Apiserver-Only Clusters for Fun and Profit

This talk explores the concept of running Kubernetes clusters with only the API server and etcd, eliminating components like the controller-manager and scheduler. The presenters, Matt Turner and Liam White from Tetrate, demonstrate how this minimal setup can be used to host lightweight control planes for other systems, such as Istio. They discuss the theoretical minimum configuration and a practical implementation of a remote Istio control plane that leverages serverless technologies to reduce maintenance overhead and manage microservices across clusters and VMs.