For regular k8s a few years ago (in my own tests) it hovered around 500-600 megabytes, and some cpu as well (can't say how much would it use on machines this old) so the thing that does nothing but controls what will run on a machine consumes like 1/8th of ram. Also their infra sounds as static as it gets and machines themselves are not pets - they are family members at this point, what would the benefits of k8s be?