Depending on your requirements such as ease of maintenance, security, control, available resources, and level of expertise to operate and manage a Kubernetes cluster, there are various solutions available. You can deploy a Kubernetes cluster on a local machine, cloud, on-prem datacenter; or choose a managed Kubernetes cluster. You can also create custom solutions across a wide range of cloud providers, or bare metal environments.
If you want to get familiar with Kubernetes, you can use the Docker-based solutions. You can use tools that are supported by the Kubernetes community or the tools in the ecosystem to set up a Kubernetes cluster on a local machine.
{{<tablecaption="Local machine solutions table that lists the tools supported by the community and the ecosystem to deploy Kubernetes.">}}
|Community |Ecosystem |
| ------------ | -------- |
| [Minikube](/docs/setup/minikube/) | [CDK on LXD](https://www.ubuntu.com/kubernetes/docs/install-local) |
| | [IBM Cloud Private-CE (Community Edition) on Linux Containers](https://github.com/HSBawa/icp-ce-on-linux-containers)|
| | [k3s](https://k3s.io)|
| | [Ubuntu on LXD](/docs/getting-started-guides/ubuntu/)|
## Production environment
Some of the possible abstractions of a Kubernetes cluster are {{<glossary_tooltiptext="applications"term_id="applications">}}, {{<glossary_tooltiptext="data plane"term_id="data-plane">}}, {{<glossary_tooltiptext="control plane"term_id="control-plane">}}, {{<glossary_tooltiptext="cluster infrastructure"term_id="cluster-infrastructure">}}, and {{<glossary_tooltiptext="cluster operations"term_id="cluster-operations">}}.
The following production environment solutions diagram lists the possible abstractions of a Kubernetes cluster and the level of expertise involved in managing the operations of a cluster.
Production environment solutions
{{<tablecaption="Production environment solutions table lists the providers and the solutions.">}}
The following production environment solutions table lists the providers and the solutions that they offer.
