<p>I'm tasked with developing a container network that is supposed to run on older hardware, i have therefore <strong>ressource constraints</strong> with servers in the 4 to 8GB RAM range.</p>
<p>As for now we have everything running on Docker, here it's around 8-10 <em>very lightweight Containers</em> and <strong>things are tight but alright</strong>.</p>
<p>I have started digging into <em>Kubernetes</em> as we have edgecases where we would need to scale to a 100+ of these containers on multiple servers.</p>
<p>We are considering adding Kubernetes as a default Wrapper over everything, even our currently well running smaller Docker network.</p>
<p>However i could not find any reasonable estimate regarding just the Kubernetes overhead; there's official sources stating you need already 2GB (!!) just for the runtime. It is hard to believe for me that it is THAT wasteful. Given its actual tasks I would've estimated maybe like 30-50MB.</p>
<p>Has anyone real-world numbers/experience regarding Kubernetes overhead?
E.g. how much more % of CPU/RAM does your network need simply by adding a Kubernetes layer on top?</p>

Philipp Elhaus
<p>I think here no blanket statement can be made because a “naked” Kubernetes does not bring you much. You need various helpers, such as a network plugin. But if you want to implement your solution with Kubernetes but require a more resource efficient distribution, then it's worth looking into <em>MicroK8s</em> or <em>K3s</em>  <a href="https://microk8s.io/compare" rel="nofollow noreferrer">comparison</a>.</p>
<p>How many resources your cluster needs depends on what you run on which servers, a worker node definitely needs less than a node running the control-plane.</p>
