[Methusalah]

This seems like a fun project and a great way to learn Kubernetes, but if I'm dropping this much money on it, I'd like it to have some productive purpose afterwards.

I'm a full-stack web dev primarily using node/react/postgres. I've also got some projects currently hosted on a Linode instance. Ideas on fun/productive uses for this cluster after I've built it and messed around with Kubernetes?

[striking]

Move the projects to your cluster and see what happens!

Consider the fact that, if you make improvements to the cluster, all of your apps will see that same lift. So if you were to set up backups on the cluster's persistent volumes and its databases, you'd get free backups for all of the projects you've moved. Same with monitoring, autoscale, and so on.

[robgibbons]

RPI's will handle Node surprisingly well, from my experience. A small cluster of them would be well suited to any number of web projects. A few years back, I played around with haproxy and a few Pi's running Node servers. You may be surprised how well they work as servers, as long as you're not expecting Xeon-level speeds.

[birdyrooster]

The Kubernetes ecosystem is evolving rapidly, you might want to keep it around to play with different CNIs, CSIs, service meshes, operators for clustered software lifecycle, and more.