Self-Scaling LLM Infrastructure Powered by Rancher

Description
The Problem
Running LLMs can get expensive and complex pretty quickly.
Today there are typically two choices:
- Use cloud APIs like OpenAI or Anthropic. Easy to start with, but costs add up at scale.
- Self-host everything - set up Kubernetes, figure out GPU scheduling, handle scaling, manage model serving... it's a lot of work.
What if there was a middle ground?
What if infrastructure scaled itself instead of making you scale it?
Can we use existing Rancher capabilities like CAPI, autoscaling, and GitOps to make this simpler instead of building everything from scratch?
Project Repository: github.com/alexander-demicev/llmserverless
What This Project Does
A key feature is hybrid deployment: requests can be routed based on complexity or privacy needs. Simple or low-sensitivity queries can use public APIs (like OpenAI), while complex or private requests are handled in-house on local infrastructure. This flexibility allows balancing cost, privacy, and performance - using cloud for routine tasks and on-premises resources for sensitive or demanding workloads.
A complete, self-scaling LLM infrastructure that:
- Scales to zero when idle (no idle costs)
- Scales up automatically when requests come in
- Adds more nodes when needed, removes them when demand drops
- Runs on any infrastructure - laptop, bare metal, or cloud
Think of it as "serverless for LLMs" - focus on building, the infrastructure handles itself.
How It Works
A combination of open source tools working together:
Flow:
- Users interact with OpenWebUI (chat interface)
- Requests go to LiteLLM Gateway
- LiteLLM routes requests to:
- Ollama (Knative) for local model inference (auto-scales pods)
- Or cloud APIs for fallback
- Cluster Autoscaler scales nodes up/down as needed
- Fleet keeps everything in sync via GitOps
Goals
- Provide a middle ground between cloud APIs and self-hosted LLMs
- Enable cost-efficient, privacy-preserving, and flexible LLM deployments
- Make LLM infrastructure easy to deploy and manage (Helm chart, GitOps)
- Support local development and production scaling
- Experiment with hybrid routing, serverless scaling, and GitOps automation
Resources
Features
- Packaged as a Helm chart: The entire stack is delivered as a Helm chart for easy deployment. See the project repository for setup instructions.
- Scale to Zero: No requests? No pods. No pods? No nodes (well, minimum 1). LLM infrastructure costs nothing when idle.
- Hybrid Routing: Simple requests can use public APIs, while complex or private queries are handled in-house, balancing cost and privacy.
- GitOps Native: Everything is Fleet bundles.
- Local Development Ready: Uses KIND + Docker provider for local dev. Same architecture that scales to production.
Tech Stack
- Rancher 2.13 - Cluster management (Turtles is now built-in!)
- Cluster API - Infrastructure as Kubernetes resources
- Knative Serving - Serverless pod autoscaling
- Ollama - Run LLMs locally
- LiteLLM - Unified LLM API gateway
- OpenWebUI - Chat interface
- Fleet - GitOps deployment
What's Next
This is a hackweek project, but here are ideas for the future:
- GPU node pools for production workloads
- Cloud provider templates (AWS/Azure/GCP)
- Smarter routing based on prompt complexity
- Cost tracking dashboard
- Response caching
Setup & Usage
For all setup and usage instructions, please refer to the project repository.
Why This Matters
LLMs are becoming a core part of many applications. But infrastructure options are still catching up.
This project explores a middle path:
- Privacy - run models locally, keep data in-house
- Cost efficiency - scale to zero, pay only for actual usage
- Flexibility - mix local and cloud models based on needs
- Simplicity - one command to deploy, GitOps to manage
It's an experiment in making LLM infrastructure more accessible and practical.
Updates
- Update 1: Pushed some project prototype I had before along with changes needed to run it on most recent Rancher version
- Update 2: Added multiple improvements for POC
Hackweek Results and Conclusion
Project Repository: github.com/alexander-demicev/llmserverless
The main conclusion is that it’s already possible to build something like this using the existing Rancher provisioning and management features. However, there are still a few questions and areas to improve for the future:
- The POC is based on Kubeadm, it can and should be migrated to RKE2.
- The SUSE AI stack wasn’t used for the sake of time efficiency, the goal was to assemble something that might currently be missing from it.
- Cluster Autoscaler is getting support in Rancher, so the POC should be updated to use the autoscaler setup recommended by Rancher.
- I’m not sure Knative is the best tool for self-scaling, maybe Keda would be a better alternative? I found Knative a bit complicated to configure and use, and it might be an overhead for the scope we have.
Looking for hackers with the skills:
This project is part of:
Hack Week 25
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Example execution
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Description
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You can have a look at the result here:
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And why this is good idea?
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Description
For purely studying purposes, I'd like to find out if I could teach an LLM some of my own accumulated knowledge, to use it as a sort of extended brain.
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Goals
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Timeline
Day 1 (of 4)
- Tried out a RAG demo, expanded on feeding it my own data
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- More experimenting and more data
- Study ChromaDB
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Day 3
- The above RAG is working well enough for demonstration purposes.
- Pivot to trying out OpenCode, configuring local Ollama qwen3-coder there, to analyze the RAG demo.
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- Battle with OpenCode that was both slow and kept on piling up broken things.
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- Clean up the mess left behind a bit.
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Description
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- A lightweight inference service that loads and serves the latest model
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Goals
By the end of Hack Week, the project should:
Produce a fully functional ML pipeline running on Kubernetes with:
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- Training job container
- Storage and versioning of trained models
- Automated deployment of new model versions
- Model inference API service
- Basic monitoring dashboards
Showcase a Go-based deployment automation component, which scans the model registry and automatically generates & applies Kubernetes manifests for new model versions.
Enable continuous improvement by making the system modular and extensible (e.g., additional models, metrics, autoscaling, or drift detection can be added later).
Prepare a short demo explaining the end-to-end process and how new models flow through the system.
Resources
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A CLI for Harvester by mohamed.belgaied
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Project Description
Harvester CLI is a command line interface tool written in Go, designed to simplify interfacing with a Harvester cluster as a user. It is especially useful for testing purposes as you can easily and rapidly create VMs in Harvester by providing a simple command such as:
harvester vm create my-vm --count 5
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Harvester CLI is functional but needs a number of improvements: up-to-date functionality with Harvester v1.0.2 (some minor issues right now), modifying the default behaviour to create an opensuse VM instead of an ubuntu VM, solve some bugs, etc.
Github Repo for Harvester CLI: https://github.com/belgaied2/harvester-cli
Done in previous Hackweeks
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- Automatically package Harvester CLI for OpenSUSE / Redhat RPMs or DEBs: DONE
Goal for this Hackweek
The goal for this Hackweek is to bring Harvester CLI up-to-speed with latest Harvester versions (v1.3.X and v1.4.X), and improve the code quality as well as implement some simple features and bug fixes.
Some nice additions might be: * Improve handling of namespaced objects * Add features, such as network management or Load Balancer creation ? * Add more unit tests and, why not, e2e tests * Improve CI * Improve the overall code quality * Test the program and create issues for it
Issue list is here: https://github.com/belgaied2/harvester-cli/issues
Resources
The project is written in Go, and using client-go the Kubernetes Go Client libraries to communicate with the Harvester API (which is Kubernetes in fact).
Welcome contributions are:
- Testing it and creating issues
- Documentation
- Go code improvement
What you might learn
Harvester CLI might be interesting to you if you want to learn more about:
- GitHub Actions
- Harvester as a SUSE Product
- Go programming language
- Kubernetes API
- Kubevirt API objects (Manipulating VMs and VM Configuration in Kubernetes using Kubevirt)
Rancher/k8s Trouble-Maker by tonyhansen
Project Description
When studying for my RHCSA, I found trouble-maker, which is a program that breaks a Linux OS and requires you to fix it. I want to create something similar for Rancher/k8s that can allow for troubleshooting an unknown environment.
Goals for Hackweek 25
- Update to modern Rancher and verify that existing tests still work
- Change testing logic to populate secrets instead of requiring a secondary script
- Add new tests
Goals for Hackweek 24 (Complete)
- Create a basic framework for creating Rancher/k8s cluster lab environments as needed for the Break/Fix
- Create at least 5 modules that can be applied to the cluster and require troubleshooting
Resources
- https://github.com/celidon/rancher-troublemaker
- https://github.com/rancher/terraform-provider-rancher2
- https://github.com/rancher/tf-rancher-up
- https://github.com/rancher/quickstart
The Agentic Rancher Experiment: Do Androids Dream of Electric Cattle? by moio
Rancher is a beast of a codebase. Let's investigate if the new 2025 generation of GitHub Autonomous Coding Agents and Copilot Workspaces can actually tame it. 
The Plan
Create a sandbox GitHub Organization, clone in key Rancher repositories, and let the AI loose to see if it can handle real-world enterprise OSS maintenance - or if it just hallucinates new breeds of Kubernetes resources!
Specifically, throw "Agentic Coders" some typical tasks in a complex, long-lived open-source project, such as:
❥ The Grunt Work: generate missing GoDocs, unit tests, and refactorings. Rebase PRs.
❥ The Complex Stuff: fix actual (historical) bugs and feature requests to see if they can traverse the complexity without (too much) human hand-holding.
❥ Hunting Down Gaps: find areas lacking in docs, areas of improvement in code, dependency bumps, and so on.
If time allows, also experiment with Model Context Protocol (MCP) to give agents context on our specific build pipelines and CI/CD logs.
Why?
We know AI can write "Hello World." and also moderately complex programs from a green field. But can it rebase a 3-month-old PR with conflicts in rancher/rancher? I want to find the breaking point of current AI agents to determine if and how they can help us to reduce our technical debt, work faster and better. At the same time, find out about pitfalls and shortcomings.
The CONCLUSION!!!
A
State of the Union
document was compiled to summarize lessons learned this week. For more gory details, just read on the diary below!
Technical talks at universities by agamez
Description
This project aims to empower the next generation of tech professionals by offering hands-on workshops on containerization and Kubernetes, with a strong focus on open-source technologies. By providing practical experience with these cutting-edge tools and fostering a deep understanding of open-source principles, we aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry.
For now, the scope is limited to Spanish universities, since we already have the contacts and have started some conversations.
Goals
- Technical Skill Development: equip students with the fundamental knowledge and skills to build, deploy, and manage containerized applications using open-source tools like Kubernetes.
- Open-Source Mindset: foster a passion for open-source software, encouraging students to contribute to open-source projects and collaborate with the global developer community.
- Career Readiness: prepare students for industry-relevant roles by exposing them to real-world use cases, best practices, and open-source in companies.
Resources
- Instructors: experienced open-source professionals with deep knowledge of containerization and Kubernetes.
- SUSE Expertise: leverage SUSE's expertise in open-source technologies to provide insights into industry trends and best practices.
