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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opencode
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When preparing a new project from scratch it is a good idea to start out with a template.
opencode.json
``` {
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- 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.
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!
OpenPlatform Self-Service Portal by tmuntan1
Description
In SUSE IT, we developed an internal developer platform for our engineers using SUSE technologies such as RKE2, SUSE Virtualization, and Rancher. While it works well for our existing users, the onboarding process could be better.
To improve our customer experience, I would like to build a self-service portal to make it easy for people to accomplish common actions. To get started, I would have the portal create Jira SD tickets for our customers to have better information in our tickets, but eventually I want to add automation to reduce our workload.
Goals
- Build a frontend website (Angular) that helps customers create Jira SD tickets.
- Build a backend (Rust with Axum) for the backend, which would do all the hard work for the frontend.
Resources (SUSE VPN only)
- development site: https://ui-dev.openplatform.suse.com/login?returnUrl=%2Fopenplatform%2Fforms
- https://gitlab.suse.de/itpe/core/open-platform/op-portal/backend
- https://gitlab.suse.de/itpe/core/open-platform/op-portal/frontend
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
