I just run one mariadb container via docker-compose that all my other services use as their database.

version: "2"
services:
  mariadb:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/mariadb:latest
    container_name: mariadb
    environment:
      - TZ=####/####
      - PUID=###
      - PGID=###
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD==############
    volumes:
      - /docker/mariadb:/config
    ports:
      - 3306:3306
    restart: unless-stopped

Off-topic but I don’t really get the appeal in running Kubernetes (or similar technologies) in a homelab. Unless it’s something you want to learn for work of course.

https://cloudnative-pg.io

Never tried it but kubegres seems like a good implementation for kubernetes. I guess if you just have a single-node cluster there won’t be much benefit but it seems a periodic backup to NFS is key (you can run NFS on most anything).

I’m a big fan of the zalando postgres operator. A lot of the critical features you’d want in production databases are handled and very nicely abstracted.

https://github.com/zalando/postgres-operator

I have a single database server because I can’t afford two servers with high storage. The servers that need access to it connect over wireguard VPN. This is slow as f**k don’t do that.

Are we talking database schema migrations or migrating a database between Postgres instances?

If it’s the former, the pattern is usually to run them in init containers or Jobs but I have been wanting to try out SchemaHero for a while which is a tool to orchestrate it and looks pretty neat.

ETA: Thought I was replying to your below comment but Memmy deleted it the first time for some reason, my bad.

I avoid software which requires a relational database altogether. For me that’s part of the fun of self hosting: what’s the simplest possible system I can get away with at my tiny scale?

For personal use, I don’t bother with databases on k8s. They are waaay easier to manage if you just let your host distribution run it as a regular service and Upgrade it through that

I google why doesn’t mysqld work?, then copy paste terminal commands from the first result, then google why doesn’t my machine boot? then turn around 360 degrees and walk away.