The Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE) is a managed container orchestration engine built on top of Kubernetes. LKE enables you to quickly deploy and manage your containerized applications without needing to build (and maintain) your own Kubernetes cluster. All LKE instances are equipped with a fully-managed control plane at no additional cost. Only pay for the worker nodes that run your application and any optional NodeBalancers (load balancers) and Block Storage volumes that your application uses.

Features

• Free fully-managed control plane: The control plane on a Kubernetes cluster is responsible for managing the cluster's worker nodes, resources, and Pods. Basic control plane infrastructure is provided at no cost. An optional high availability control plane is offered as a paid upgrade.
• Automatic monitoring, backup, and recovery: A snapshot of your cluster's metadata is backed up continuously and your cluster is automatically restored in the event of a failure. In addition, all of the control plane components are monitored and, if a failure is detected, they will automatically recover.
• Kubernetes Dashboard: All LKE installations include access to a Kubernetes Dashboard installation.
• Third-party integration: Harness the strong open source ecosystem of Kubernetes tooling. LKE supports integration with popular K8s-related tools, such as Rancher, Helm, Operators, and more.

Availability

The Linode Kubernetes Engine is available across all core compute regions, but is not yet available in distributed compute regions.

Pricing

The basic control plane infrastructure on LKE clusters is provided at no additional cost. An upgrade to a high availability control plane is priced starting at $60/month per cluster, depending on region. All other resources consumed by the cluster are billed at the normal rate, including Compute Instances, NodeBalancers, and Block Storage volumes. Review the Pricing page for more information on those costs.

Technical specifications

• Equipped with a fully-managed control plane at no cost. While the control plane is fully-managed, the user is responsible for managing their deployment configuration and applications.
• Kubernetes version availability: When deploying your cluster, you can select from multiple Kubernetes versions. These are periodically updated with the latest features and security updates. We also regularly make new Kubernetes versions available and remove older versions when they are no longer supported.
• Compute Instance plans supported: Dedicated CPU, Shared CPU, High Memory, and Premium CPU (excluding the 512 GB size for both Dedicated CPU and Premium CPU). See the Pricing page for the compute resources included in each plan.
• 40 Gbps inbound network bandwidth
• Free inbound network transfer
• Provisioning and management through Cloud Manager, Linode CLI, or programmatically through the Linode API

Developer resources

• Linode API provides the ability to programmatically manage the full range of Akamai cloud computing products and services.
  • Linode Kubernetes Engine Endpoint Collection
• Linode CLI is a wrapper around the Linode API that lets you manage your account and resources from the command line. Learn how to use the Linode CLI to create and manage LKE clusters.
• Terraform: Terraform is an Infrastructure-as-code tool that includes management features for various types of Linode resources. Use Linode’s official Terraform Provider to provision Linode Kubernetes Engine Clusters.