☸️ Docker & Kubernetes
K3s Lightweight Kubernetes
Lightweight Kubernetes for IoT, Edge, and CI/CD pipelines
Standard Kubernetes is heavy — the control plane requires gigabytes of RAM and complex etcd cluster management. K3s strips away legacy alpha features, replaces etcd with SQLite, and packages everything into a single 70MB binary. It is fully certified Kubernetes, just smaller and faster.
Key Concepts
Single Binary
No separate containers or processes for API server, scheduler, kubelet, etc. Everything is compiled into one single `k3s` Go binary. Extremely easy to install (curl | sh).
Low Memory Footprint
Standard K8s requires ~1.5GB RAM just to idle. K3s idles at around 512MB RAM. This allows Kubernetes to run on Raspberry Pis, IoT edge devices, and resource-constrained environments.
SQLite by Default
etcd is a complex, memory-hungry distributed key-value store requiring 3+ nodes for quorum. K3s replaces it with SQLite for single-node clusters, or uses external DBs (Postgres/MySQL) for high availability.
Batteries Included
Comes with embedded `containerd` (no need to install Docker), `Flannel` for networking, `CoreDNS`, and `Traefik` Ingress controller pre-installed. It works out of the box.
Standard K8s vs K3s Architecture
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Senior Architect Insight: If you need a local Kubernetes cluster for development, or a fast ephemeral cluster for CI/CD integration testing, K3s (or K3d, which runs K3s in Docker) is the absolute best choice. It spins up in less than 30 seconds.