The Afrotomation cluster runs 70+ apps on a bare-metal k3s setup, fully managed via ArgoCD and a single GitLab repository. Every deploy is a git commit. Every secret is SOPS-encrypted. Every cert is auto-renewed.
GitLab is the source of truth. ArgoCD pulls changes into k3s. cert-manager, external-dns, and ingress-nginx handle TLS and routing. Cloudflare sits in front of everything.
A single-node k3s control plane runs on a Contabo VPS 50 (8 vCPU, 30 GB RAM). An Oracle Ampere ARM64 node (4 OCPU, 24 GB RAM) joins as a worker for lightweight workloads. ArgoCD manages every namespace declaratively; the only manual step is bootstrapping a new namespace secret once per workload.
All production images are built via GitLab CI and pushed to the in-house
registry at registry.afrotomation.com. The argocd-image-updater
watches for new digests and writes back to the GitLab repository, triggering
a self-healing sync loop. SOPS + age encrypts every secret committed to the
repo; the sops-secrets-operator decrypts at runtime.
Each workload defines its own GitLab CI job gated on changes to its subdirectory. Semantic-release manages the infra changelog and version tagging. Mirror-to-GitHub ensures a public read-only copy stays in sync on github.com/afrotomation/afrotomation-infra.
10 live public-facing apps on the cluster, all served over HTTPS via Cloudflare + ingress-nginx + cert-manager.
Self-hosted scheduling and calendar-link platform, replacing Calendly for the Afrotomation team.
Self-hosted collaborative whiteboard for diagrams, architecture sketches, and brainstorming sessions.
Internal AI Developer Agent control center — monitors autonomous dev operations and system health.
Code analytics platform for tracking development velocity, churn, and contribution metrics across repos.
Solar energy monitoring dashboard tracking PV output, battery state, and grid interaction for Sahel Energies.
E-commerce storefront for Fructosahel fruit juices and products — part of the Sahel Foods group.
Freelance and remote work marketplace connecting African tech talent with global opportunities.
Investment portfolio tracker and African market analytics platform for individual and institutional investors.
Docker Swarm-style orchestration dashboard for managing distributed services across the cluster.
Self-hosted knowledge graph and note-taking tool for team documentation and personal wikis.
Internal messaging and notification relay service connecting all Afrotomation platform events.
Privacy-first web analytics platform providing traffic insights across all Afrotomation properties.
Last 10 releases — managed by semantic-release from the GitLab repository.
Full changelog on GitLab →