got my cluster working thanks @sticky-summer-13450 and @creamy-pencil-82913 .. have another more general question, k3s vs RKE, what am I missing ? I'm sort of using k3s as a full blown k8s setup with external ETCD, multiple control planes, multiple workers to each control plane.. am I going to regret this some day as I scale this out or my workloads grow or am I pretty safe here?

I'm sort of using k3s as a full blown k8s setup

But surely, k3s is exactly that - except K3s manages the etc cluster. We've been migrating from kube-spray deployed K8s to K3s deployed K8s for our on-prem clusters (around the world). I guess with RKE2 you get a tiny bit more monitoring of the control plane from within K8s, as the control plane runs as pods. 🤷

thanks @sticky-summer-13450 good to know..