How to Use Kubehub

Kubehub turns your old laptops, mini PCs, or spare desktops into your own personal cloud. Think of it like a home-grown version of AWS or Google Cloud — but the hardware is yours and everything runs on your own machines.

Here’s the whole journey in plain words:

1. Log in with your account

Just sign in with any of these:

  • GitHub
  • Google
  • Microsoft

No extra sign-up needed — your existing account is your Kubehub account.

2. Create a cluster

A cluster is like a small “data center” made out of your own machines. Create one in the portal and give it a name. It starts empty — the next step is adding machines to it.

3. Onboard your nodes

A node is one of your machines that joins your cluster and runs your apps. You can use almost anything as a node: an old laptop, a mini PC, a desktop, or even a VM.

See How to Onboard a Node for the full step-by-step. The short version: you install Linux on a machine, plug in your SSH key, and run one command on it. The machine then becomes part of your cluster and starts running your apps.

4. Ready to use

Once your node is onboarded, your cluster is alive. Now you can:

  • Manage everything through the portal UI — the easy way. Create apps, check status, and see what’s running without touching a command line.
  • Use the shell for advanced stuff — the portal covers the common functions, but the built-in shell gives you full kubectl/helm power when you need to tweak something the UI doesn’t expose. See Shell in Portal.
  • Download your kubeconfig — if you’re comfortable with Kubernetes tools, grab the config and use your own favorite tooling against your cluster.

5. Expose your apps

Got an app you want to share? We handle the tricky parts (addresses and secure connections) for you — either to the public internet or just your home network. See How to Expose Apps.

That’s it. From an old laptop to your own personal cloud in a few steps.