K3s
K3s is a CNCF project, originally from Rancher, that bundles Kubernetes with containerd, Traefik and a simple installer into one small binary. It runs on a laptop or a Raspberry Pi and is the cluster inside Rancher Desktop.
Key concepts #
- Server and agent: control plane and worker nodes.
- Traefik: the bundled ingress controller. See Traefik.
- containerd: the container runtime. See containerd.
Learn it #
See how to install K3s.
More tutorials that use K3s
Related tutorials
- Docker & Rancher Desktop Tutorials
Kubernetes in Rancher Desktop: Run Your Local Images on K3s
Use the Kubernetes cluster of Rancher Desktop: choose the version, run local images without a registry, expose apps with Traefik ingress and port-forward.
Containers and Orchestration
Rancher Desktop
Rancher Desktop is a free open source app with a container engine (containerd or dockerd) and a local K3s Kubernetes cluster for Linux, macOS and Windows.
Containers and Orchestration
Helm
Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes: it installs and upgrades applications from versioned charts with configurable values.