feat(netbird): drop the cluster-side backup of the controller VPS

Backing up an external server is that server's own business. The pull path
made the cluster responsible for it and, worse, put a root key on the VPS
that the cluster held — a standing inbound grant that existed only to move
a SQLite file.

Removed cluster-side: the netbird-backup namespace and everything in it
(the nightly CronJob, the netbird-backup-ssh ExternalSecret, the 5Gi
ceph-block PVC), the namespace's entry in the OpenBao ClusterSecretStore
allow-list, the netbird-backup-daily Velero Schedule, and the
NetbirdVpsBackupStale / NetbirdVpsBackupNeverRan alerts.

Flux prunes the PVC, which destroys the 14 retained dumps (2026-08-15
through 08-28). That is intended. Velero's existing offsite copies age out
on their own under the schedule's 720h TTL; no cleanup is needed there.

Removed VPS-side: the dump script, and the forced-command key authorising
it. Deleting the two tasks that placed them would only stop ansible
managing them and leave both live on the host, so they are replaced with
state: absent tasks that actually revoke them. Those two can go once the
role has run against every host that ever carried them.

The trmnl-daily schedule's stagger comment pointed at netbird-backup-daily
for its slot; it now points at apps-daily, which is the schedule that
actually precedes it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

ansible/roles/netbird-server/files/netbird-backup-dump

@@ -1,36 +0,0 @@
-#!/bin/sh
-# Forced-command target for the netbird-backup SSH key (see the
-# "Authorize the cluster backup key" task): takes a CONSISTENT snapshot
-# of the management SQLite store (safe against a live writer, unlike
-# copying store.db) and streams a gzipped tar to stdout. The key's
-# authorized_keys entry is restricted to exactly this script — the
-# in-cluster puller cannot run anything else.
-#
-# Deliberately store.db ONLY: /opt/netbird/config is fully regenerable
-# from the netbird-server role's templates + vault, and including it
-# would put the plaintext TURN secret (turnserver.conf) into every
-# nightly tarball. Restore = re-run the role (rebuilds config), then
-# untar this dump into /opt/netbird/management/.
-set -eu
-tmp=$(mktemp -d)
-trap 'rm -rf "$tmp"' EXIT
-# NetBird sets no journal_mode on the store (its DSN carries only
-# _busy_timeout and cache=shared), so store.db uses the default rollback
-# journal, where the management container's write lock blocks a reader
-# outright rather than letting it through as WAL would. Two things follow.
-#
-# .timeout arms a busy handler on the source connection, which is the
-# contended side; the destination is a fresh file in $tmp that nothing else
-# touches. Without it sqlite3 uses its 0 ms default and gives up the moment
-# it cannot take the lock. 30 s sits well inside the puller's 600 s
-# activeDeadlineSeconds.
-#
-# VACUUM INTO rather than .backup: the shell's .backup copies 100 pages per
-# sqlite3_backup_step(), and SQLite restarts the copy whenever the source is
-# written between steps, so a steady writer drags it out for as long as the
-# writes keep coming. VACUUM INTO reads one transaction in a single pass and
-# is documented as an alternative to the backup API for exactly this. It
-# also compacts, so the dump is smaller than the live file.
-sqlite3 -cmd '.timeout 30000' /opt/netbird/management/store.db \
-    "VACUUM INTO '$tmp/store.db'"
-tar -C "$tmp" -czf - store.db

ansible/roles/netbird-server/tasks/main.yml

@@ -77,29 +77,22 @@
   register: docker_compose_result
   changed_when: "'Started' in docker_compose_result.stdout or 'Creating' in docker_compose_result.stdout"
 
-# Off-VPS backup of the management store (SPOF assessment 2026-07-25:
-# this SQLite DB — peers, setup keys, groups, routes — had zero backup
-# coverage; losing the VPS meant re-enrolling the entire mesh). The VPS
-# cannot reach any PBS (both PBS names resolve to the public proxy,
-# ports closed), so the CLUSTER pulls: a CronJob
-# (kubernetes/infrastructure/netbird-backup) ssh's in with a dedicated
-# key that is locked to the dump script below, and lands the tarball on
-# a Ceph PVC that Velero ships offsite. The dump is store.db ONLY —
-# /opt/netbird/config is regenerable from this role's templates + vault
-# and would otherwise leak the TURN secret into every tarball. Restore:
-# re-run this role (rebuilds config), then untar the dump into
-# /opt/netbird/management/.
-- name: Install the backup dump script
-  ansible.builtin.copy:
-    src: netbird-backup-dump
-    dest: /usr/local/bin/netbird-backup-dump
-    mode: "0755"
+# The management store has no cluster-side backup. Pulling one put a root
+# key on this host that the cluster held, and this server's own state is
+# its own business to protect rather than the cluster's. Dropping the two
+# tasks that placed them would only stop ansible managing the key and the
+# script — the pair below revokes them instead, and can go once the role
+# has run against every host that ever carried them.
+- name: Remove the backup dump script
+  ansible.builtin.file:
+    path: /usr/local/bin/netbird-backup-dump
+    state: absent
 
-- name: Authorize the cluster backup key (forced command, no shell)
+- name: Revoke the cluster backup key
   ansible.posix.authorized_key:
     user: root
     key: "ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIFeW/L9bHMTSa5/Qb0ClppCf4Z0hL39JwzI6tBmKd2FG netbird-backup@homelab-cluster"
-    key_options: 'restrict,command="/usr/local/bin/netbird-backup-dump"'
+    state: absent
 
 - name: Wait for management container to be ready
   ansible.builtin.pause:

kubernetes/apps/llama-server/configmap.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+# llama-server router presets. Running the server with --models-preset and no
+# -m puts it in router mode: every section below is a separately supervised
+# model subprocess, all reachable on one port through one OpenAI-compatible
+# /v1 API. Requests pick a section by name via the JSON body's "model" field,
+# so chat and embeddings are served by a single Deployment and Service.
+#
+# Keys are llama-server command-line arguments without the leading dashes.
+#
+# `hf-repo` makes this file the only place a model is named: llama-server
+# resolves and downloads the weights itself into LLAMA_CACHE (the models PVC)
+# on first load, so changing a model here needs no matching change anywhere
+# else. The quant after the colon is optional and case-insensitive.
+apiVersion: v1
+kind: ConfigMap
+metadata:
+  name: llama-server-models
+  namespace: ai
+data:
+  models.ini: |
+    version = 1
+
+    [*]
+    # Every layer runs on the Intel iGPU. Measured on this hardware (i9-12900H,
+    # Iris Xe 96 EU): full offload matches CPU throughput at ~10.8 tok/s decode
+    # while leaving the node's 14 cores free for the rest of the cluster. The
+    # iGPU is here for that isolation, not for a speed-up.
+    n-gpu-layers = 99
+    # Generation is memory-bandwidth-bound, so extra threads buy nothing once
+    # the layers are on the GPU. Keeps the pod within its CPU limit.
+    threads = 4
+
+    [chat]
+    hf-repo = bartowski/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct-GGUF:Q4_K_M
+    ctx-size = 8192
+    load-on-startup = true
+
+    [embed]
+    hf-repo = Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-GGUF:Q8_0
+    # Serves POST /v1/embeddings. Set per-model rather than globally: the flag
+    # restricts a model to embeddings and would disable chat on [chat].
+    embedding = true
+    ctx-size = 2048
+    load-on-startup = true

kubernetes/apps/llama-server/deployment.yaml

@@ -1,21 +1,4 @@
 ---
-# The chat endpoint, and the only one behind the ingress.
-#
-# Single-model rather than router mode. Router mode served chat and embeddings
-# from one port, but two things made that wrong here:
-#
-#   1. Its /health answers 200 as soon as the router process listens, while the
-#      models are still downloading behind it. Kubernetes marked the pod Ready
-#      within seconds of start, so traffic arrived at a server that could not
-#      answer. In single-model mode /health returns 503 until the model is
-#      resident, which is what the probes below actually need.
-#   2. Every model on the port is selectable in the built-in WebUI, including
-#      the embedding model. Asking an embedding model to chat returns fluent
-#      nonsense ("capital capital capital ...") rather than an error, and
-#      `--embeddings` does not prevent it. There is no flag to hide a model
-#      from the list — `--tags` is informational and `--ui-config` only sets UI
-#      preferences — so the only way to keep it out of the picker is to keep it
-#      off this endpoint. It runs in embed.yaml instead.
 apiVersion: apps/v1
 kind: Deployment
 metadata:
@@ -25,8 +8,8 @@ metadata:
     app.kubernetes.io/name: llama-server
 spec:
   replicas: 1
-  # A rolling update would load a second copy of the weights onto the same
-  # iGPU and into the same node's RAM before releasing the first.
+  # One iGPU per node and one RWX volume of weights: a rolling update would
+  # start a second copy that loads the same models onto the same device.
   strategy:
     type: Recreate
   selector:
@@ -41,7 +24,8 @@ spec:
         runAsNonRoot: true
         runAsUser: 1000
         runAsGroup: 1000
-        # Makes the CephFS volume group-writable so the weights can be cached.
+        # Makes the CephFS volume group-writable so the initContainer can
+        # write the downloaded weights.
         fsGroup: 1000
         seccompProfile:
           type: RuntimeDefault
@@ -49,70 +33,24 @@ spec:
         - name: llama-server
           image: ghcr.io/ggml-org/llama.cpp:server-vulkan-b10731
           args:
-            # The one place this model is named; llama-server resolves the repo
-            # and downloads it itself, so there is nothing to keep in sync.
-            #
-            # A 35B mixture-of-experts with only ~3B parameters active per
-            # token. Decode on this hardware is bound by how many bytes are read
-            # per token rather than by parameter count, and this model reads
-            # ~1.85 GB/token where a dense 27B reads ~16.5 GB — so it is both
-            # far larger and faster than any dense model that would fit.
-            #
-            # Measured here (llama-bench, k8s-1, this image): tg128 11.59 tok/s,
-            # against 10.78 for a dense 8B. Prefill 120.9 t/s at 512 tokens and
-            # 69.8 at 16384 — a sublinear falloff, so the Gated Delta Net
-            # prefill collapse of llama.cpp#27638 does not occur on this stack.
-            - --hf-repo
-            - ggml-org/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-GGUF:Q4_K_M
-            # Every layer on the Intel iGPU. Full offload matches CPU throughput
-            # while leaving the node's 14 cores free for the rest of the
-            # cluster; the iGPU is here for that isolation, not for a speed-up.
-            - --n-gpu-layers
-            - "99"
-            # Decode runs on the GPU, so extra threads buy nothing. At 11.59
-            # tok/s this model moves 21.4 GB/s against the 53.9 GB/s a dense
-            # model sustains here, so it is the iGPU's 96 EUs working through
-            # many small per-expert matmuls that sets the pace, not bandwidth.
-            - --threads
-            - "4"
-            # 16k rather than 8k because the measured prefill falloff is mild
-            # and this model's KV cache is unusually cheap — only 10 of its 40
-            # layers use full attention.
-            - --ctx-size
-            - "16384"
-            # A micro-batch of 2048 or more makes this Vulkan/Mesa stack fail
-            # with ErrorDeviceLost.
-            - --ubatch-size
-            - "1024"
-            # The server otherwise allows every CORS origin and warns about it
-            # at startup. Without this, any page a LAN browser visits could call
-            # this unauthenticated API from the user's machine. Consumers talk
-            # to it server-side; the WebUI is same-origin and unaffected.
+            # No -m: with only --models-preset the server starts in router
+            # mode and serves every section of the INI behind one /v1 API.
+            - --models-preset
+            - /config/models.ini
+            - --models-max
+            - "2"
+            # The server defaults to allowing every CORS origin, which would let
+            # any page a LAN browser visits call this unauthenticated API from
+            # the user's machine. Every consumer here talks to it server-side,
+            # so no cross-origin access is needed; the built-in WebUI is
+            # same-origin and unaffected.
             - --cors-origins
             - localhost
-            # Two names for one model. Without this the id is the whole
-            # --hf-repo string, which is unreadable in a model picker and in
-            # logs.
-            #
-            # The first is what callers see: it says which model is actually
-            # answering, which a bare "chat" hides and which matters as soon as
-            # a second chat model exists. The second is a stable handle for
-            # machine consumers — Home Assistant, Paperless, CI — so their
-            # config survives the next model swap without an edit.
-            - --alias
-            - qwen3.6-35b-a3b,chat
-            # Qwen3.6 enables thinking by default. At ~11.6 tok/s that spends
-            # minutes reasoning before answering, and a request with a modest
-            # max_tokens returns an empty `content` with finish_reason "length"
-            # because the whole budget went to reasoning_content. Off by default
-            # keeps answers usable; a client that wants it can send
-            # chat_template_kwargs per request.
-            - --chat-template-kwargs
-            - '{"enable_thinking": false}'
           env:
-            # Where --hf-repo caches the weights. Pointing it at the PVC makes
-            # the download a one-time cost, shared with llama-embed, and keeps
-            # the server off a home directory it cannot write as UID 1000.
+            # Where the `hf-repo` presets resolve to. Pointing the cache at the
+            # PVC is what makes the download a one-time cost: the weights are
+            # written here on first load and reused on every later start. Also
+            # keeps the server off the home directory it cannot write as UID 1000.
             - name: LLAMA_CACHE
               value: /models
           ports:
@@ -123,30 +61,25 @@ spec:
             capabilities:
               drop:
                 - ALL
-          # Vulkan allocates the iGPU's working set from system RAM, and that
-          # counts against the pod's cgroup: a 5.2 GiB model measured 7.54 GiB
-          # RSS. Sized as the 19 GiB of weights plus that overhead, plus the KV
-          # cache — which is unusually cheap here, since only 10 of the 40
-          # layers use full attention.
           resources:
             requests:
               cpu: 500m
-              memory: 24Gi
+              memory: 12Gi
               gpu.intel.com/i915: "1"
             limits:
               cpu: "6"
-              memory: 32Gi
+              memory: 16Gi
               gpu.intel.com/i915: "1"
-          # /health is 503 while the model loads and 200 once it is resident, so
-          # the pod only goes Ready when it can actually answer. On a cold PVC
-          # that includes pulling ~19 GiB from Hugging Face, hence the long
-          # startup budget (40 min); liveness takes over only after that.
+          # /health reports 503 until every load-on-startup model is resident.
+          # On a cold PVC that includes pulling ~5 GiB from Hugging Face before
+          # either model can load, so the startup budget is deliberately long
+          # (20 min); liveness only takes over once startup has succeeded.
           startupProbe:
             httpGet:
               path: /health
               port: http
             periodSeconds: 10
-            failureThreshold: 240
+            failureThreshold: 120
           readinessProbe:
             httpGet:
               path: /health
@@ -162,10 +95,16 @@ spec:
           volumeMounts:
             - name: models
               mountPath: /models
+            - name: config
+              mountPath: /config
+              readOnly: true
       volumes:
         - name: models
           persistentVolumeClaim:
             claimName: llama-server-models
+        - name: config
+          configMap:
+            name: llama-server-models
 ---
 apiVersion: v1
 kind: Service

kubernetes/apps/llama-server/embed.yaml

@@ -1,119 +0,0 @@
----
-# The embedding endpoint, for RAG and semantic search.
-#
-# Deliberately separate from llama-server and deliberately not behind the
-# ingress: an embedding model has no generative training, and when it shares a
-# port with the chat model the built-in WebUI lists it as a choice. Selecting it
-# returns fluent nonsense rather than an error, because `--embeddings` does not
-# actually refuse chat completions. Keeping it on its own ClusterIP-only Service
-# is what makes it unselectable, since llama.cpp has no way to hide a model from
-# the picker.
-#
-# Reachable in-cluster at http://llama-embed.ai.svc.cluster.local:8080/v1/embeddings.
-apiVersion: apps/v1
-kind: Deployment
-metadata:
-  name: llama-embed
-  namespace: ai
-  labels:
-    app.kubernetes.io/name: llama-embed
-spec:
-  replicas: 1
-  strategy:
-    type: Recreate
-  selector:
-    matchLabels:
-      app.kubernetes.io/name: llama-embed
-  template:
-    metadata:
-      labels:
-        app.kubernetes.io/name: llama-embed
-    spec:
-      securityContext:
-        runAsNonRoot: true
-        runAsUser: 1000
-        runAsGroup: 1000
-        fsGroup: 1000
-        seccompProfile:
-          type: RuntimeDefault
-      containers:
-        - name: llama-embed
-          image: ghcr.io/ggml-org/llama.cpp:server-vulkan-b10731
-          args:
-            - --hf-repo
-            - Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-GGUF:Q8_0
-            # Serves POST /v1/embeddings.
-            - --embeddings
-            - --n-gpu-layers
-            - "99"
-            - --threads
-            - "2"
-            - --ctx-size
-            - "2048"
-            # No browser ever talks to this Service, so the WebUI is dead weight
-            # and one more unauthenticated surface.
-            - --no-webui
-          env:
-            # Same cache as llama-server, so the two share one copy of anything
-            # they have in common and neither re-downloads the other's weights.
-            - name: LLAMA_CACHE
-              value: /models
-          ports:
-            - name: http
-              containerPort: 8080
-          securityContext:
-            allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
-            capabilities:
-              drop:
-                - ALL
-          resources:
-            requests:
-              cpu: 250m
-              memory: 2Gi
-              gpu.intel.com/i915: "1"
-            limits:
-              cpu: "2"
-              memory: 4Gi
-              gpu.intel.com/i915: "1"
-          # ~600 MiB rather than ~5 GiB, so a much shorter budget than the chat
-          # model needs, but still sized for a cold download.
-          startupProbe:
-            httpGet:
-              path: /health
-              port: http
-            periodSeconds: 10
-            failureThreshold: 60
-          readinessProbe:
-            httpGet:
-              path: /health
-              port: http
-            periodSeconds: 10
-          livenessProbe:
-            httpGet:
-              path: /health
-              port: http
-            periodSeconds: 30
-            timeoutSeconds: 10
-            failureThreshold: 6
-          volumeMounts:
-            - name: models
-              mountPath: /models
-      volumes:
-        - name: models
-          persistentVolumeClaim:
-            claimName: llama-server-models
----
-apiVersion: v1
-kind: Service
-metadata:
-  name: llama-embed
-  namespace: ai
-  labels:
-    app.kubernetes.io/name: llama-embed
-spec:
-  selector:
-    app.kubernetes.io/name: llama-embed
-  ports:
-    - name: http
-      port: 8080
-      targetPort: http

kubernetes/apps/llama-server/kustomization.yaml

@@ -2,6 +2,6 @@ apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
 kind: Kustomization
 resources:
   - pvc.yaml
+  - configmap.yaml
   - deployment.yaml
-  - embed.yaml
   - ingress.yaml

kubernetes/apps/monitoring-rules/kustomization.yaml

@@ -13,7 +13,6 @@ resources:
   - prometheusrule-loki.yaml
   - prometheusrule-mariadb-backup.yaml
   - prometheusrule-netbird-availability.yaml
-  - prometheusrule-netbird-backup.yaml
   - prometheusrule-netbird-ingress.yaml
   - prometheusrule-openbao.yaml
   - prometheusrule-velero.yaml

kubernetes/apps/monitoring-rules/prometheusrule-netbird-backup.yaml

@@ -1,44 +0,0 @@
-apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1
-kind: PrometheusRule
-metadata:
-  name: netbird-backup
-  namespace: monitoring
-  labels:
-    # kube-prometheus-stack's Prometheus selects on this label.
-    release: kube-prometheus-stack
-spec:
-  groups:
-    - name: netbird-backup.rules
-      rules:
-        - alert: NetbirdVpsBackupStale
-          # The nightly pull of the controller VPS's management store
-          # hasn't succeeded in over 26 h (one missed cycle + slack).
-          # This dump is the only copy of the mesh state (peers, setup
-          # keys, routes) that survives losing the Hetzner VPS — a
-          # silently dead backup is exactly the failure mode the SPOF
-          # assessment flagged.
-          expr: |
-            time() - kube_cronjob_status_last_successful_time{namespace="netbird-backup", cronjob="netbird-vps-backup"} > 26 * 3600
-          for: 30m
-          labels:
-            severity: critical
-          annotations:
-            summary: "NetBird VPS backup has not succeeded in 26h+"
-            description: "The netbird-vps-backup CronJob's last successful run is over 26 hours old. Check the job logs in the netbird-backup namespace (ssh reachability of netbird.renner.uno, the netbird-backup-ssh ExternalSecret, PVC space)."
-
-        - alert: NetbirdVpsBackupNeverRan
-          # The CronJob exists but has never succeeded — most likely the
-          # one-time OpenBao provisioning step
-          # (bao kv put homelab/infrastructure/netbird-backup ssh-key=@…)
-          # hasn't been done, so the ExternalSecret cannot sync and the
-          # job pod fails on the missing secret mount.
-          expr: |
-            kube_cronjob_created{namespace="netbird-backup", cronjob="netbird-vps-backup"}
-            unless
-            kube_cronjob_status_last_successful_time{namespace="netbird-backup", cronjob="netbird-vps-backup"}
-          for: 6h
-          labels:
-            severity: warning
-          annotations:
-            summary: "NetBird VPS backup has never succeeded"
-            description: "The netbird-vps-backup CronJob exists but has no successful run. If this is the initial rollout: the private key must be provisioned once by hand — bao kv put homelab/infrastructure/netbird-backup ssh-key=@<keyfile> — before the ExternalSecret can sync."

kubernetes/clusters/homelab/llama-server.yaml

@@ -6,10 +6,10 @@ metadata:
 spec:
   interval: 10m
   retryInterval: 1m
-  # On a cold PVC the chat model pulls ~19 GiB of GGUF weights from Hugging
-  # Face and then loads onto the iGPU before /health goes green, so a first
-  # start is far slower than a normal app's.
-  timeout: 60m
+  # On a cold PVC llama-server pulls ~5 GiB of GGUF weights from Hugging Face
+  # and then loads both models onto the iGPU before /health goes green, so a
+  # first start is far slower than a normal app's.
+  timeout: 45m
   sourceRef:
     kind: GitRepository
     name: flux-system

kubernetes/e2e-test.sh

@@ -524,114 +524,6 @@ check "alertmanager: no severity=critical alerts active" bash -c '
     test "$body" = "[]"
 '
 
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# Local AI inference. Every check here corresponds to a defect that actually
-# shipped, because none of them are catchable by manifest validation — the
-# manifests were valid in each case and the endpoint still misbehaved.
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-# llm_chat: POST a chat completion through the ingress. Body lands in
-# /tmp/llm_body for the caller to assert against. Generous --max-time: the
-# model runs on an iGPU at ~12 tok/s, so a short answer still takes seconds.
-llm_chat() {
-    local model="$1" prompt="$2" max="${3:-64}" out body code payload
-    payload=$(jq -nc --arg m "$model" --arg p "$prompt" --argjson n "$max" \
-        '{model:$m,messages:[{role:"user",content:$p}],max_tokens:$n,temperature:0}')
-    out=$(curl -sk --resolve "llm.renner.uno:443:$LB_IP" --max-time 300 \
-          -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d "$payload" \
-          -w $'\n__CODE__:%{http_code}' \
-          "https://llm.renner.uno/v1/chat/completions" 2>&1)
-    code=${out##*__CODE__:}
-    body=${out%$'\n'__CODE__:*}
-    printf 'code=%s body=%s\n' "$code" "${body:0:300}"
-    [[ "$code" == "200" ]] || return 1
-    printf '%s' "$body" > /tmp/llm_body
-}
-export -f llm_chat
-export LB_IP
-
-# helper_post: POST JSON from inside e2e-helper, for Services with no ingress.
-# kubectl exec passes argv directly, so the JSON needs no shell quoting.
-helper_post() {
-    local url="$1" data="$2" out body code attempt
-    for attempt in 1 2 3; do
-        out=$(kubectl -n monitoring exec e2e-helper -- \
-              curl -sk --max-time 60 -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-              -d "$data" -w $'\n__CODE__:%{http_code}' "$url" 2>&1)
-        body=${out%$'\n'__CODE__:*}
-        code=${out##*__CODE__:}
-        printf 'attempt=%s code=%s body=%s\n' "$attempt" "$code" "${body:0:200}"
-        if [[ "$code" =~ ^2[0-9][0-9]$ ]]; then
-            printf '%s' "$body" > /tmp/helper_body
-            return 0
-        fi
-        sleep 5
-    done
-    return 1
-}
-export -f helper_post
-
-echo "=== Local AI inference ==="
-
-check "llama-server /health returns 200" \
-    http_code "https://llm.renner.uno/health" 200
-
-# The chat model is named for what it is, so a picker and a log line say which
-# model answered. `chat` stays valid alongside it as a stable handle, so a
-# consumer's config survives the next model swap.
-check "model list advertises qwen3.6-35b-a3b" \
-    http_body "https://llm.renner.uno/v1/models" 'qwen3.6-35b-a3b'
-
-# Regression: the embedding model used to share this port. It appeared in the
-# chat picker, and selecting it returned fluent nonsense ("capital capital
-# capital ...") instead of an error, because --embeddings does not refuse chat
-# completions. It now lives on a ClusterIP-only Service; if it ever reappears
-# here, it is selectable again and this must fail.
-check "embedding model absent from chat endpoint" \
-    bash -c '! curl -sk --resolve "llm.renner.uno:443:$LB_IP" --max-time 15 \
-        "https://llm.renner.uno/v1/models" | grep -qi "embed"'
-
-check "embeddings not exposed through the ingress" \
-    http_code "https://llm.renner.uno/v1/embeddings" 501
-
-# Regression: with thinking enabled by default the model spent its whole token
-# budget on reasoning_content and returned an EMPTY content with
-# finish_reason "length" — a 200 response that answers nothing. Asserting on
-# the status code alone would have passed.
-check "chat completion returns non-empty content" \
-    bash -c 'llm_chat chat "Nenne die Hauptstadt von Frankreich." 64 &&
-             jq -e ".choices[0].message.content | length > 0" /tmp/llm_body >/dev/null'
-
-check "chat completion stops rather than truncating" \
-    bash -c 'jq -e ".choices[0].finish_reason == \"stop\"" /tmp/llm_body >/dev/null'
-
-# Coherence, not just liveness. This is what catches a model answering from the
-# wrong weights or a numerically broken backend — llama-bench measures
-# throughput and would report excellent numbers while emitting garbage.
-check "chat answer is coherent (knows Paris)" \
-    bash -c 'jq -re ".choices[0].message.content" /tmp/llm_body | grep -qi paris'
-
-# Both names must be advertised, because advertising is all that a single-model
-# server does with them: it ignores the request's `model` field entirely and
-# answers to any string, so posting a name and getting a reply proves nothing.
-# /v1/models is what a client reads to populate a picker, and it is the only
-# place the alias is observable.
-check "model list also offers the chat handle" \
-    http_body "https://llm.renner.uno/v1/models" '"chat"'
-
-# Reached from the monitoring namespace, which ai-ns.yaml admits; there is no
-# ingress for this Service by design.
-check "llama-embed returns an embedding vector" \
-    bash -c 'helper_post "http://llama-embed.ai.svc.cluster.local:8080/v1/embeddings" \
-                 "{\"model\":\"embed\",\"input\":\"Testsatz\"}" &&
-             jq -e ".data[0].embedding | length > 0" /tmp/helper_body >/dev/null'
-
-# Guards the resource request silently disappearing: without it the pod still
-# runs, just on CPU, and only a throughput measurement would notice.
-check "llama-server holds an iGPU allocation" \
-    bash -c 'kubectl -n ai get deploy llama-server -o json |
-             jq -e ".spec.template.spec.containers[0].resources.limits[\"gpu.intel.com/i915\"]" >/dev/null'
-
 echo "=== Authentik OIDC discovery (per-app) ==="
 # A reachable, parseable .well-known proves Authentik has an OIDC provider
 # bound to that application slug. If the app config is missing or Authentik

kubernetes/infrastructure/kustomization.yaml

@@ -18,7 +18,6 @@ resources:
   - cloudnative-pg/
   - mariadb-operator/
   - netbird-ingress/
-  - netbird-backup/
   - coredns-config/
   - k8s-gateway/
   - external-dns-unifi/

kubernetes/infrastructure/namespaces/namespaces.yaml

@@ -3,13 +3,6 @@ kind: Namespace
 metadata:
   name: apps
 ---
-# Pull-based off-VPS backup of the NetBird controller state
-# (kubernetes/infrastructure/netbird-backup).
-apiVersion: v1
-kind: Namespace
-metadata:
-  name: netbird-backup
----
 apiVersion: v1
 kind: Namespace
 metadata:

kubernetes/infrastructure/netbird-backup/cronjob.yaml

@@ -1,97 +0,0 @@
-apiVersion: batch/v1
-kind: CronJob
-metadata:
-  name: netbird-vps-backup
-  namespace: netbird-backup
-  labels:
-    app.kubernetes.io/name: netbird-backup
-spec:
-  # Nightly at 02:45, well ahead of the 07:45 Velero Schedule
-  # (post-crds/velero-schedules.yaml) that ships this PVC offsite.
-  schedule: "45 2 * * *"
-  timeZone: Europe/Berlin
-  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
-  successfulJobsHistoryLimit: 2
-  failedJobsHistoryLimit: 5
-  startingDeadlineSeconds: 3600
-  jobTemplate:
-    spec:
-      backoffLimit: 2
-      activeDeadlineSeconds: 600
-      ttlSecondsAfterFinished: 259200 # 3 d
-      template:
-        metadata:
-          labels:
-            app.kubernetes.io/name: netbird-backup
-        spec:
-          restartPolicy: Never
-          securityContext:
-            runAsNonRoot: true
-            runAsUser: 65534
-            runAsGroup: 65534
-            fsGroup: 65534
-            seccompProfile:
-              type: RuntimeDefault
-          containers:
-            - name: pull
-              # ci-ansible ships an ssh client and standard coreutils and
-              # is pulled from the local registry; a dedicated slim image
-              # is not worth maintaining for one nightly ssh pull.
-              image: gitea.renner.uno/gitea_admin/ci-ansible:2026-04-29
-              command:
-                - sh
-                - -ec
-                - |
-                  # The key's authorized_keys entry on the VPS is
-                  # restrict,command=… — the server runs the dump script
-                  # regardless of what we request, streaming a tar.gz.
-                  # ssh demands 0600 on the key; secret mounts are group-
-                  # readable, so copy first. The host key is PINNED (no
-                  # TOFU): captured 2026-07-26 via ssh-keyscan and
-                  # cross-checked against the workstation's known_hosts.
-                  # If the VPS is ever reprovisioned with a new host key,
-                  # update this line — the job failing loudly on a key
-                  # mismatch is the desired behavior.
-                  install -m 600 /ssh/ssh-key /tmp/key
-                  printf '%s\n' 'netbird.renner.uno ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIKCe8LRXbyn6Y+5V4ia4ErnBEcTFzHI1fAnsTvT77HJU' > /tmp/known_hosts
-                  # Leftover .part files from aborted earlier runs are
-                  # outside the retention glob — clear them up front.
-                  rm -f /backup/*.part
-                  ts=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
-                  ssh -i /tmp/key \
-                      -o StrictHostKeyChecking=yes \
-                      -o UserKnownHostsFile=/tmp/known_hosts \
-                      -o ConnectTimeout=15 \
-                      root@netbird.renner.uno > "/backup/netbird-$ts.tar.gz.part"
-                  gzip -t "/backup/netbird-$ts.tar.gz.part"
-                  mv "/backup/netbird-$ts.tar.gz.part" "/backup/netbird-$ts.tar.gz"
-                  # Retention: newest 14 dumps (Velero keeps 30 d offsite).
-                  ls -1t /backup/netbird-*.tar.gz | tail -n +15 | xargs -r rm --
-                  ls -lh /backup/
-              env:
-                - name: HOME
-                  value: /tmp
-              securityContext:
-                allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
-                capabilities:
-                  drop: ["ALL"]
-              resources:
-                requests:
-                  cpu: 25m
-                  memory: 64Mi
-                limits:
-                  memory: 256Mi
-              volumeMounts:
-                - name: ssh-key
-                  mountPath: /ssh
-                  readOnly: true
-                - name: backup
-                  mountPath: /backup
-          volumes:
-            - name: ssh-key
-              secret:
-                secretName: netbird-backup-ssh
-                defaultMode: 0440
-            - name: backup
-              persistentVolumeClaim:
-                claimName: netbird-backup

kubernetes/infrastructure/netbird-backup/externalsecret.yaml

@@ -1,21 +0,0 @@
-apiVersion: external-secrets.io/v1
-kind: ExternalSecret
-metadata:
-  name: netbird-backup-ssh
-  namespace: netbird-backup
-spec:
-  refreshInterval: 1h
-  secretStoreRef:
-    kind: ClusterSecretStore
-    name: openbao
-  target:
-    name: netbird-backup-ssh
-  # OpenBao path homelab/infrastructure/netbird-backup, key `ssh-key`:
-  # the private half of the dedicated backup keypair whose public half
-  # is pinned (forced-command, restrict) in the VPS's authorized_keys by
-  # the netbird-server role. ONE-TIME provisioning by hand (same pattern
-  # as the rotator bootstrap credentials):
-  #   bao kv put homelab/infrastructure/netbird-backup ssh-key=@<keyfile>
-  dataFrom:
-    - extract:
-        key: infrastructure/netbird-backup

kubernetes/infrastructure/netbird-backup/kustomization.yaml

@@ -1,11 +0,0 @@
-apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
-kind: Kustomization
-# Pull-based backup of the NetBird controller VPS's management store.
-# The VPS side (dump script + restricted SSH key) is deployed by the
-# netbird-server Ansible role; the Velero Schedule that ships the PVC
-# offsite lives in post-crds/velero-schedules.yaml; the staleness alert
-# in apps/monitoring-rules/prometheusrule-netbird-backup.yaml.
-resources:
-  - externalsecret.yaml
-  - pvc.yaml
-  - cronjob.yaml

kubernetes/infrastructure/netbird-backup/pvc.yaml

@@ -1,14 +0,0 @@
-apiVersion: v1
-kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
-metadata:
-  name: netbird-backup
-  namespace: netbird-backup
-spec:
-  # 14 daily dumps of a small SQLite store plus config — 5Gi is
-  # generous headroom.
-  storageClassName: ceph-block
-  accessModes:
-    - ReadWriteOnce
-  resources:
-    requests:
-      storage: 5Gi

kubernetes/infrastructure/post-crds/openbao-clustersecretstore.yaml

@@ -26,7 +26,6 @@ spec:
         - influxdb
         - ingress
         - monitoring
-        - netbird-backup # netbird-backup-ssh: the VPS-pull backup key
         - paperless
         - trmnl
         - velero

kubernetes/infrastructure/post-crds/velero-schedules.yaml

@@ -247,40 +247,14 @@ spec:
 ---
 apiVersion: velero.io/v1
 kind: Schedule
-metadata:
-  name: netbird-backup-daily
-  namespace: velero
-  labels:
-    app.kubernetes.io/part-of: homelab-backup
-spec:
-  # Daily at 07:45 local (next free stagger slot after apps-daily at
-  # 07:15). Ships the netbird-backup PVC — nightly pulls of the NetBird
-  # controller VPS's management store (SQLite dump + config, pulled at
-  # 02:45 by the netbird-vps-backup CronJob) — offsite. This is the
-  # only copy of the mesh state that survives losing the Hetzner VPS.
-  # Added 2026-07-26 (SPOF assessment: controller store had zero backup
-  # coverage). No CNPG in this namespace.
-  schedule: "45 7 * * *"
-  useOwnerReferencesInBackup: false
-  template:
-    includedNamespaces:
-      - netbird-backup
-    includedResources:
-      - persistentvolumeclaims
-    storageLocation: default
-    ttl: 720h0m0s
-    snapshotMoveData: true
----
-apiVersion: velero.io/v1
-kind: Schedule
 metadata:
   name: trmnl-daily
   namespace: velero
   labels:
     app.kubernetes.io/part-of: homelab-backup
 spec:
-  # Daily at 08:15 local (next free stagger slot after netbird-backup-daily
-  # at 07:45). Selects the whole namespace minus the CNPG-labelled PVCs, so
+  # Daily at 08:15 local (next free stagger slot after apps-daily at
+  # 07:15). Selects the whole namespace minus the CNPG-labelled PVCs, so
   # it picks up terminus-data (device screens + synchronised fonts),
   # terminus-valkey-data and trmnl-renderer-data (the renderer's schedule
   # and rendered output) without needing to be edited per PVC. The tr-pg