MicroK8s, already popular for IoT and developer workstations, now gains resilience for production workloads in cloud and server deployments. Canonical has announced autonomous high availability (HA) clustering in MicroK8s, the lightweight Kubernetes.

High availability is enabled automatically once three or more nodes are clustered, and the data store migrates automatically between nodes to maintain quorum in the event of a failure.

Designed as a minimal conformant Kubernetes, MicroK8s installs and clusters with a single command.

HA MicroK8s are claimed to withstand the loss of any node and still provide reliable services, meeting production requirements with minimal administrative costs and oversight.

The datastore which makes this possible is Dqlite, Canonical’s raft-enhanced Sqlite,
embedded inside Kubernetes. Dqlite reduces the cluster memory footprint and automates
datastore maintenance.

MicroK8s can also be configured to use etcd, but Dqlite provides automatic, autonomous high availability.

MicroK8s automatically chooses the best nodes to provide the datastore. In case of a datastore node failure, the next best node is automatically promoted in its place. MicroK8s manages its own control plane, ensuring API services remain up and running.

The increased resilience of HA MicroK8s benefits Kubernetes clusters on edge nodes, such as
remote branch office racks, retail points of sale, cell towers, or cars.

HA MicroK8s also claim to harden industrial IoT applications, supporting cloud-native applications in the high stakes environment of operation technology.