Show HN: Edka – Kubernetes clusters on your own Hetzner account

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Product concept & target users

  • Web-based control plane that provisions full Kubernetes clusters into a user’s own Hetzner account; users pay Hetzner directly for resources.
  • Focus is on simplicity and a GUI, plus one-click deployment of common add‑ons (ingress, Prometheus, Elasticsearch, databases, WordPress, etc.).
  • Intended for developers/small companies who want Kubernetes benefits on Hetzner without deep ops expertise.

Comparison to existing tools & services

  • Users compare it to kops, Talos, kube‑hetzner, hetzner‑k3s, and Terraform modules; those are seen as more DIY, lower-level, and sometimes complex.
  • Edka’s differentiators mentioned: dashboard UX, pre-packaged apps, and potential commercial support.
  • Several comments highlight Syself and other managed offerings on Hetzner that already provide production-ready, supported clusters (often without a UI).

Pricing and “free plan” debate

  • Criticism that “€0 free plan” is misleading because control plane nodes still cost money from Hetzner; HA realistically needs 3 nodes.
  • A point that Terraform-based setups can provide similar functionality without Edka’s subscription fee.

Security, secrets, and trust

  • Security is described as shared responsibility: platform sec handled by Edka; cluster hardening left to the user. Internal pentests and best practices are mentioned, but product is still beta.
  • AWS KMS is used to encrypt data stored in Vault, raising concern that this reintroduces AWS dependency in a “Hetzner” product.
  • Multiple commenters question missing legal/imprint info and company registration; the creator responds with Spanish VAT and updates policies. Trust is a recurring theme.

Storage, encryption, and durability

  • For PostgreSQL, Edka uses Hetzner’s CSI driver with persistent volumes. Some are unsure how trustworthy Hetzner’s storage is and expected something like Rook/Ceph.
  • Discussion of encrypted disks: LUKS-based setups, Terraform modules enabling encryption by default, and Kubernetes storage solutions (OpenEBS, LocalZFS) with encryption support.

Bare metal vs cloud, scaling & automation

  • Several users prefer Hetzner bare metal for performance and reliability; Edka currently targets cloud instances only.
  • Desire for tooling that mixes bare metal and cloud nodes and supports autoscaling; Cluster API and CAPH are suggested for such use cases.
  • Questions about programmatic scaling (autoscaling pods/nodes) arise; details remain unclear beyond “you control resources.”

Reliability, maturity & Hetzner’s own plans

  • Some report Hetzner cloud provisioning flakiness (stuck deployments, recent issues with deletions and websockets), while others have multi‑year 100% uptime clusters.
  • Edka’s HN launch surfaces real-world issues (rate limiting, cluster creation failures during a Hetzner incident), underscoring its beta status.
  • Multiple people note Hetzner is rumored to be working on its own managed Kubernetes, but timing is unknown; opinions vary on whether they’ll deliver a good product.