Platform foundation
MetalLB
Gives bare-metal LoadBalancer services a real, routable IP
What it does
MetalLB implements the Kubernetes LoadBalancer service type on bare metal, which normally only works on a cloud provider's own network.
How it runs here
Runs in the metallb-system namespace and hands out addresses from a dedicated IP pool using layer-2 mode, announced only from worker nodes so a control-plane reboot cannot take ingress down.
Connects to
Why I chose it
A small self-hosted cluster still needs one real entry-point IP, and MetalLB is the standard way to get that without cloud infrastructure.