I realized I haven't posted about my DrupalCon Seattle 2019 session titled Everything I know about Kubernetes I learned from a cluster of Raspberry Pis, so I thought I'd remedy that. First, here's a video of the recorded session:



The original Pi Dramble 6-node cluster, running the LAMP stack.

I started running the Raspberry Pi Dramble in 2014, after I realized I could automate the setup of everything in a LAMP stack on a set of Raspberry Pi 2s using Ansible (one Pi for an HTTP load balancer/reverse proxy, two for PHP app backends, and two for MySQL redundancy. Kubernetes was the logical next step, so I moved things towards Kubernetes in 2017, but running Kubernetes was a lesson in pain due to the Pi's limited memory (1 GB maximum) at the time.

When the Raspberry Pi 4 came around, I acquired some 2 GB models as quickly as I could, and redeployed onto them. Gone were the restrictions that were causing Kubernetes' API to be flaky with the older Pis, and now the Pi 4 cluster is extremely reliable. Early on, cooling was an issue, but the recent firmware update has made that less problematic. I now power the cluster using the official PoE HAT, which means I only have one plug for each Pi, and everything fits nicely into a small travel case (if I want to bring the cluster with me anywhere).



The current Pi Dramble, running Kubernetes and sporting BlinkStick Nanos.

I even got it all to run off a 10,000 mAh battery pack with a bunch of USB splitters... but it did not stay powered long, and kept giving low power warnings—so I'll have to consider other options for a highly-mobile four-node Kubernetes bare-metal cluster.

I've continually updated the cluster so it is tested in a Docker-based Kubernetes environment, a Vagrant-based Kubernetes local development environment, and of course, the Pi environment. The latter environment causes much consternation, as many common container images are not maintained in an armv6 or linux/arm format, which is required when running on the 32-bit ARM OS the Pi uses, Raspbian. But the Pi Dramble abides, and it quietly goes on, serving up traffic for https://www.pidramble.com through the years.

The official Pi Dramble Wiki has all the instructions for building your own Pi Kubernetes cluster, with links to buy all the parts I have, along with every step to get it running using open source Ansible roles to install Kubernetes and Docker for ARM, then configure a new four-node cluster.