K3s

Updated: April 6, 2026

k3s is best for creating a lightweight rpi cluster.

These are the steps used for creating my k3s pi cluster which contains
3 control nodes and 4 workers (stacked HA cluster)

Gather Facts
Hardware
Test
Install
Arguments
CRI

Gather Facts

Commands to find necessary information.
EEPROM:

# get UUID information
blkid

# current EEPROM version
vcgencmd bootloader_version

# man page
rpi-eeprom-update -h

# check if update is available
sudo rpi-eeprom-update

# install the update
sudo rpi-eeprom-update -a

# read current EEPROM configuration
rpi-eeprom-config  # or
vcgencmd bootloader_config

# read from an EEPROM image
pri-eeprom-config pieeprom.bin

Hardware

Use Raspberry Pi Imager to install ubuntu or raspbianOS then SSH in:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade -y
sudo rpi-update
sudo reboot now

SSH back into the sd card:

sudo rpi-eeprom-update -d -a
sudo raspi-config
# 5 Localisation Options >> L1 Locale >> en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 (select with spacebar) >> OK
# 5 Localisation Options >> L2 Timezone >> US >> Eastern
# 6 Advanced Options >> A7 Bootloader Version >> E1 Latest >> OK >> no
# 6 Advanced Options >> A6 Boot Order >> B2 USB Boot >> Finish >> yes, reboot

Install git and rpi-clone

sudo apt install git -y
git clone https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone.git
cd rpi-clone
sudo cp rpi-clone rpi-clone-setup /usr/local/sbin
sudo rpi-clone-setup -t $(hostname -s)
sudo rpi-clone -s

Connect USB || NVME SSD to RPI

sudo fdisk -l || lsblk || diskutil list # linux || Linux || mac
sudo sfdisk --delete /dev/sda
sudo rpi-clone sda
  # leave blank for optional file system label
  # hit enter to unmount
  # it will tell you PARTUUID, I note it for future reference for other scripting

Shutdown pi4, disconnect all power, unplug SD, plug power back in, verify

sudo shutdown -h now

Check where you are booting from:

mount | egrep "/([[:space:]]|boot)"

Test Write && Read

dd if=/dev/zero of=./speedTestFile bs=20M count=5 oflag=direct
dd if=./speedTestFile of=/dev/zero bs=20M count=5 oflag=dsync

Performance	SD Card	USB NVME
Write	32 MB/s	253 MB/s
Read	45 MB/s	263 MB/s

If ethernet keeps droping it may be issue with EEE (energy efficient ethernet)

# check eee status
ethtool --show-eee eth0

# turn eee off
sudo ethtool --set-eee eth0 eee off

Rest of setup can be done with ansible

Set networking
Establish SSH
Install dependencies for kubernetes
Configure cgroup driver

sudo rfkill block wifi
sudo rfkill block bluetooth

The Chosen

Calico # pod network
Traefik # load balancer
Glusterfs # storage volume
Helm # package manager
Prometheus # collect metric data
Grafana # visualize Prometheus data

K3s