Proxmox on Lichturm

Proxmox Kubernetes using Cluster-API Part 2: Cluster-API Testrun

Fri, 23 May 2025 19:23:12 +0200

Reading material

https://cluster-api.sigs.k8s.io/user/quick-start.html (Select Proxmox)

Setup proxmox cluster-api user account

Our Cluster API provider for Proxmox (CAPMOX) will need to be able to manage resources in Proxmox. We can either follow the basic instructions of the provider, which may grant a few more permissions than necessary, or we can define a more limited set of permissions ourselves. For comparison, here’s the simple variant using the PVEVMAdmin role:

pveum user add capmox@pve
pveum aclmod / -user capmox@pve -role PVEVMAdmin
pveum user token add capmox@pve capi -privsep 0

And here is a somewhat more minimal permission setup I ended up going with, based on the required permissions described here and some of my own findings:

Proxmox Kubernetes using Cluster-API Part 1: Preparing Images using Image Builder

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 13:58:54 +0200

After thinking about what to use for the Kubernetes cluster, the next step is building an image with the necessary software to start our VMs from. Manually updating nodes with kubeadm is not just more error-prone, it also gets tedious quickly once we have more than a low single digit numbers of nodes.

Building Images with image-builder

There is an official kubernetes project which produces VM-images for Cluster API called image-builder. image-builder can produce images for all kinds of virtualisation environments, and in the case of Proxmox, it starts a VM on the Proxmox Cluster to produce the VM template for Kubernetes. Under the hood, tools like Packer and Ansible are used. It is a bit on the heavy side, but it has a community around it, and for now, i like having something a bit more standardised.

Proxmox Kubernetes Cluster using Cluster API Part 0: Considerations

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 18:32:34 +0200

The devloper of Portfolio Performance called working on his Free Software project »Therapeutic Programming«; that is to say, that from time to time, it is salubrious to work on a technical project where you get to make all the design decisions, and no external restrictions are placed on you. Just you and the issue at hand, with no time pressure, or meddling detracting from the enjoyment and discovery. I have learned a lot about the tools i use in my work by finding uses for them in my free time. Usually i come across other people’s notes and documentation during this, which have always been very helpful. So, in the tradition of doing that, I will document building my own, homegrown, little datacenter for posterity.