HIGH AVAILABILITY k3s (Kubernetes) in minutes!

Have you been thinking about running Kubernetes but don't know where to get started? Let's start with k3s! k3s is a highly optimized distribution of Kubernetes that can run on ARM, IoT, Raspberry Pis, or even x86 hardware. It's small, lightweight, and gives you all the features in Kubernetes! Join me as we set up k3s for your homelab or production use!

(Affiliate links may be included in this description. I may receive a small commission at no cost to you.)

00:00 - Intro
00:23 - What are we going to do today?
00:50 - What is k3s?
01:37 - What are the requirements for k3s?
02:16 - k3s operating system requirements
02:23 - What are k3s data store options?
02:35 - Fixed registration address for k3s
02:52 - Load balancer for k3s
03:13 - What is the k3s architecture?
03:48 - Setting up k3s servers
04:25 - Setting up MySQL for k3s
05:14 - Create an NGINX load balancer for k3s
06:51 - k3s Gotchas
07:14 - Run the k3s Server install on our servers
08:41 - Taint vs Affinity
09:53 - Test our k3s server
10:37 - Run the k3s Agent install on our servers
10:56 - Get our k3s kubernetes token
11:25 - k3s agent install command
12:01 - Checking all of our k3s agents
12:17 - Get our k3s kube config and copy to our dev machine
13:27 - Install the kubernetes dashboard on k3s
14:22 - Kubernetes dashboard tour
14:47 - Deploy a workload deployment to our k3s servers
15:46 - exec into our pod to test it
16:05 - Scale our pods up to 20 on k3s!
17:30 - Delete deployment on k3s
17:37 - What do you think of k3s?
18:20 - Stream Highlight - Pass the inspiration on!

#k3s #Kubernetes #HomeLab

"Chroma" is from Harris Heller's album SHINGU.

Thank you for watching!

[TechnoTim]

What are you going to run your k3s cluster on?

[jessicalee]

Excellent work. You keep it simple and accessible. I would never attempt these levels of sophistication in my work. You are boiling this down to the simplest terms. Much appreciated. You have earned a loyal follower

[harrycox]

The video tutorials you make are gold.

[JeffOwens]

Just started setting up my Homelab and learning Kubernetes for work. Your videos are the best I have seen. Thank you for clear and detailed directions.

[duffyscottc]

I was not able to follow along with this tutorial for three reasons: 1. I don't know how to configure a load balancer (is it on another VM, is it on my personal machine, etc). 2. I don't know how to set up the mysql database (again, where does this go). 3. how do I set up the vms for my servers and agents? I've already followed your tutorials on proxmox, but I feel like that was left out here. Otherwise, thanks for this tutorial, you make great content, and I appreciate everything!!

[andrebalsa]

Great, great tutorial for deploying HA K3s, and after two years, everything still works as per your explanations (with a couple of minor adjustments). Thanks a bunch for your excellent work !

[pchasco]

I really appreciate this video! I've been struggling to get a k8s cluster up and running, and this video was exactly what I needed. Thanks so much!

[gumtreeuser]

@TechnoTim, you may add two things:
1. the k3s servers don't just pick up K3S_DATASTORE_ENDPOINT variable, and need --datastore-endpoint parameter
2. second k3s server needs token argument

In my setup, in April 2024, these are what made it working.

Thanks anyway for this awesome video. Do you have any plans to have terraform based k3s deployment on XO or Proxmox or whatever homelab owners have?

[shinzoken]

Whoa you are throwing hot tutos, been watching and following along for 2weeks now, homelab is starting to look nice now :)

[unmetplayer]

With all the problems with google photos at the moment a video on something like photo prism would go a long way. Thank you for continously making quality content, keep up the good work!

[yeezul]

Great tutorial! Been waiting for you to do something like this for a while.
Thanks!
Ps: your tutorials are amazing. Well structured and easy to follow.
Keep up the good work!

[damienbutt]

It would be really helpful if you could show what you did to set up the MySQL database. I am just failing at that stage. I have a VM setup running MySQL and a k3s database created. But I cannot connect to it remotely despite changing the config file to allow remote connections from anywhere. Also, can you explain the database load balancer setup? The same load balancer as before, or a separate one? Can you show the topology? Sorry, there seems to be lots of gaps in the tutorial. Just little things left unexplained.

[GabREAL]

you're becoming my favourite yt channel for this kind of stuff... a lot of others are just super annoying or try to sell you stuff all the time like network chuck etc.
This is really useful stuff.

[abrahamlora]

Hey Tim, You're an inspiration for sure!
I have been consuming content for long time and I am also looking to start paying that forward soon.

[AndrewBradTanner]

FYA explaining HA server configuration at a high level would have prevented me from going down a rabbit hole of sillyness trying to setup a HA configuration without the datastore. Specifically the part about HA server configuration requiring the datastore. Still though, as someone new to K8s very helpful!

[EvilDesktop]

I've been looking at lots of docs the past few days to set up k3s in HA and from what I remember it can handle 1 server failure if we have at least 3 of them, I may be mixed up by k8s or something though. Nice videos, that's the first one that I actually ended up with a working k3s cluster! Thank you

[DJ-Manuel]

That sounds always easier to do when you explane it, but after i try it out it looks waaaay harder 😅👍
Thank you anyhow for this video

[nischalstha]

So well explained! Got my cluster up and running so well!!

[uuutttuuubbbee]

i think a lot of things have updated now on deploying K3S. Could you make an updated video for newest version of K3S?

[sacha]

Hey Tim, love your tutorials. If you want an idea for a video, there is one thing very tricky but could be extremely powerful to setup.
Can you add persistent storage on truenas for kubernetes nodes through NFS or iSCSI.