secrets-store-csi-driver-provider-aws VS k3d

The driver can also sync changes to secrets. The driver currently supports Vault, AWS, Azure, and GCP providers. Secrets Store CSI Driver can also sync provider secrets as Kubernetes secrets; if required, this behavior needs to be explicitly enabled during installation.

Great suggestions below. If you are a AWS shop and use secrets manager you can use https://github.com/aws/secrets-store-csi-driver-provider-aws

AWS SS-CSI driver

For a secrets manager we use the aws secrets store csi driver to fetch our secrets from aws secrets manager and parameter store. On Azure we still need to implement something similar, however an implementation does exist we haven't gotten around to it yet ;)

secrets-store-csi-driver-provider-aws

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.