postgresql_cluster VS k3s

Creating a robust and reliable database cluster is often fraught with challenges.A manual deployment process can be fraught with risks, particularly for those who lack extensive experience. Even minor errors in configuration can drastically affect your database's performance and stability.

Recognizing this intricacy, many businesses choose to use cloud-based managed databases. These services offer convenience but not without limitations. These drawbacks can include being tied to a specific cloud provider and limited direct access to the database server for adjustments. These constraints can hinder your ability to tune your system and perform thorough performance analyses.

In response to these challenges, we've developed a project to make this process easier and more efficient. This project uses automation to streamline the deployment of High-Availability PostgreSQL Clusters. By doing so, it helps mitigate the risks involved with manual configuration and speeds up the deployment process.

Our solution caters to various deployment environments. It allows you to establish your cluster either in your own data center or in the cloud, providing a robust database solution similar to managed databases, but with you retaining full control.

Explore the project here: https://github.com/vitabaks/postgresql_cluster

FYI: postgresql_cluster

HA postgres

If not Kubernetes, check out this: https://github.com/vitabaks/postgresql_cluster – Postgres + patroni + pgBouncer + WAL-G or pgBackRest + Netdata + more, managed by Ansible.

If you do want to use Kubernetes, then check out StackGres.io and https://github.com/zalando/postgres-operator

Also check PostgreSQL High-Availability Cluster (based on "Patroni" and "DCS(etcd)"). Automating deployment with Ansible.

Opinionated meaning it picks, install, patches your CNI/Ingress/Load Balancer/DNS Server/Metrics Server/Monitoring Setup.

k3s is probably most well known as it ships with bunch of preinstall software: https://github.com/k3s-io/k3s so you can just start throwing yaml files at cluster and handling workloads. It's what I use for my homelab.

Paid things I've heard of include OpenStack and SideroLabs. Haven't used personally by SRE coworkers say good things about them.

For self-hosting I've found https://k3s.io to be really good from the SUSE people. Works on basically any Linux distro and makes self-hosting k8s not miserable.

Yes it’s going to depend on which k8s distribution you’re using. We have work in-progress for k3s to natively support nix-snapshotter: https://github.com/k3s-io/k3s/pull/9319

For other distributions, nix-snapshotter works with official containerd releases so it’s just a matter of toml configuration and a systemd unit for nix-snapshotter.

We run Kubernetes outside of NixOS, but yes the NixOS modules provided by the nix-snapshotter certainly make it simple.

K3S: is a lightweight distribution of Kubernetes that is designed for resource-constrained environments. It is an excellent option for running Kubernetes on a virtual machine or cloud server.

I recently purchased a used Lenovo M900 Think Centre (i7 with 32GB RAM) from eBay to expand my mini-homelab, which was just a single Synology DS218+ plugged into my ISP's router (yuck!). Since I've been spending a big chunk of time at work playing around with Kubernetes, I figured that I'd put my skills to the test and run a k3s node on the new server. While I was familiar with k3s before starting this project, I'd never actually run it before, opting for tools like kind (and minikube before that) to run small test clusters for my local development work.

Kubernetes - k3s distribution

I’ve created a local cluster with K3S and installing Windmill could not be simpler with just one chart to configure, which already has sane defaults to get started. For this demo we will also configure workers to passthrough environment variables to our scripts so that they have access to the Kubernetes API server for later.

You should be familiar with Kubernetes and have set up a Kubernetes cluster. I recommend k3s.