Using this tool with existing Hetzner cloud VMs

[maulik13]

Hi @vitobotta, fantastic job with this tool 👏

I want to use this tool but with my existing managed cloud VMs in Hetzner. I already have my Terraform and Ansigble setup that create all the cloud part of the infrastructure. I would like to use your tool only for k3s setup part. Is there a way to use this tool with existing VMs today? I tried to go through the docs but did not find any specific information.

Many thank for your time.

[vitobotta]

Hi, hetzner-k3s is designed to manage the infrastructure for you. It's not just a k3s installer. It provisions all the instances, network, firewall etc. So it's not really meant to be used with existing VMs, unless you name them with the same naming convention used by hetzner-k3s. Same goes for the network etc. Why would you want to use extra tools like Terraform and Ansible when hetzner-k3s can do everything for you? The reason why I built hetzner-k3s was exactly because I wanted a purpose built tool to manage my clusters in Hetzner Cloud without having to deal with multiple tools and configurations.

All you need with hetzner-k3s is the binary and a super simple configuration file, and nothing else.

[vitobotta]

I converted this to a discussion since it's not about a bug or problem with the tool.

[igorhrcek]

One of the reasons now is to try to keep existing VMs because whatever was provisioned until June 15th is billed using the old pricing. New instances are much more expensive, so being able to keep what you currently have might be helpful.

[vitobotta]

With today's v2.6.0 release, it's now possible to add external nodes to a cluster, but the control plane must be in Hetzner Cloud.

[jampy]

Perhaps the OP means to recycle already active Hetzner VM instances and have hetzner-k3s use them to build the cluster (by reinstalling the O/S and so on)? The rationale seems to be Hetzner VM availability and recent pricing increases making existing instances valuable.