Lightweight Kubernetes. Easy to install, half the memory, all in a binary less than 40mb.

Great for:

  • Edge
  • IoT
  • CI
  • ARM
  • Situations where a PhD in k8s clusterology is infeasible

What is this?

K3s is a fully compliant Kubernetes distribution with the following enhancements:

  • An embedded SQLite database has replaced etcd as the default datastore. External datastores such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, and etcd are also supported.
  • Simple but powerful “batteries-included” features have been added, such as: a local storage provider, a service load balancer, a helm controller, and the Traefik ingress controller.
  • Operation of all Kubernetes control plane components is encapsulated in a single binary and process. This allows K3s to automate and manage complex cluster operations like distributing certificates.
  • In-tree cloud providers and storage plugins have been removed.
  • External dependencies have been minimized (just a modern kernel and cgroup mounts needed). K3s packages required dependencies, including:
    • containerd
    • Flannel
    • CoreDNS
    • Host utilities (iptables, socat, etc)