MetalLB and Kubernetes Bare-Metal Networking: LoadBalancers Without a Cloud

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The first thing that goes wrong when you build a Kubernetes cluster on your own hardware is the most anticlimactic possible failure. You deploy something, set its Service type to LoadBalancer the way every tutorial told you to, and then… nothing. kubectl get svc shows EXTERNAL-IP stuck on <pending>, forever, with the quiet patience of a thing that is never going to happen.

This is not a bug. On a cloud provider, type: LoadBalancer is a request that the cloud’s controller fulfils by provisioning an actual load balancer and handing you a public IP. On bare metal there is no cloud controller listening, so the request just sits there. MetalLB is the missing piece: it implements that controller for your own network, so a homelab or on-prem cluster can finally do the thing the cloud does for free.

MetalLB - Tag - vo.rs

MetalLB and Kubernetes Bare-Metal Networking: LoadBalancers Without a Cloud