Production K3s with MetalLB

Deploy a production-ready K3s Kubernetes cluster with MetalLB load balancer for bare metal and VPS environments. This guide provides step-by-step instructions for setting up and managing this technology on your VPS-based Kubernetes infrastructure.

Installing K3s

# Install K3s on the first server (control plane)
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -s - \
    --disable servicelb \
    --disable traefik \
    --write-kubeconfig-mode 644 \
    --tls-san your-public-ip

# Get token for worker nodes
cat /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token

# Join worker nodes
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_URL=https://control-plane-ip:6443 \
    K3S_TOKEN=your-token sh -

# Verify cluster
kubectl get nodes

Installing MetalLB

# Install MetalLB
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metallb/metallb/v0.14.5/config/manifests/metallb-native.yaml

# Wait for pods
kubectl wait --namespace metallb-system --for=condition=ready pod --all --timeout=90s

# Configure IP address pool
cat