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K3s Master Node (OCI)

The Master Node functions as the control plane for the production K3s cluster hosted on OCI.

Role: Production Cluster Control Plane
Instance: k3s-master (Oracle Ampere A1)
OS: Ubuntu 22.04 Minimal (ARM64)

1. Hardware Specification

The master node is the primary compute resource for cluster management:

Component Specification Description
CPU 3 OCPU High availability for control plane services
RAM 20 GB Sufficient for control plane + core apps
Storage 150 GB Block Volume (High Performance)
Network Public IP Secured via Tailscale

2. Software Architecture

Core Components

  • Orchestrator: K3s v1.28+ (Lightweight Kubernetes).
  • Storage Provider: Longhorn (Distributed block storage).
  • Network CNI: Flannel (Standard K3s configuration).

3. Deployment and Provisioning

Infrastructure is provisioned using the following standard procedures:

  1. Base OS: Ubuntu 22.04 Minimal is deployed with cloud-init configuration.

  2. K3s Installation: Executed via the official install script with specific flags for ARM64 optimization:

    curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -s - server --cluster-init

  3. Token Management: The cluster-join token is secured and stored within the secret management system.

4. Security Hardening

Control plane security is maintained through:

  • Firewall Rules: OCI VCN Security Lists restricted to cluster internal communication and authorized VPN IPs.
  • Authentication: RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) is strictly enforced.
  • Audit Logging: System and Kubernetes audit logs are captured and monitored.

5. Resource Management

To maintain optimal performance for hosted applications like OpenClaw, heavy compute services are offloaded:

  • Ollama Offloading: The local Ollama deployment has been removed from the K3s cluster.
  • External Failover: AI inference tasks are routed to an external Ollama instance (Windows PC) or cloud providers via OpenRouter to preserve OCPU and RAM for core application services.