To Kubernetes or not to Kubernetes, that is the Question: A Home Lab Perspective
When does running Kubernetes at home actually pay off, and when is it the wrong tool? A look at intent versus hype for self-hosters.
TLDR
For your homelab, if your idea of fun is to tinker, break things and fix them up better while building real hands-on skills, k8s fits right with you. But, if you just want to spin up a few services, then set and forget, you should consider simpler tools like docker, systemd services/apps etc.
The Temptation
It is certainly a tempting thought for the casual "homelabber" to simply follow the kubernetes hype and attempt to stand up a cluster to run home services. But it is important to take a pause and examine that thought, especially asking yourself what exactly you are trying to achieve, before digging in. I have to admit, it is certainly a lot of fun to do, moreso if you work with k8s on a day to day basis at work or you are on a journey to get real hands-on experience breaking and fixing clusters or you just have a knack for things like that and don't mind going down the rabbit hole.
What Kubernetes Was Built For
However, I think that to even attempt to answer the question objectively will certainly require a brief look at what problems kubernetes was originally designed to solve. And the simple answer to that is the problem of scale. Without a doubt Kubernetes solves many other problems and introduces many great features to infrastructure management, but before all else, kubernetes was designed as a way to horizontally scale the use of containers in a predictable way. And scaling just screams "enterprise" and managing "increasing or rather, fluctuating" loads on applications. And this raison d'être i.e. solving scale, doesn't really describe a homelab.
The Honest Admission
So while we, serious homelabbers 😄, will go war to protect our rights to our helm charts, somewhere within, we know we have an over-engineered entity/cluster chugging along, responding to our "kubectl get pods" with a max of usually 2 pods per actual useful service.
A Question of Intent
To answer the question of whether to go the route of k8s cluster(s) for homelab services is simply to answer a question of intent. And I have alluded to this earlier. You just have to define what you are trying to achieve. If the aim is to simply run a few self-hosted services and not tinker too much, then other simpler tools will do the job just fine. Tools like docker, podman, systemd services, or the good old Windows program installation are more suited to a beginner or simple setup (set and forget).