MicroK8s vs K3s vs minikube
Lightweight Kubernetes distributions are becoming increasingly popular for local development, edge/IoT container management and self-contained application deployments. If you are looking to run Kubernetes on devices lighter in resources, have a look at the table below. MicroK8s stands out for its simplicity, robustness and completeness.
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| MicroK8s | K3s | minikube | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNCF certified | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Vanilla Kubernetes | Yes | – | Yes |
| Architecture support | x86, ARM64, s390x, POWER9 | x86, ARM64, ARMhf | x86, ARM64, ARMv7, ppc64, s390x |
| Enterprise support | Yes | Yes | – |
| Single-node support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-node cluster support | Yes | Yes | – |
| Automatic high availability | Yes | Yes | – |
| Automatic updates | Yes | Yes | – |
| Memory requirements | 540 MB | 512 MB | 644 MB |
| Add-on functionality | Yes | – | Yes |
| Container runtime | containerd, kata | CRI-O | Docker, containerd, CRI-O |
| Networking | Calico, Cilium, CoreDNS, Traefik, NGINX, Ambassador, Multus, MetalLB | Flannel, CoreDNS, Traefik, Canal, Klipper | Calico, Cilium, Flannel, ingress, DNS, Kindnet |
| Default storage options | Hostpath storage, OpenEBS, Ceph | Hostpath storage, Longhorn | Hostpath storage |
| GPU acceleration | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Why MicroK8s?
Selecting your lightweight Kubernetes distribution depends on the use case, the resource constraints and your familiarity with the Kubernetes internals.
MicroK8s is the easiest way to consume Kubernetes as it abstracts away much of the complexity of managing the lifecycle of clusters. Its low-touch UX automates or simplifies operations such as deployment, clustering, and enabling of auxiliary services required for a production-grade K8s environment. Compared to other lightweight distributions MicroK8s is the only option that provides a single-command installation, automatic high availability clustering and automatic updates.
Robustness is a key primitive, particularly for production environments. Transactional over-the-air patching and security fixes, provided through the snap package as well as self-healing high availability of the Kubernetes control plane services, give MicroK8s the edge for mission-critical workload support.
With MicroK8s you get a complete, CNCF-compliant Kubernetes environment and all the services you need to run your OCI containers at scale, such as networking & load balancing, storage, service mesh, observability, GPU & FPGA acceleration, multi-cluster management and more - something unique among lightweight Kubernetes distributions.
MicroK8s and Kubernetes resources
Webinars on demand
- An intro to MicroK8s
- K8s at the edge: easy as “Pi”
- Embedded Kubernetes for secure IoT Edge
- MicroK8s on IBM Z — minimal footprint meets zero downtime
- Self-healing Kubernetes at the edge: MicroK8s, Raspberry Pis and Portainer
- KSimplifying Kubernetes across the Clouds: MicroK8s on NVIDIA Tech Stack
- Micro clouds: Building your Kubernetes edge computing strategy
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