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I've been running k3 on a single bigger hetzner dedicated machine to power https://demo.opensuite.online, a work-in-progress open source replacement for Google Workspace, a distribution of what the Dutch government is trying to switch to but they seemingly don't care about UX at all so I wanted to try build on their foundations (which in turn are basically just nextcloud, element, and some others).

Anyway can definitely recommend, it feels like a real cluster but it's all on a single piece of hardware which makes snapshots etc super simple.

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I've been doing the same for over a year. I think single node kubernetes is very underrated, both for running a single project or for multiple.

What are the advantages of running Kubernetes on a single node versus not using kubernetes at all (which seems simpler to me).

You need to see Kubernetes as a wrapper of the init thread (systemd).

If you fought with cgroup to tame resource (memory, cpu) consumption you know.

You get also controlled rollout for free.

Likewise, it’s also a platform so you get installation receipts of third party software’s for free.

You install the Prometheus operator and, bam, you get declarative monitoring as code for free.

The ticket entry is not free but once you got it, it’s repeatable and durable.

I use most of this chart:

https://github.com/combostrap/kubee#list-of-kubee-charts

There is more but it asks a real blog.

It made it trivial for me to deploy reproducible blocks that are also nicely integrated and automated on certain axes (DNS, LetsEncrypt, load balancer / reverse proxy, storage management, PostgreSQL databases with backups).

All of that with considerably easier to understand and debug mechanisms in my experience than doing it with old school configuration management or, even worse, manually.

Using the same software you might use at work and getting better at it, perhaps even exploring simpler distros like K3s, k0s, Minikube or whatever people use nowadays.

> seemingly don't care about UX

That seems to be the case on every project with the folks that sign the checks or contracts for integrating other vendors.

I think Jobs was the rare exception there.