GitHub user chunkyen created a discussion: 📢 CloudStack Kubernetes Flavors — A Reference Guide I Wish I Had When I Started
I've been exploring Kubernetes on CloudStack out of personal interest, and one thing that struck me early on was how scattered the information is. Documentation exists for each individual approach (CKS, CAPC, Talos), but there wasn't a single place that compared them side-by-side or walked through the practical gotchas you hit along the way. So I started building that reference — a repository covering four approaches to running Kubernetes on CloudStack: 1️⃣ CKS (CloudStack Kubernetes Service) — Native CloudStack integration 2️⃣ CAPC (Cluster API Provider for CloudStack) — Infrastructure-as-Code with CAPI 3️⃣ Rancher + CAPC — Managed Kubernetes with Rancher as the management plane 4️⃣ Talos Linux — Minimal, immutable Kubernetes OS (standalone or with Sidero Omni) Plus two cross-cutting components that apply to every flavor: - CloudStack Kubernetes Provider (CCM) — external cloud controller manager for node labels, load balancers, and firewall rules - CloudStack CSI Driver — persistent storage with dynamic provisioning and snapshots Each flavor includes architecture analysis, setup guides, and — most importantly — the lessons learned from actually deploying them. Things like the CSI DaemonSet cloud-init-dir issue on Talos, the ClusterClass limitation with CAPC, or the self-signed CA trust dance with Omni. The kind of details that take hours to figure out but are obvious in hindsight. A significant portion of the work went into air-gapped / offline CKS deployment — including a deep-dive into the ISO build process, container image pre-import workarounds, Cilium manifest patching for offline environments, and the various failure modes you hit when CKS assumes internet access is available. The [offline guide](https://github.com/chunkyen/cloudstack-kubernetes-flavors/blob/main/setup/cks/cks-offline.md) (https://github.com/chunkyen/cloudstack-kubernetes-flavors/blob/main/setup/cks/cks-offline.md) documents all of this. The Rancher + Turtles + CAPC combination was something I figured out on my own — I couldn't find any existing architecture or guide that documented this specific stack working together. It's a good example of how open source technologies can be combined even when there's no official reference architecture, and I hope the guide helps others who want to run this stack without having to piece it together from scratch. I've also included suggested improvements for the approaches that could benefit from upstream changes: - [CKS Improvements](https://github.com/chunkyen/cloudstack-kubernetes-flavors/blob/main/setup/cks/cks-improvements.md) (https://github.com/chunkyen/cloudstack-kubernetes-flavors/blob/main/setup/cks/cks-improvements.md) — pre-import images during upgrades, restrictive default firewall rules, ISO build script fixes, and more - [CAPC + Rancher Turtles Improvements](https://github.com/chunkyen/cloudstack-kubernetes-flavors/blob/main/setup/rancher-turtles-capc/capc-rancher-turtles-improvements.md) (https://github.com/chunkyen/cloudstack-kubernetes-flavors/blob/main/setup/rancher-turtles-capc/capc-rancher-turtles-improvements.md) — dynamic credential injection, ClusterClass support, etcd backup automation, and other proposals What's in the repo: - 🏗 Architecture docs for each flavor and cross-cutting components - 📖 Step-by-step setup guides - ⚠️ Known issues and workarounds - 💡 Suggested improvements for upstream projects - 📊 Quick comparison table (complexity, GitOps, upgrades, multi-cluster) How it was built: The entire repository was developed collaboratively with AI agents (Hermes / OpenCLAW) running on locally hosted models (Qwen, Gemma, etc.) — a testament to how far open-source LLMs have come for technical documentation and infrastructure work. 🔗 https://github.com/chunkyen/cloudstack-kubernetes-flavors This is a lab project driven by curiosity, not production experience. If you're also exploring Kubernetes on CloudStack, I hope this saves you some of the head-scratching. Corrections, contributions, and suggestions are very welcome! GitHub link: https://github.com/apache/cloudstack/discussions/13638 ---- This is an automatically sent email for [email protected]. To unsubscribe, please send an email to: [email protected]
