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Comparing K3s with vanilla Kubernetes

hoelzel.it

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Re: Comparing K3s with vanilla Kubernetes

#31

Post by zzyzxd »

I tried k3s several times in the past few years but I still can't use it in my homelab:

1. the project claims to be production ready and support HA control plane setup, but there's no solution for API load balancing out of box. How do you bring up a new node(either control plane or worker node)? You write down the join token produced by the first control plane node, and hardcode the token and the existing control plane's IP in the new node's systemd unit file. Btw, if you use the official installation script, that file is going to have permission 755 and everyone on the server can just read that token.

2. And how do you bring up the first control plane anyways? The official instruction is to `curl` a bash script and pipe into a shell. You can probably translate that script into some ansible playbook, but the whole running-a-bootstrap-script-and-passing-along-secrets approach make the whole process difficult to be converted into some something that's supposed to be idempotent.

All the problems can be worked around, in fact I was half way there, but then I suddenly started thinking: "didn't I choose k3s because I thought it was easy?"

Re: Comparing K3s with vanilla Kubernetes

#32

Post by stonemetal12 »

nailer wrote: post #20

Kinda off topic but what’s the actual word for k3s? We have Kubernetes k8s, addreesen horowitz a16z, internationalisation i18n, founders f6s. What is k3s?

It isn't a word. From their documentation:

We wanted an installation of Kubernetes that was half the size in terms of memory footprint. Kubernetes is a 10-letter word stylized as K8s. So something half as big as Kubernetes would be a 5-letter word stylized as K3s. There is no long form of K3s and no official pronunciation.

Re: Comparing K3s with vanilla Kubernetes

#33

Post by user61129028 »

jhoelzel wrote: post #23
kobalsky wrote: post #3

the title doesn't make sense, it reads like "comparing Ubuntu with Linux, How Ubuntu is often the better choice". k3s is a kubernetes distribution

while true, writing "vanialla kubernetes" did not have the right feel for me. What would have been a better title for you?

"vanilla kubernetes" isn't a distribution either.

> Kubernetes and k3s are both container orchestration platforms

Your article makes it seem like k3s and k8s are different platforms which is simply incorrect.

A more useful comparison would have been to compare k3s with another distribution like EKS, GKE, OKD etc.

Re: Comparing K3s with vanilla Kubernetes

#34

Post by jhoelzel »

zzyzxd wrote: post #31

I tried k3s several times in the past few years but I still can't use it in my homelab: 1. the project claims to be production ready and support HA control plane setup, but there's no solution for API load balancing out of box. How do you bring up a new node(either control plane or worker node)? You write down the join token produced by the first control plane node, and hardcode the token and the existing control pla…

Truth be told yes that tricky but can be managed with ansible easily for instance.

1) Your main problem though would probably be the need for a haproxy or bgp which does load balancing for you. There are other solutions like kube-vip but they are more a "failover" solution that HA. Which would be fine for a homelab and is for instance how Rancher Harvester (kubernetes for virtual machines) does it.

2) you have to pass a parameter called --cluster-init for the first node and then join the other nodes. once the cluster is running you dont need any node with that parameter anymore and its common practise to create the first node wiuth --cluster-init then join 3 other ones and take down the first node

And on a personal node, you sound like you would be happy with rancher harvester. check it out its bascially turnkey

Re: Comparing K3s with vanilla Kubernetes

#36

Post by jhoelzel »

user61129028 wrote: post #33
jhoelzel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while true, writing "vanialla kubernetes" did not have the right feel for me. What would have been a better title for you?

"vanilla kubernetes" isn't a distribution either. > Kubernetes and k3s are both container orchestration platforms Your article makes it seem like k3s and k8s are different platforms which is simply incorrect. A more useful comparison would have been to compare k3s with another distribution like EKS, GKE, OKD etc.

i kindly ask again, what is the distribution called that you setup with kubeadm?

Re: Comparing K3s with vanilla Kubernetes

#37

Post by ph4te »

jhoelzel wrote: post #29
awinter-py wrote: post #4

hmmmmm no mention of pvcs eh

Longhorn ( https://longhorn.io/ ) has been stable for a long time now and is also a could native foundation project =) You can start with a single storage node without replication and easily go from there to triple replicated storage

Been using k3s(kube-vip + MetalLB) and Longhorn for both my personal projects and work projects for a while without any issues. It's a pleasure to use instead of the alternatives.

Re: Comparing K3s with vanilla Kubernetes

#38

Post by cwayne »

zzyzxd wrote: post #31

I tried k3s several times in the past few years but I still can't use it in my homelab: 1. the project claims to be production ready and support HA control plane setup, but there's no solution for API load balancing out of box. How do you bring up a new node(either control plane or worker node)? You write down the join token produced by the first control plane node, and hardcode the token and the existing control pla…

Could check out https://github.com/k3s-io/k3s-ansible althought admittedly it's a bit in need of some lovin'

Re: Comparing K3s with vanilla Kubernetes

#39

Post by kamikazechaser »

Title is misleading. k3s is a deployment stack/distribution that builds off various Kubernetes modules. It must pass a certain test suite to conform to Kubernetes standards.

What you might be trying to compare is kubeadm which is the official deployment stack provided by Kubernetes.

Re: Comparing K3s with vanilla Kubernetes

#40

Post by mcmcmc »

mulmen wrote: post #11
apetresc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the joke, though? It's k8s, but "smaller".

What are the three letters? It only makes sense for being confusing, which is the base state of Kubernetes. "Our name is literally a complex joke about complexity" doesn't inspire confidence in a project that supposedly simplifies complexity.

The three letters are k, 3, and s
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