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Karthik B Hegde | DevOps Engineer
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$0/Month Portfolio Infrastructure

·3 mins
Hugo Cloudflare Pages Oracle Cloud K3s ArgoCD Terraform GitOps
Author
Karthik B Hegde
Table of Contents

Overview
#

A production-grade DevOps portfolio and infrastructure showcase running at $0/month — proving that great DevOps is about smart architectural decisions, not budget.

Hugo Cloudflare Pages Oracle Cloud K3s ArgoCD Terraform GitHub Actions

Architecture
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The infrastructure uses a two-tier architecture — static frontend on Cloudflare’s CDN, and a live infrastructure layer on Oracle Cloud’s free tier.

flowchart TB
    subgraph "Tier 1: Static Site ($0)"
        A[Hugo + Blowfish] --> B[Cloudflare Pages\nGlobal CDN]
        B --> C[karthikhegde.in]
    end

    subgraph "Tier 2: Live Infrastructure ($0)"
        D[Oracle Cloud ARM\n4 CPUs / 24GB RAM] --> E[K3s Cluster]
        E --> F[ArgoCD]
        E --> G[Grafana]
        E --> H[VictoriaMetrics]
        E --> I[Uptime Kuma]
    end

    J[GitHub Actions] --> |Build & Push| K[GHCR]
    K --> |Auto-sync| F
    F --> E

    L[Cloudflare Tunnel] --> D

    subgraph "External Monitoring ($0)"
        M[UptimeRobot\n50 monitors]
    end

Cost Breakdown
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ServiceProviderWhat It DoesMonthly Cost
Static hosting + CDNCloudflare PagesHugo site with global edge caching$0
DNS + SSLCloudflareDNS management, free SSL certificates$0
Email forwardingCloudflare Email Routinghello@karthikhegde.in → Gmail$0
Compute (4 ARM CPUs, 24GB RAM)Oracle Cloud Always FreeK3s, ArgoCD, Grafana, monitoring$0
Container registryGitHub Container RegistryDocker image storage (public repos)$0
CI/CD pipelinesGitHub ActionsBuild, test, deploy automation$0
External monitoringUptimeRobot50 monitors, 5-minute intervals$0
Total$0/month

The only cost is the domain registration: ~$10-12/year for karthikhegde.in.

Static Site Stack
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  • Hugo — Go-based static site generator (builds in <300ms)
  • Blowfish theme — Tailwind CSS, dark mode, Mermaid diagrams, search, 100/100 Lighthouse
  • Custom cyberpunk theme — Orbitron + Fira Code fonts, neon glow effects, glassmorphism, glitch animation
  • Cloudflare Pages — Auto-deploys on git push, 500 builds/month, global CDN

Infrastructure Stack
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  • Oracle Cloud Always Free — 4 ARM Ampere cores, 24GB RAM, 200GB disk — permanently free
  • K3s — Lightweight Kubernetes distribution that fits comfortably in the free tier
  • ArgoCD — GitOps controller with web UI — watches the Git repo and auto-syncs deployments
  • Cloudflare Tunnel — Outbound-only encrypted tunnel, zero open ports on the VM

Monitoring Stack
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  • VictoriaMetrics — Prometheus-compatible TSDB using 7x less RAM
  • Grafana — Dashboards for infrastructure and application metrics
  • Uptime Kuma — Self-hosted status page at status.karthikhegde.in
  • UptimeRobot — External monitoring as a second pair of eyes (free tier: 50 monitors)

CI/CD Pipeline
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flowchart LR
    A[Git Push] --> B[GitHub Actions]
    B --> C[Hugo Build]
    B --> D[Docker Build]
    C --> E[Cloudflare Pages\nAuto-deploy]
    D --> F[Push to GHCR]
    F --> G[ArgoCD Detects\nNew Image]
    G --> H[K3s Rollout]

Lessons Learned
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  • Oracle Cloud’s free tier is the real deal — 4 ARM CPUs and 24GB RAM is enough to run K3s + ArgoCD + Grafana + VictoriaMetrics + Uptime Kuma simultaneously
  • Cloudflare Tunnel eliminates firewall complexity — No ports to open, no IP allowlisting
  • Hugo builds are incredibly fast — Full site builds in under 300ms, Cloudflare Pages deploys in under 30 seconds
  • The .io TLD has sovereignty risk — Research found Mauritius transfer creates TLD retirement risk; .in is a safe choice for Indian developers