bootkube VS k3d

Bootkube - bootkube - Launch a self-hosted Kubernetes cluster kubectx + kubens - Switch faster between clusters and namespaces in kubectl kube-shell - Kubernetes shell: An integrated shell for working with the Kubernetes kuttle: kubectl wrapper for sshuttle without SSH - Kubernetes wrapper for sshuttle kubectl sudo - Run kubernetes commands with the security privileges of another user K9s - Kubernetes CLI To Manage Your Clusters In Style! Ktunnel - A cli that exposes your local resources to kubernetes KubeOperator - Run kubectl command in Web Browser. https://kubeoperator.io/ Vimkubectl - Manage any Kubernetes resource from Vim https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.ph KubeHelper - KubeHelper - simplifies many daily Kubernetes cluster tasks through a web interface.

K3D: is a lightweight distribution of Kubernetes designed for resource-constrained environments. It is an excellent option for running Kubernetes on virtual machines or cloud servers.

k3d is a lightweight wrapper that makes running Kubernetes (specifically, the lightweight k3s distribution) in Docker straightforward and efficient. It's designed to provide developers with a quick and easy way to test Kubernetes without the overhead of setting up a full cluster.

If you customer prefers to run the standard docker engine you could use k3d

You don’t need to run Rancher from a Kubernetes cluster, the rancher/rancher image works fine with Docker (it uses k3d, aka « k3s in docker » : https://k3d.io/).

K3d and Skaffold for local development

If you are a developer and want to learn how to deploy applications to a cluster, getting a cluster up an running can be a daunting task in it's own rights. There are many ways to do it: spinning up local virtual machines and configuring from scratch or using tools like minikube, etc. You may not care for the pain of setting up and configuring a cluster, and if that is you, then the quickest way that I have found is using k3d.