I’ve been try to get more of my home lab behind Authentik and SSO lately, but that raised a question in my mind. What happens when the identity system is the thing that breaks? How do I get into the rest of my lab?

This post looks at the difference between getting Authentik back itself, fixing access to an application tied to it, and getting into infrastructure when Authentik is completely down. I also walk through where I keep local break-glass access and why I would avoid having one shared emergency credential. Also, we look at why it is so important to test these accounts just like we test our backups.

Curious how others handle emergency access in their self-hosted environments without having just another single point of failure.