Kubernetes Deployment Options for On-Prem Clusters
Lincoln Bryant, Robert W. Gardner, Fengping Hu, David Jordan, Ryan P. Taylor
TL;DR
This article confronts the problem of deploying production-grade Kubernetes on-premises by comparing three representative deployment strategies: kubeadm with Kubespray, OpenShift/OKD, and Rancher with K3S/RKE2. It analyzes provisioning approaches, essential integrations, and production extras to illuminate the trade-offs between flexibility, enterprise features, and governance. The work provides practical guidance for administrators and developers to select a distribution that aligns with scale, security requirements, and existing infrastructure, acknowledging that no single solution fits all on-prem environments. Overall, the study highlights how deployment choices shape lifecycle management, security posture, and operability in on-prem Kubernetes contexts.
Abstract
Over the last decade, the Kubernetes container orchestration platform has become essential to many scientific workflows. Despite its popularity, deploying a production-ready Kubernetes cluster on-premises can be challenging for system administrators. Many of the proprietary integrations that application developers take for granted in commercial cloud environments must be replaced with alternatives when deployed locally. This article will compare three popular deployment strategies for sites deploying Kubernetes on-premise: Kubeadm with Kubespray, OpenShift / OKD and Rancher via K3S/RKE2.