Running a full Kubernetes cluster doesn't always mean spinning up multiple nodes. If you're prototyping, running a small production workload, or just want a lightweight environment to learn on, a single EC2 instance running Kubernetes is more than enough — and a lot cheaper.
In this post, I'll walk through the options for running Kubernetes on a single EC2 instance, why I went with K3s, and exactly how to get a working single-node cluster up in under five minutes.
Options for Running Kubernetes on EC2
Before picking a tool, it's worth knowing what's out there:
1] k3s : Single node, lightweight.
2] MicroK8s : Ubuntu-native, addons built-in.
3] Kubeadm : Full control, standard k8s.
4] Kind/Minikube : Local dev only, not for EC2 prod.
Each has a place. kubeadm gives you the full vanilla Kubernetes experience and is the right call if you're planning to scale to multiple nodes later. MicroK8s is a solid choice if you're already in the Ubuntu/Canonical ecosystem and want snap-based add-ons. Kind and Minikube are built for local development and aren't meant for EC2 production use at all.
Why K3s
Since the goal here was a single EC2 instance running a working cluster, K3s was the clear choice:
- Single command install — literally one line, no multi-step bootstrap process
- Half the memory footprint of full Kubernetes, so it runs comfortably on smaller instances
- Production-grade — it's not a toy; K3s is used widely in real-world deployments, including edge and IoT environments
- Batteries included — containerd, Flannel (CNI), Traefik (ingress), and CoreDNS all ship built-in, so there's nothing extra to install
-
100% kubectl compatible — every
kubectlcommand, every manifest, every Helm chart works exactly the same as it would on a "real" cluster
Prerequisites
- An AWS account
- An EC2 instance with:
- AMI: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
-
Instance type:
t3.medium(2 vCPU, 4GB RAM) - Storage: 20GB gp3
Step 1: Install K3s
SSH into your EC2 instance and run:
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -
That's the entire installation. Behind the scenes, this single command:
- Installs containerd as the container runtime
- Installs the control plane components (API server, controller manager, scheduler)
- Installs Flannel for pod networking
- Installs Traefik as the ingress controller
- Installs CoreDNS for cluster DNS
- Configures the node to act as both control plane and worker, since this is a single-node setup
- Registers itself as a systemd service, so it survives reboots
Step 2: Verify the Cluster
Check that the node is up and ready:
sudo kubectl get nodes
You should see a single node in Ready state:
NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION
ip-172-31-x-x Ready control-plane,master 1m v1.29.x+k3s1
That's it — you now have a fully functional, kubectl-compatible Kubernetes cluster running on a single EC2 instance, ready to take workloads.
What's Next
From here, the cluster behaves like any other Kubernetes cluster: deploy with manifests, expose services via Traefik ingress, install Helm charts, or wire it into a CI/CD pipeline to pull and run container images from a registry like ECR.
K3s strips away the operational overhead of running Kubernetes without compromising on compatibility — making it the simplest way to get a real cluster running on a single EC2 instance.