Kubitect - a Solution for On-premise Cluster Deployment

Deploying compute clusters is easy and user-friendly when using modern public cloud solutions, however alternative open source solutions for smaller, non-enterprise setups, such as hobby projects, home labs, or small and micro enterprises are currently missing. In this paper, we identify challenges for on-premise environments and propose Kubitect- a solution that allows anyone to set up their own on-premises private cloud that can run containerized applications and is easy to maintain. Unlike the existing state of the art, the proposed solution enables the creation of clusters on multiple physical hosts using a single declarative configuration file that can be easily understood and versioned. The paper describes the user and automated workflows of Kubitect, elaborates on the design choices for implementation and provides a qualitative and quantitative evaluation. The high-availability of on on-premises cluster deployment is also validated.