K3S on Hetzner VM
Hetzner is my favorite cloud provider. Easy to use, cheap... ideal not only for garage projects. I was thinking about Kubernetes cluster running in the cloud. As a playground, home projects, learning opportunity. Cluster? Not really, just Kubernetes on ONE NODE. I have experience with managed Kubernetes clusters in google, amazon, digital ocean... but usually you need at least 3 nodes and it is not cheap. On laptop with Minikube, Kind... But for the cloud, accessible from everywhere, running 24/4 I've decided K3S.
Price for it? ~4.30EUR/month
What VM I've chosen? CX23 with 2vCPU + 4GB RAM + 40GB SSD + 20TB traffic + public ipv4. OS LTS Ubuntu 24.04. I want something well known, big community... and for sure AI will be able to help me better
First I've used ChatGPT (OpenAI GPT-5.1) with the following sequence of commands:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y (update the system)
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sudo sh - (Install k3s)
sudo systemctl status k3s (check status)
sudo cat /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml (get kubeconfig + modification)
kubectl get nodes (basic test)
Simple. Works. ChatGPT suggested other optional steps (why not):
- Firewall
- Hetzner Cloud Controller + Hetzner CSI
- Automation (Bash, Terraform
I've also asked Gemini (Flash 2.5) what added:
- HA cluster using hetzner-k3s tool (must try later)
And Claude (Sonnet 4.5) added:
- Hetzner Cloud Controller + Private networking for multi node