Deploying a Single-Node Kubernetes Cluster on AWS EC2 with K3s

prokshita nagarajan — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 13:38:52 +0000

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 kubectl command, 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.