Load Balancer Setup (Nginx)

The Nginx load balancer distributes incoming API server traffic across all k3s master nodes at Layer 4 (TCP). This is the single entry point for both external tools (kubectl) and worker nodes joining the cluster.

Target Machine

Run these steps on the dedicated infrastructure machine — the one that will also host the MariaDB database (e.g. 192.168.0.156).

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Step 1 — Create the Nginx Config

Create a file named nginx.conf with the following content.

Replace 192.168.0.151 and 192.168.0.152 with the actual IPs of your k3s master nodes.

nginx.conf

events {}

stream {
  upstream k3s_servers {
    server 192.168.0.151:6443;
    server 192.168.0.152:6443;
  }

  server {
    listen 6443;
    proxy_pass k3s_servers;
  }
}

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Step 2 — Create the Docker Compose File

Create a docker-compose.yml (or add to an existing one) with the Nginx service:

docker-compose.yml

services:
  nginx-lb:
    image: nginx:latest
    container_name: nginx-lb
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "6443:6443"
    volumes:
      - ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro

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Step 3 — Start the Load Balancer

docker compose up -d

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Verification

Confirm the container is running:

docker ps | grep nginx-lb

You should see nginx-lb in the output. Workers and kubectl clients should now point to 192.168.0.156:6443.

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Next Step

Continue to Database Setup to deploy MariaDB.