Kubernetes distros

vCluster is deployed with its own Kubernetes distribution that does not need to match with the host cluster's distribution. For example, you can deploy virtual clusters with the K8s distro on top of EKS clusters.

warning

After deploying your vCluster, changing the Kubernetes distribution of vCluster is not supported.

By default, the distribution of vCluster is vanilla Kubernetes (K8s) and is the recommended distribution to use.

Deprecation notice

Support for K0s and K3s is deprecated in vCluster v0.25. K0s support is removed in v0.26.
Migration to a supported Kubernetes distribution is recommended.

The following distributions are supported for virtual clusters:

• K8s: By default, vCluster uses vanilla Kubernetes. This is the recommended distribution.
• K3s: A lightweight, certified Kubernetes distribution designed for resource-constrained environments, remote locations, and IoT devices.
• K0s: A single-binary Kubernetes distribution with built-in cluster configuration. It can run on dual-stack host clusters but does not fully support dual-stack networking.

The Kubernetes distro of vCluster is completely independent of the Kubernetes distro of the host cluster. This means you can run vCluster using any supported Kubernetes distribution distribution regardless of the distribution type of the host cluster.

Host cluster compatibility

vCluster supports specific Kubernetes versions on host clusters. For more information, see the Kubernetes compatibility matrix.