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9 Creating A Local Kubernetes Cluster With Minikube

The document discusses how to create a local Kubernetes cluster using Minikube by starting a virtual machine and deploying Kubernetes components. It covers starting Minikube, notes for Windows users, understanding the process, verifying the cluster status, and exploring the Kubernetes dashboard.

Uploaded by

Ajay Singh
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25 views5 pages

9 Creating A Local Kubernetes Cluster With Minikube

The document discusses how to create a local Kubernetes cluster using Minikube by starting a virtual machine and deploying Kubernetes components. It covers starting Minikube, notes for Windows users, understanding the process, verifying the cluster status, and exploring the Kubernetes dashboard.

Uploaded by

Ajay Singh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Creating a Local Kubernetes Cluster with Minikube

In this lesson, we will run a Kubernetes cluster locally using Minikube.

WE'LL COVER THE FOLLOWING

• Starting Minikube to Create a Cluster


• 📝 A Note to Windows Users
• Understanding the Process
• Veri cation
• Exploring the Kubernetes Dashboard

Starting Minikube to Create a Cluster #


The folks behind Minikube made creating a cluster as easy as it can get. All we
need to do is to execute a single command. Minikube will start a virtual
machine locally and deploy the necessary Kubernetes components into it. The
VM will get configured with Docker and Kubernetes via a single binary called
localkube.

minikube start --vm-driver=virtualbox

📝 A Note to Windows Users #


You might experience problems with VirtualBox. If that’s the case, you might
want to use Hyper-V instead.

Open a Powershell Admin Window and execute the Get-NetAdapter


command, noting the name of your network connection.

Create a hyperv virtual switch New-VMSwitch -name NonDockerSwitch -


NetAdapterName Ethernet -AllowManagementOS $true replacing Ethernet
with your network connection name.
Then, create the Minikube vm: minikube start --vm-driver=hyperv --
hyperv-virtual-switch "NonDockerSwitch" --memory=4096 .

Other minikube commands such as minikube start , minikube stop and


minikube delete all work the same whether you’re using VirutalBox or Hyper-
V.

A few moments later, a new Minikube VM will be created and set up, and a
cluster will be ready for use.

Understanding the Process #


When we executed the minikube start command, it created a new VM based
on the Minikube image. That image contains a few binaries. It has both
Docker and rkt container engines as well as localkube library.

rkt is an application container engine developed for modern production


cloud-native environments.

The localkube library includes all the components necessary for running
Kubernetes. We’ll go into details of all those components later. For now, the
important thing is that localkube provides everything we need to run a
Kubernetes cluster locally.
Minikube simplified architecture

Remember that this is a single-node cluster running locally on our machine


only. While that is unfortunate, it is still the easiest way to “play” with
Kubernetes locally. It should do, for now. Later on, we’ll explore ways to
create a multi-node cluster that will be much closer to a production setup.

Veri cation #
Let’s take a look at the status of the cluster.

minikube status

The output is as follows.

host: Running
kubelet: Running
apiserver: Running
kubectl: Correctly Configured: pointing to minikube-vm at 192.168.99.100
Minikube is running, and it initialized a Kubernetes cluster. It even
configured kubectl so that it points to the newly created VM.

Exploring the Kubernetes Dashboard #


You won’t see much UI in this course. We believe that a terminal is the best
way to operate a cluster. More importantly, we are convinced that one should
master a tool through its commands first. Later on, once we feel comfortable
and understand how the tool works, we can choose to use a UI on top of it.
We’ll explore the Kubernetes UI in one of the later chapters. For now, you can
have a quick glimpse of it.

minikube dashboard

The above command will redirect you to the following page on your browser.

Feel free to explore the UI but don’t take too long. You’ll only get confused
with concepts that we did not yet study. Once we learn about pods, replica-
sets, services, and a myriad of other Kubernetes components, the UI will start
making much more sense.

In the next lesson, we’ll explore some other useful Minikube commands.

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