Stratum Kubernetes Engine
Stratum Kubernetes Engine (SKE) is a Kubernetes distribution that ships as one binary. That binary carries the component binaries and the container images, so installing a cluster touches no registry at all.
stratum up
One command, one node, Ready — with no network access to a registry.
What it is
| One artifact | ~610 MB: an ELF with an appended payload of 12 component binaries and 7 OCI images |
| Built from source | Kubernetes, etcd, containerd, runc and kube-vip are compiled here, not repackaged |
| Airgap by default | there is no separate "airgap edition" — the normal artifact is the airgap artifact |
| Supervised, one unit | the control plane runs as static pods under kubelet, and kubelet, containerd and the operator run under stratum's supervisor; a single stratum.service unit brings the node back after a reboot |
| Pinned end to end | every version lives in one place and is enforced by CI |
What is in the box
| Component | Version | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Kubernetes | 1.36.4 | apiserver, controller-manager, scheduler, kubelet, kubectl |
| etcd | 3.6.8 | the only datastore — TLS, managed join/snapshot/restore |
| containerd + runc | — | container runtime, cgroup v2 only |
| kube-vip | 1.2.3 | API server VIP, supervised on controllers |
| Cilium | 1.20.3 | CNI, network policy, and the service dataplane |
| CoreDNS | 1.14.7 | cluster DNS |
| local-path | 0.0.37 | default StorageClass |
No kube-proxy (Cilium replaces it), no kine (etcd only), no second CNI. Each absence is a recorded architecture decision rather than an omission — see Networking & Storage.
Where to start
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Quick Start
A single node to Ready, with no registry access. Start here if you want a cluster in front of you before reading anything else.
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Overview
How the pieces fit — the supervisor, the two topologies, cluster formation — and why each is shaped the way it is.
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Installation
The artifact, prerequisites, topologies, and the one configuration file.
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Cluster Administration
Day 2: high availability, upgrades and rollback, snapshots and restore, and the CIS hardening profile.
Reference material — the full command list, on-disk paths, and a glossary of the terms these pages use precisely — is in the Appendices.
Everything above is the open-source engine. Stratum PRO adds fleet management, single sign-on and cluster provisioning on top of it — the same engine, built into a binary of its own.