Cost-Effective Kubernetes at the Edge: a Comparative Analysis of K3s on Raspberry Pi Versus Cloud Deployments
Srivenkateswara Reddy Sankiti, Vinoth Punniyamoorthy, Shiva Kumar Reddy Carimireddy, Ashok Gadi Parthi, Nachiappan Chockalingam, Kabilan Kannan, Suhas Malempati, Akash Agarwal
Abstract
This paper presents a practical and cost-effective approach to deploying a lightweight Kubernetes (K8s) cluster using K3s on Raspberry Pi (RPi) devices for edge computing within residential and academic environments. The proposed framework integrates MetalLB for Layer-2 load balancing, Ingress-NGINX for HTTP/HTTPS routing, and Cert-Manager for automated TLS certificate management through a local Certificate Authority (CA). An observability stack comprising Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki enables comprehensive monitoring and centralized logging. Through configuration optimizations, the framework addresses Wi-Fi ARP instability and achieves secure, encrypted service access without reliance on public DNS or cloud infrastructure. Empirical evaluation demonstrates strong resource efficiency, reliability, and significant cost savings up to 87 % compared to equivalent cloud-based Kubernetes deployments. The system serves as a reproducible blueprint for secure, low-cost, and energy-efficient edge orchestration, supporting applications in academic instruction, research prototyping, and home-lab experimentation.