k3s VS Docker Compose

A lightweight k3s Kubernetes cluster using k3d

Setting up the Kubernetes cluster and the AWS SQS queue is outside the scope of this article, but you can deploy an Amazon EKS cluster by following this guide, or use k3s as a lightweight, local alternative. For setting up an SQS queue, refer to this tutorial.

Start with small-scale experiments using k3s/k3d

This will initialize K3S (a lightweight Kubernetes distribution), and will configure the Kairos SpinKube bundle we will install in a moment.

Finally the main reason for us is the choice of runtime. We have very decent container runtimes (RKE, RHOS, K3s) available to deploy applications. We are very familiar with them, and they offer us a lot of functionality. These all support containers primarily.

I used K3S in my cluster because it is a lightweight, stripped-down version of Kubernetes that’s ideal for running on resource-constrained devices like Raspberry PIs I plan to use in my home lab cluster. K3S can be installed through a shell script:

In the last few years, we’ve witnessed the introduction of several new lightweight Kubernetes distributions. SUSE’s Rancher Labs k3s project was one of the earliest. Canonical now includes Microk8s in Ubuntu. And k0s is a single-binary Kubernetes distribution.

K3S is a Kubernetes distribution made by Rancher, made to be as lightweight as possible while being compatible with Kubernetes production standards.

Jeff led me to K3s using Ansible, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution that is perfect for my home cluster and a pre-defined way of installing it because I don't have pre-requirements nor the idea on how to set it up otherwise.

name: CD Pipeline on: push: branches: [main] jobs: deploy: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - name: Checkout repository uses: actions/checkout@v3 - name: Deploy via SSH uses: appleboy/ssh-action@master with: host: ${{ secrets.SSH_HOST }} username: ${{ secrets.SSH_USERNAME }} key: ${{ secrets.SSH_PRIVATE_KEY }} script: | # Update package index and install dependencies sudo apt-get update -y sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common # Add Docker's official GPG key curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add - sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" # Install Docker sudo apt-get update -y sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io # Add the SSH user to the Docker group sudo usermod -aG docker ${{ secrets.SSH_USERNAME }} # Install Docker Compose sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.20.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose # Verify installations docker --version docker-compose --version # Navigate to the project directory and deploy cd /home/ubuntu/ git clone cd fastapi-book-project/ git pull docker-compose up -d --build

#!/bin/bash sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose sudo -i chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose docker compose version

#!/bin/bash # Update the system sudo apt-get update -y sudo apt-get upgrade -y # Install Git sudo apt-get install -y git # Install Docker sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null sudo apt-get update -y sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io # Add the 'ubuntu' and 'ssm-user' to the Docker group sudo usermod -aG docker ubuntu sudo usermod -aG docker ssm-user id ubuntu ssm-user sudo newgrp docker # Enable and start Docker sudo systemctl enable docker.service sudo systemctl start docker.service # Install Docker Compose v2 sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins sudo curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.23.3/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose sudo chmod +x /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose # Add swap space sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=128M count=32 sudo chmod 600 /swapfile sudo mkswap /swapfile sudo swapon /swapfile echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

--- - name: Run update ansible.builtin.apt: name: aptitude state: latest update_cache: true - name: Install dependencies ansible.builtin.apt: name: - net-tools - apt-transport-https - ca-certificates - curl - software-properties-common - python3-pip - virtualenv - python3-setuptools - gnupg-agent - autoconf - dpkg-dev - file - g++ - gcc - libc-dev - make - pkg-config - re2c - wget state: present update_cache: true - name: Add Docker GPG apt Key ansible.builtin.apt_key: url: https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg state: present - name: Add repository into sources list ansible.builtin.apt_repository: repo: deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu {{ ansible_lsb.codename }} stable state: present filename: docker - name: Install Docker ansible.builtin.apt: name: - docker-ce - docker-ce-cli state: present update_cache: true - name: Add non-root to docker group user: name: ubuntu groups: [docker] append: true - name: Install Docker module for Python ansible.builtin.pip: name: docker - name: Install Docker-Compose ansible.builtin.get_url: url: https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.29.2/docker-compose-Linux-x86_64 dest: /usr/local/bin/docker-compose mode: '755' - name: Create Docker-Compose symlink ansible.builtin.command: cmd: ln -s /usr/local/bin/docker-compose /usr/bin/docker-compose creates: /usr/bin/docker-compose - name: Restart Docker ansible.builtin.service: name: docker state: restarted enabled: true

Docker Compose v2.30.0 has introduced lifecycle hooks, making it easier to manage actions tied to container start and stop events. This feature lets developers handle key tasks more flexibly while keeping applications clean and secure.

curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.23.0/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o $DOCKER_CONFIG/cli-plugins/docker-compose

sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m) -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose docker-compose version