klipper-lb VS metallb

Service By, formerly Klipper LB, could also be an option, this is also by default integrated in k3s: https://github.com/k3s-io/klipper-lb

IMO Klipper is super simple compared to other load balancers: You setup a load balancer saying "hey I want to access this service on port 8080" and then you can access it from the outside by using "AnyKubernetesNodeIp:8080".

klipper (servicelb) is a very basic implementation of a load balancer, reading thru the issues you'll soon discover there's many reasons why metallb is preferred. For example klipper only supports externalTrafficPolicy: Cluster which means the real source IP of the request is not passed thru to the pod. The pod only gets the LB IP.

GitHub - k3s-io/klipper-lb: Embedded service load balancer in Klipper

Hey guys, I want to share a guide I’m pretty proud of which is talking about setting up kubernetes which leverages https://kubespray.io/#/ and https://metallb.universe.tf/ so you can host this yourself most people when spinning up kubernetes opt for k3s or get stuck with all the options or unable to setup the external ips for their services so these tools will eliminate the problem.

Have a closer look at MetallLB.

To avoid that, you can use a combination of haproxy and keepalived, an enterprise grade load balancer like the one from F5 or Citrix. Besides that you can also work with https://kube-vip.io or https://metallb.universe.tf.

Not sure if klipper is usable in a cluster with multiple nodes, as it binds to one port only. You may want to use MetalLB instead: https://metallb.universe.tf/

Then deploy MetalLB https://metallb.universe.tf/

What issue do you see with the load balancer? For self hosted clusters, one can use MetalLB for example to have such single outfacing IP which will failover to another node keeping the same IP if a node dies.

Quoting from their docs:

metalLB to manage bare-metal LoadBalancer services - WIP - Only L2 configuration can be set-up via playbook.