Self-Hosting Like a Pro, Part 2: Docker, K3s and Traefik v3 with Automatic HTTPS

This is Part 2 of a four-part series where I document how I turned a 10€/month VPS into a production-grade platform hosting multiple projects. In Part 1 we hardened a fresh Ubuntu server. Today we install the actual platform: a container runtime, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution, a modern reverse proxy, and automatic TLS certificates. By the end of this article, deploying an app with HTTPS will take one YAML file and zero manual certificate handling.*

Why Kubernetes on a single VPS?

Fair question. Docker Compose would work, and for a single project I would recommend it without hesitation. But my server hosts several unrelated projects: a portfolio blog, a university group website, and a SaaS platform. I want:

Isolation: a memory leak in one project must not take down the others.

Resource quotas: each project gets a defined slice of the 8 GB RAM, enforced by the platform, not by hope.