k3s VS minikube

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.

Despite some of the mainstream Cloud providers offering Wasm integration, none of them provide such a low-level one. I'll continue on my laptop, but Docker Desktop doesn't offer a direct integration either: it's time to be creative. For example, minikube is a full-fledged Kubernetes distribution that creates an intermediate Linux virtual machine within a Docker environment. We can SSH into the VM and configure it to our heart's content. Let's start by installing minikube.

New-Item -Path 'c:\' -Name 'minikube' -ItemType Directory -Force Invoke-WebRequest -OutFile 'c:\minikube\minikube.exe' -Uri 'https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/releases/latest/download/minikube-windows-amd64.exe' -UseBasicParsing

Kubernetes cluster: You need a running Kubernetes cluster that supports persistent volumes. You can use a local cluster, like kind or Minikube, or a cloud-based solution, like GKE%20orEKS or EKS. The cluster should expose ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) for external access. Persistent storage should be configured to retain Keycloak data (e.g., user credentials, sessions) across restarts.

Minikube: Ensure you have Minikube installed and running. If not, download and install it from the official website: https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/

Visit the Minikube releases page and download the latest release for your operating system.

A Kubernetes cluster - we're using a local Minikube cluster (https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io)

To begin with, I don't have a home lab as such, so I'll run everything through minikube. I may switch things up later to get a more "realistic" k8s install, but minikube will be fine for a start.

With the containerized Node.js/Express API, I could run multiple containers, scaling to handle more traffic. Using a tool called minikube, we can easily spin up a local Kubernetes cluster to horizontally scale Docker containers. It was possible to keep one shared instance of the database, and many APIs were routed with an internal Kubernetes load balancer.

Install Minicube - a tool that allows us to spin up a Kubernetes cluster in a local machine Run minikube start to start your Kubernetes cluster Run minikube dashboard to spin up a web-based user interface that allows you to manage your Kubernetes cluster