Not sure if I got the scenario. Are you installing K8s on bare metal using a previously installed OS that you do not control? If so, that will be harsh. I am n

Not sure if I got the scenario. Are you installing K8s on bare metal using a previously installed OS that you do not control? If so, that will be harsh. I am not sure how to help you there. There are many things that could go wrong as you say. If you do have control over the OS (you are providing an ISO or virtualization image) then it should mostly "just work". My company is doing a similar thing, only we ship boxes with everything pre-installed. There is another scenario for hybrid cloud, but even then they download a VMWare image. Also if you do have control over the OS: can you use CoreOS instead? It is very well suited for running K8s and has less things that can go wrong. RedHat bought them anyway. With Ignition (or even the old-fashioned cloud init with a config drive), it is a no-touch deployment (you do have to generate and inject the certificates beforehand). One thing that sounds weird is that you are "telling folks to do X". Can you avoid telling them anything and have it automated?