DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling

K2D by Portainer

May 17, 2024

Neil Cresswell and Steven Kang from Portainer discuss K2D, a project merging Kubernetes tooling with Docker to manage containers on edge devices. They delve into the architecture, motivations, and limitations of K2D, highlighting its efficiency and compatibility with small devices like Raspberry Pis. The podcast explores running Kubernetes tools on Docker without a full Kubernetes distribution and the future possibilities of lightweight container configurations.

32:42

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Episode guests

Steven Kang

Neil Cresswell

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Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

K2D project enables managing Docker containers on small devices using Kubernetes tools efficiently.

K2D offers minimal resource usage, crucial for small devices, with future plans to enhance functionalities and integrations.

Deep dives

Introduction of K2D: A Kubernetes to Docker Translation Project

Neil Creswell, CEO of Portainer, introduces the K2D project, which stands for Kubernetes to Docker, a concept creating a partial Kubernetes API on top of a Docker engine. Targeted at small devices like older Raspberry Pis, 32-bit machines, and edge infrastructure, K2D allows using Kubernetes tools to deploy containers on a Docker engine with minimal resource usage compared to traditional Kubernetes distributions.

Introduction

2min

Exploring Running Kubernetes Tools on Docker without Kubernetes Installed

2min

Exploring Kubernetes on Far-Edge Systems

4min

Optimizing Performance with K2D in Resource-Constrained Environments

18min

Functionality and Limitations of the Product

4min

Exploring Lightweight Container Configurations and Future Possibilities

3min

Bret and Nirmal are joined by Neil Cresswell and Steven Kang from Portainer to look at K2D, a new project that enables us to leverage Kubernetes tooling to manage Docker containers on tiny devices at the far edge.

K2D stands for Kubernetes to Docker, which is a bit of a crazy idea -- it's a partial Kubernetes API running on top of Docker Engine without needing a full Kubernetes control plane. If you work with very small devices, including older Raspberry PIs, 32-bit machines, maybe industry sensors and the infrastructure we now call 'edge', the container hardware is often hard for you to make simple, reliable, and automated all at the same time.

So this project uses less resources than a single node K3S and still allows you to use Kubernetes tools to deploy and manage your containers, which are in fact just running on a Docker Engine with no full-fledged Kubernetes distribution going on there.

We get into far more detail on the architecture, the Portainer team's motivations for this new open source project and what its limitations are, because it's not real Kubernetes, so it can't do everything.

Watch the video version on YouTube for any demos.

This episode is from our YouTube Live show on March 28, 2024 (Stream 260).

★Topics★
K2D website
K2D Docs

Creators & Guests