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Comment by imachine1980_ | Hacker News Reader

imachine1980_

Why use this over kubernetes, if it's the same but less memory why not only use k3s ans drop k8s

There's no real "over kubernetes". K3s is a kubernetes implementation.

You have to think of k8s as more of a specification of what can be done with multiple implementations. k3s, kind, microk8s, minikube are all implementations of kubernetes that you might want to try out.

k8s is much like the original IBM pc or a linux distribution. There are a bunch of interchangeable parts that you may land on depending on your needs.

Why use this over something else? I've found k3s to be really simple to setup and upgrade, which is why I use it for my home lab.

Yes. I think Kubernetes "distribution" has always made the most sense to me.

So all of those can be used to host a highly available multi physical node cluster?

It makes sense to use full Kubernetes in that case. The lightweight distributions are good for single instances or limited multiple nodes. Like homelabs, edge nodes, or local development. But hosting application in data center makes sense to use full Kubernetes.

As I said, there's not a "full kubernetes".

If you are in a datacenter, it's best to use the K8s distributed by that datacenter (EKS for AWS, for example).

The EKS provided by a datacenter will have integrations with external to Kubernetes resources you will almost certainly want (like storage, DNS records, or load balancers).

k3s and microk8s definitely support multiple node setup. I'm not sure about kind or minikube (Maybe? You'd have to look into the docs). How ready they are and how well they'll scale out will depend a lot on how the controllers are setup.

k3s, at least, supports multiple controller nodes on setup.

Where things really get squirrelly, at least with k3s, is storage and ingresses. k3s supports both but in a super robust fashion.

Kubernetes is sort of like Linux. There are distributions that excel in different areas. For example, RKE2 is for those that prioritize security. It deals with compliance and security things. There are numerous distros right now. The CNCF even has a certification program and listing for the certified ones.

K3s is the lightweight distro. You can install and run it from a single binary on pretty much any Linux distro.

There's 100+ certified kubernetes distros/products :)

https://www.cncf.io/certification/software-conformance/

Because this makes certain assumptions and certain decisions about the Kubernetes Environment you want to be running.

See here: https://docs.k3s.io/

It's fully compliant but opinionated towards the smaller side.

k3s is a single binary + a lot of unnecessary api's trimmed. In general a better entrypoint for someone new to k8s imo.

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