Setting up your own k8s from scratch is kind of like writing your own string class in C++: it’s a good exercise (if it’s valuable for your learning path) but you probably don’t want to use it for actual work.

Maintaining a cluster set up like that is a ton of work. And if you don’t perform an upgrade perfectly, you’ll have downtime. Tools like kops help a lot but you’ll still spend far more time than the $70/month it costs for a managed cluster.