Reason for this blog

I've been working for several years with containers and Kubernetes, and I've been working with hypervisors/virtual machines for at least a decade.  Most commercial production work has been implemented in the Google Cloud, Digital Ocean, AWS, and friends.   However, in the interest of saving on the commercial cloud costs(I was working for a startup),  I also built a private cloud out of older machines that had been hanging around the organization.  This cloud wound up doing a lot of the long term code builds, testing, simulations and things that didn't require the millisecond response time the outward-facing products needed.   So this blog is documenting my process of building a working Kubernetes cluster out of cheap surplus hardware.  Hopefully, this will allow hobbyists, small schools, clubs, and other groups to get a good working knowledge of Kubernetes clusters without having to take out a second mortgage 😊.  Let's get started with the first page showing the initial design of the private cloud.