Some Lightweight K8s Implementations
| Feature | Minikube | K3S/K3D | MicroK8s | KinD | K0S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Kubernetes | Rancher | Canonical | Kubernetes | Mirantis |
| Home | minikube.sigs.k8s.io | k3s.io k3d.io | microk8s.io | kind.sigs.k8s.io | k0sproject.io |
| Repo | kubernetes/minikube | k3s-io/k3s k3d-io/k3d | ubuntu/microk8s | kubernetes-sigs/kind | k0sproject/k0s |
| Suitability | Testing | Testing, Production, IoT | IoT | CI | |
| CNCF-Certified | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1-node cluster | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| multi-node cluster | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Architecture | x86 arm64 ARMv7 ppc64 s390x | x86_64 armhf arm64 aarch64 s390x | x86 arm64 s390x POWER9 | amd64 arm64 | x866-64 arm64 ARMv7 |
| Min CPU | 2+ | 1+ | 1+ | ? | 1+ |
| Min RAM | 2GB | 512MB | 540MB | ? | 1GB |
| Container RT | Docker, containerd, CRI-O | Docker, containerd | containerd, kata | Docker, CRI-O | containerd |
| Networking | Calico, Cilium, Flannel, ingress, DNS, Kindnet | Canal, CoreDNS, Flannel, Traefik, Klipper | Calico, Cilium, CoreDNS, Traefik, nginx, Ambassador, Multus, MetalLB | kindnetd | Calico, kube-router |
| OS | Linux, macOS, Windows | Linux | Linux | Linux, macOS, Windows | Linux, Windows Server 2019 |
Conclusion
From this comparison:
- Minikube is the easiest to use but it is not suitable for production.
- For performance-constraint environments, K3S is an easy to use the lightweight K8s implementation.
- MicroK8s offers more features in terms of usage but it is more difficult to configure and install than others, could be a good duo with the Ubuntu.
- In resource-constrained environments, it is useful to consider also K0S.
- K0S and K3S are similar though if a proper toolchain is in place K0S gives attention to security by providing 100% FIPS compliance.