
└── environments/
    ├── wil/
    │   ├── ubuntu-variables.pkrvars.hcl
    │   └── credentials.wil.pkrvars.hcl  # Encrypted
    └── ldn/

How ENV= Works

The root Taskfile.yaml defines ENV as a variable (defaults to dev). Each namespace's Taskfile uses it to resolve paths:

# .taskfiles/ansible/Taskfile.yaml
vars:
  ENV_DIR: "environments/{{.ENV}}"
  HOSTS_FILE: "{{.ENV_DIR}}/hosts.ini"

# .taskfiles/terraform/Taskfile.yaml
vars:
  ENV_DIR: "environments/{{.ENV}}"

This means the same task commands work across environments — just change ENV=:

task ansible:ping ENV=wil    # Pings WIL hosts
task ansible:ping ENV=ldn    # Pings LDN hosts

Shared vs. Environment-Specific Config

Shared across environments:

  • Ansible roles (ansible/roles/)
  • Playbook definitions (ansible/playbooks/)
  • Terraform modules (terraform/modules/)
  • Packer templates (packer/templates/)

Per-environment:

  • Inventory (hosts.ini)
  • Group variables (group_vars/)
  • VM definitions (vms.auto.tfvars)
  • Secrets (secrets.sops.yml, credentials.*.pkrvars.hcl)
  • Terraform state (terraform.tfstate)

Troubleshooting

Wrong environment deployed — Double-check ENV= in your command. The default is dev, not wil. Run task ansible:ping ENV=<env> to verify you're targeting the right hosts.

Missing environment directory — Each new environment needs both ansible/environments/<env>/ and terraform/environments/<env>/ directories with the required files.

Cross-site access — WIL and LDN communicate over Tailscale. Ensure the subnet router VM is deployed and advertising routes. See Tailscale.