[thor24]

> I use K3S for deploying an actual production cluster

You mean when you want to run a small cluster of let's say less than 10 nodes (anything in single digits)?

Why doesn't normal k8 work this way? like same tech but just less scale?

(I should probably read more on the side myself as well, new to this K8 world).

[moondev]

It does. Upstream kubeadm - authentic kubernetes - can even run on a single node. Not sure why people choose k3s or microk8s when you can just as easily deploy the real thing.

[geerlingguy]

For smaller needs, K3s runs fast/stable on servers with 1-2 GB of RAM, whereas K8s proper tends to be a little shaky until you go to 2-4 GB, minimum.

[moondev]

I hear this a lot but have any actual, tangible comparisons been done with k3s vs kubeadm arm resource use?

[thor24]

That's exactly what i am confused about when only reading these things in isolation.

[wichert]

kubeadm is very bare bones though; it gives you a running node but you are still responsible for configuring network and storage providers, an ingress controller and probably a load balancer.

[koeng]

Yep, it’s a small self hosted cluster on my own server hardware (VMs on Proxmox) I’m sure k8s would work, but k3s made it really easy for me to get going so now just has inertia.

[thor24]

I see, I assumed logically Kubernetes as a community would want to keep thing simple and keep it same across scale. For large scale there could be different variations (like switching storage backend) but for small/low scale tier keep it dead simple.

I am guessing there were valid reasons for the offshoots (k3s, microk8s etc.).