Setup Kubernetes with Minikube on a Bare Metal Server
Kubernetes Overview
Kubernetes is an open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services with a rapidly growing ecosystem. Kubernetes orchestrates computing, networking, and storage infrastructure on behalf of user workloads. The tool facilitates both: declarative configuration and automation and was released to the public by Google in 2014.
Kubernetes has a number of features. It can be thought of as:
- a container platform
- a microservices platform
- a portable cloud platform and a lot more.
Minikube runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster inside a VM on your computer or cloud server for developing and testing applications.
Minikube supports Kubernetes features such as:
- DNS
- NodePorts
- ConfigMaps and Secrets
- Dashboards
- Container Runtime: Docker, rkt, CRI-O and containerd
- Enabling CNI (Container Network Interface)
- Ingress
Requirements:
- You have configured your SSH Key
- You have a BareMetal server running on Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (18.04).
Downloading and Installing Minikube
1 . Check if the CPU of your server supports hardware virtualization. The output of the following command shall not be empty:
egrep --color 'vmx|svm' /proc/cpuinfo
2 . Minikube relies on a Hypervisor to run the Kubernetes VM. This tutorial uses KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine), but it is also possible to run Minikube on VirtualBox.
apt-get install qemu qemu-kvm libvirt-bin virtinst curl
3 . Download the Minikube binary and make it executable:
curl -Lo minikube https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64 && chmod +x minikube
4 . Copy the binary file to /usrlocal/bin/ to make it available system-wide, then remove the downloaded binary:
cp minikube /usr/local/bin && rm minikube
5 . Download and install the KVM driver for Minikube:
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/docker-machine-driver-kvm2 && chmod +x docker-machine-driver-kvm2
6 . Copy the binary file to /usrlocal/bin/ to make it available system-wide, then remove the downloaded binary:
cp docker-machine-driver-kvm2 /usr/local/bin/ && rm docker-machine-driver-kvm2
7 . Download and install kubectl, a CLI tool to mange Kubernetes:
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/$(curl -s https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl && chmod +x kubectl
8 . Copy the binary file to /usrlocal/bin/ to make it available system-wide, then remove the downloaded binary:
cp kubectl /usr/local/bin && rm kubectl
Using Minikube
1 . Start Minikube:
minikube start --vm-driver=kvm2
An output informs about the status of Minikube:
😄 minikube v1.1.0 on linux (amd64)
2019/05/27 15:11:47 No matching credentials were found, falling back on anonymous
🔥 Creating kvm2 VM (CPUs=2, Memory=2048MB, Disk=20000MB) ...
🐳 Configuring environment for Kubernetes v1.14.2 on Docker 18.09.6
💾 Downloading kubeadm v1.14.2
💾 Downloading kubelet v1.14.2
🚜 Pulling images ...
🚀 Launching Kubernetes ...
⌛ Verifying: apiserver proxy etcd scheduler controller dns
🏄 Done! kubectl is now configured to use "minikube"
2 . Check the health status of minikube:
minikube status
host: Running
kubelet: Running
apiserver: Running
kubectl: Correctly Configured: pointing to minikube-vm at 192.168.39.101
3 . Start an Echoserver deployment:
kubectl run hello-minikube --image=k8s.gcr.io/echoserver:1.14 --port=8080
Once the deployment is created, a message confirms the step:
deployment.apps/hello-minikube created
4 . Check the running pods and configured deployments:
kubectl get pods
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
hello-minikube-56cdb79778-qj7sd 1/1 Running 0 3m47s
kubectl get deployments
NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
hello-minikube 1/1 1 1 5m59s
Expose an echoserver deployment with NodePort
kubectl expose deployment hello-minikube --type=NodePort
7 . curl the service created by running the following command:
curl $(minikube service hello-minikube --url)
A response similar to this example is shown:
Hostname: hello-minikube-56cdb79778-qj7sd
Pod Information:
-no pod information available-
Server values:
server_version=nginx: 1.13.3 - lua: 10008
Request Information:
client_address=172.17.0.1
method=GET
real path=/
query=
request_version=1.1
request_scheme=http
request_uri=http://192.168.39.101:8080/
Request Headers:
accept=*/*
host=192.168.39.101:30090
user-agent=curl/7.58.0
Request Body:
-no body in request-
8 . Delete the hello-minikube service:
kubectl delete services hello-minikube
9 . Delete the deployment:
kubectl delete deployment hello-minikube
A confirmation displays:
deployment.extensions "hello-minikube" deleted
10 . Stop Minikube:
minikube stop
A confirmation displays:
✋ Stopping "minikube" in kvm2 ...
🛑 "minikube" stopped.
For more information regarding Minikube and Kubernetes, check out the official documentation and the Minikube GitHub repository.
