Introduction

After some tinkering, I decided to build an homebalb with 2-node Raspberry Pi 4 cluster running K3s — one master and one worker — to learn better Kubernetes and host my own services.
In this post, I’ll walk you through the process: from hardware setup to K3s installation and homepage deployment with ingress access.

Hardware Setup

Here’s the base hardware I used:

  • 2× Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB RAM each)
  • Mini rack with dual fans for cooling
  • Gigabit network switch
  • Ethernet cables
  • Personal PC (used as a proxy to manage the cluster)
  • Raspberry Pi OS installed on both Pis (SSH enabled)

The Raspberry Pis are connected to the switch, and my DHCP server handles:

  • Static IP assignment for each Pi
  • Hostnames for rpi-master, rpi-worker, and proxy-pc

Network & SSH Configuration

With Raspberry Pi OS installed, I enabled SSH:

sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh

From my proxy PC, I can connect to each Pi:

ssh pi@rpi-master.local
ssh pi@rpi-worker.local

Installing K3s

Master Node

On the master (rpi-master):

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -

This starts the K3s server and generates a join token.

Worker Node

On the worker (rpi-worker):

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_URL=https://rpi-master:6443 \
K3S_TOKEN=<your-join-token> sh -

You can find the join token on the master at:

sudo cat /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token

Verifying the Cluster

From the master:

sudo k3s kubectl get nodes

You should see both master and worker nodes in Ready state.

Smoke Test Deployment

To ensure everything works, I deployed a simple test pod:

kubectl create deployment nginx --image=nginx
kubectl expose deployment nginx --type=ClusterIP --port=80
kubectl get svc

Pods and services deployed correctly — smoke test passed.

Accessing the Cluster from My Proxy PC

I copied the kubeconfig from the master to my proxy PC:

scp pi@rpi-master:/etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml ~/.kube/config

Then updated the server address in ~/.kube/config to point to rpi-master’s LAN IP.

Deploying Homepage

I deployed my homepage application and service:

kubectl apply -f homepage-deployment.yaml
kubectl apply -f homepage-service.yaml

Exposing Homepage via Ingress

Using the default ingress class of K3s (Traefik).

After updating my /etc/hosts on my proxy PC:

192.168.1.50 homepage.local

I could access the homepage via:

  • HTTP: http://homepage.local
  • HTTPS: https://homepage.local

Demo

Hardware Homepage Smoketest proxy Smoketest k3s cluster Smoketest k3s cluster

Next Steps

I plan to expand the cluster’s observability:

  • Deploy Grafana
  • Deploy Prometheus
  • Set up metrics and dashboards

Conclusion

This small but mighty Raspberry Pi 4 cluster now runs K3s with ingress routing and serves my homepage over HTTPS. It’s a perfect foundation for homelab experiments and a stepping stone toward more advanced Kubernetes workloads.

If you want to check out my configuration files, head over to my homelab-utils repo (when it’s back online!).