Deploy a Multiple Control Plane Kubernetes Cluster on ThreeFold Grid in Minutes

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Deploy a Multiple Control Plane Kubernetes Cluster on ThreeFold Grid in Minutes

Hello dear ThreeFold users,

I’m glad to present a new open-source project that makes deploying enterprise-grade Kubernetes clusters on the ThreeFold Grid incredibly simple. The TFGrid-K3s project automates the entire deployment process, from infrastructure provisioning to cluster configuration.

What Makes This Special?

  • Flexible Control Plane Architecture: Deploy with X control plane nodes for true high-availability Kubernetes (e.g. 3 control plane nodes)

  • Scalable Worker Nodes: Add Y worker nodes as needed for your workloads, completely customizable (e.g. 5 worker nodes)

  • Fully Automated: Single command deployment with zero manual configuration

  • Security-First Design: Implements best practices for handling sensitive credentials

  • WireGuard Integration: Secure network overlay between all nodes

  • Infrastructure as Code: Everything defined with OpenTofu (Terraform fork) and Ansible

How It Works

The deployment process is simple:

  1. Clone the repository

  2. Set your configuration variables (node IDs, sizing, SSH key)

  3. Securely set your ThreeFold mnemonic as an environment variable

  4. Run the whole deployment with one command (bash deploy.sh)

That’s it! In a few minutes, you’ll have a production-ready Kubernetes cluster running on distributed ThreeFold nodes.

Why Deploy Kubernetes on ThreeFold?

  • True Decentralization: Your clusters run on hardware running on the TFGrid

  • Sovereign Infrastructure: Full control over your computing resources

  • Cost-Effective: Pay only for the resources you use, without cloud provider markups

Complete Process

The complete deployment process is presented below.


# Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/mik-tf/tfgrid-k3s

cd tfgrid-k3s

# Configure your deployment

cp infrastructure/credentials.auto.tfvars.example infrastructure/credentials.auto.tfvars

nano infrastructure/credentials.auto.tfvars

# Set your mnemonic securely

set +o history

export TF_VAR_mnemonic="your_actual_mnemonic_phrase"

set -o history

# Deploy!
cd scripts
bash deploy.sh

Real-World Use Cases

This deployment is robust enough for various production workloads:

  • Web Applications: Deploy your web services with high availability

  • Data Processing: Run distributed data workloads

  • Development Environments: Create isolated dev/test environments

  • Blockchain Nodes: Run validators and nodes with Kubernetes orchestration

Community Feedback

Please share your experiences, suggest improvements, or contribute to the codebase. The repository is available at github.com/mik-tf/tfgrid-k3s.

Getting Help

If you encounter any issues or have questions, feel free to:

  • Open an issue on GitHub

  • Ask in this forum thread

  • Check the troubleshooting guide in the repository

Thanks for reading and I wish you a happy cluster! :sun_behind_small_cloud:

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