Regarding networking, did you consider Flannel? Its "host-gw" backend doesn't have any overhead, as it's only setting up routing tables, which is fine for small (<100s of nodes) clusters that have L2 connectivity between nodes.
Re:Kubernetes 1.10 released
by scurvy on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @03:20PM
(#16700929)
Our network is full layer 3 Clos Leaf/Spine. We'd much prefer something with network advertisements (OSPF/BGP) or SDN. Layer 2 stuff is OK for labs, but I don't know anyone building out layer 2 networks any more.
For load balancing, have you looked at Traefik?