Fly Kubernetes does more now

Summary

Fly Kubernetes is moving from early access to a closed beta as a managed Kubernetes service backed by Fly.io infrastructure. It provides the Kubernetes API while mapping core primitives to Fly resources: containers become Firecracker microVMs through flyd and Firecracker, pods become Fly Machines, networking uses an internal WireGuard mesh, services use the Fly Proxy, and storage uses Fly Volumes. Virtual Kubelet, running alongside K3s, receives pod requests and deploys them through the Fly Machines API, removing user-managed node capacity planning and hardware management. The beta supports workloads, including GPUs, across available regions, with Deployments/ReplicaSets, Services, DNS, and ephemeral and persistent volumes, but only part of the Kubernetes API. Missing capabilities include multi-container pods, StatefulSets, network policies, horizontal pod autoscaling, and emptyDir volumes; pricing is free during beta and planned at $75 per cluster monthly afterward, excluding resource costs.

Takeaways

1. 1

   Virtual Kubelet acts as a node-like Kubernetes API without a backing Node, creating each pod as a Fly Machine on an underlying host in the selected region.

2. 2

   ClusterIP Services work with Fly.io internal DNS and CoreDNS, and pods communicate over the IPv6 WireGuard mesh and Flycast private network.

3. 3

   The beta omits multi-container pods, StatefulSets, network policies, horizontal pod autoscaling, and emptyDir volumes; autoscaling and emptyDir support are planned in the coming weeks, with multi-container pods targeted for the coming months.