How to host your own managed Kubernetes cluster in the cloud

11/21/2024image

This post is AI generated and serves purely as an example.

How to Host Your Own Managed Kubernetes Cluster in the Cloud

Hosting your own managed Kubernetes cluster in the cloud can be a rewarding journey, especially if you want complete control over your infrastructure without relying on fully managed services. In this guide, we’ll explore how to build and manage your cluster effectively while optimizing for performance, security, and cost.

Why Host Your Own Cluster?

When using managed Kubernetes services like GKE, AKS, or EKS, you trade off some level of control for convenience. Hosting your own Kubernetes cluster offers benefits such as:

  • Full Customization: Choose specific Kubernetes versions, configure custom networking, and deploy exotic workloads.
  • Cost Savings: Avoid vendor lock-in or per-cluster fees imposed by managed services.
  • Learning Opportunity: Deepen your understanding of Kubernetes internals and cloud orchestration.

Now, let’s dive into the steps to set up your cluster.

Step 1: Choose Your Cloud Provider

Select a cloud provider that fits your needs. Some great options are:

  • Hetzner Cloud: Budget-friendly with high-performance servers.
  • DigitalOcean: Developer-centric with intuitive interfaces.
  • AWS: Offers robust infrastructure for scaling workloads.

For this guide, we’ll use Hetzner Cloud, as it provides an excellent balance between cost and performance.

Step 2: Provision Your Servers

Start by provisioning virtual machines (VMs) for your control plane and worker nodes.

  1. Control Plane Node:
    Allocate a high-availability VM with a minimum of 2 vCPUs and 4 GB RAM.
    Example Hetzner instance: CX21.

  2. Worker Nodes:
    Deploy two or more worker nodes for redundancy and scaling.
    Example Hetzner instance: CX31 (2 vCPUs, 8 GB RAM).

Networking

  • Set up a private network for secure node communication.
  • Assign a public IP to the control plane for API access.

Step 3: Install Kubernetes with kubeadm

Once the servers are provisioned, SSH into your control plane and worker nodes to install Kubernetes.

On All Nodes

  1. Install Dependencies: 
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl
curl -s https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://apt.kubernetes.io/ kubernetes-xenial main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y kubelet kubeadm kubectl
sudo systemctl enable kubelet