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Installation#

This section describes how to install k0smotron on top of an existing k0s Kubernetes cluster that allows for creation and management of the k0s control plane.

Pre-requisites

Before installing k0smotron, ensure that you have cert-manager installed when using the kubectl apply method.
If you use clusterctl, cert-manager is installed automatically as part of the process.

TL;DR

kubectl apply --server-side=true -f https://docs.k0smotron.io/v1.10.2/install.yaml

Installation modes#

k0smotron can be deployed in two modes: k0smotron standalone or as a Cluster API integration

k0smotron standalone#

This mode installs only the k0smotron operator: 

kubectl apply --server-side=true -f https://docs.k0smotron.io/v1.10.2/install-standalone.yaml

For more details, see the Standalone usage section.

Cluster API integration#

Deploys k0smotron as a full Cluster API provider (bootstrap, control plane, and infrastructure).
This installation embeds the standalone components, so there is no need to install standalone separately. For more details, see the Cluster API integration usage section.

There are two options for installing in CAPI mode:

Declarative deployment with kubectl apply:#

kubectl apply --server-side=true -f https://docs.k0smotron.io/v1.10.2/install.yaml

This installs all components: k0smotron operator, bootstrap provider, control plane provider, and infrastructure provider. It requires cert-manager to be preinstalled.

TL;DR

In order to run k0smotron CAPI controllers, Cluster API controllers must be installed first.

Per-module installation for Cluster API#

clusterctl init --bootstrap k0sproject-k0smotron \
                --control-plane k0sproject-k0smotron \
                --infrastructure k0sproject-k0smotron

In this case, clusterctl also ensures that cert-manager is installed automatically.

To start using the k0smotron Cluster API, refer to Cluster API.

Known limitations#

Areas in which k0smotron is currently limited include:

  • Control plane exposure

    Currently k0smotron only supports ClusterIP, NodePort, and LoadBalancer services, and often it is necessary to further configure created services to ease their interaction with cloud provider implementations.

  • Updates prevalence

    Although k0smotron can easily update the cluster control plane, in standalone mode such updates do not extend to worker nodes.

Hardware requirements#

k0smotron does not require any special hardware for workloads aside from the one required for k0s. For details on k0s hardware requirements for workloads, see k0s documentation.

Software prerequisites#

k0smotron requires the following software to be preinstalled:

  • Kubernetes management cluster. In this documentation set, we use the k0s Kubernetes distribution as a management cluster. For Cluster API integration, you can use a Cluster API cluster.
  • kubectl installed locally.
  • cert-manager installed in the management cluster.

  • For Cluster API integration:

    • clusterctl installed locally.
    • Configured cloud provider. In this documentation set, we describe configuration examples for the following providers: AWS, Docker, Hetzner Cloud, OpenStack, vSphere. For setup instructions, refer to the official documentation of the selected cloud provider.
  • Optional. CSI provider for persistent storage in managed clusters.
  • Optional. Load balancer provider for ensuring high availability of the control plane.