A practical walkthrough of provisioning K3s clusters on on-premise Proxmox infrastructure using k0rdent's Bring Your Own Template (BYOT) approach. The setup uses three custom Helm charts: an infrastructure provider that clones Proxmox VMs via API, a control plane provider that assigns node roles declaratively, and a bootstrap provider that installs and initializes K3s. k0rdent continuously reconciles desired state across all three layers, replacing manual bash scripts with a fully declarative, reproducible cluster lifecycle. The result is an on-prem Kubernetes setup that can be scaled or rebuilt through configuration alone.
Table of contents
The Big PictureWhy On-Prem + k0rdent Makes SenseStep 1: Infrastructure Provider (BYOT)Step 2: Control Plane ProviderStep 3: Bootstrapping Kubernetes with K3sHow k0rdent Ties It All TogetherWhat You End Up WithSort: