K3s Lightweight Kubernetes

K3s is a highly available, certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in resource-constrained, remote, or IoT environments, packaged as a single binary that reduces the dependencies and steps needed to install, run, and auto-update a production Kubernetes cluster. Developed by Rancher Labs (now part of SUSE) in 2019, with over 28,000 stars as of 2026. Key features include: single binary (entire Kubernetes distribution including kubelet, kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, kube-scheduler, containerd, and container networking in a single approximately 70MB binary), embedded SQLite (default datastore for single-node clusters with external database support for PostgreSQL and MySQL for multi-node HA), simplified operations (removed legacy alpha features, in-tree cloud provider plugins, and storage drivers in favor of CSI and external controllers), auto-TLS (automatic certificate generation and rotation for securing cluster component communication), embedded containerd (built-in containerd runtime with no Docker dependency), built-in ingress (Traefik-based ingress controller included by default), service load balancer (embedded ServiceLB providing layer 4 load balancing without external cloud provider), local storage (local path provisioner for out-of-the-box persistent volumes), Helm controller (native Helm chart installation via Custom Resource without tiller or CLI), multi-server HA (embedded etcd or external datastore for multi-control-plane high availability), ARM support (native ARM64 and ARMv7 support for edge and IoT deployments on Raspberry Pi), and auto-upgrade (Rancher System Upgrade Controller for automated cluster upgrades).