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Minikube

Syed Sayem edited this page Mar 29, 2019 · 4 revisions

The simplest and quickest way to get started with Kubernetes is to install Minikube on your local machine. Minikube is a tool that sets up a single-node cluster that's great for both testing Kubernetes and developing apps locally.

Since Minikube is running locally instead of on a cloud provider, certain provider-specific features like LoadBalancers and PersistentVolumes will not work out-of-the-box. However, you can use NodePort LoadBalancers and HostPath PersistentVolumes.

NOTE Minikube doesn't support LoadBalancer services, so the service will never get an external IP. But you get the IP and port through which you can access service by running minikube service kubia-http.

 

Table of contents

 

Before you begin

Minikube requires that VT-x/AMD-v virtualization is enabled in BIOS. To check that this is enabled on OSX / macOS run:

sysctl -a | grep machdep.cpu.features | grep VMX

If there's output, you're good!

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Prerequisites

  • kubectl
  • docker (for Mac)
  • minikube
  • virtualbox

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Installation

The best way to get started on a macOS is to use Homebrew. If you already have Homebrew installed, you can install kubectl , docker, minikube, and virtualbox by running the following command

brew update && brew install kubectl && brew cask install docker minikube virtualbox

If you don't already have Homebrew installed, I would strongly recommend that you install it! It's incredibly useful for installing software dependencies like OpenSSL, MySQL, Postgres, Redis, SQLite, and more.

You can install it by running the following command:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

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Verify

docker --version                # Docker version 17.09.0-ce, build afdb6d4
docker-compose --version        # docker-compose version 1.16.1, build 6d1ac21
docker-machine --version        # docker-machine version 0.12.2, build 9371605
minikube version                # minikube version: v0.22.3
kubectl version --client        # Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"8", GitVersion:"v1.8.1", 
GitCommit:"f38e43b221d08850172a9a4ea785a86a3ffa3b3a", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2017-10-12T00:45:05Z", GoVersion:"go1.9.1", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"darwin/amd64"}    

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Start

minikube start

This can take a while, expected output:

Starting local Kubernetes cluster...
Kubectl is now configured to use the cluster.

Great! You now have a running Kubernetes cluster locally. Minikube started a virtual machine for you, and a Kubernetes cluster is now running in that VM.

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Check k8s

kubectl get nodes

Should output something like:

NAME       STATUS    ROLES     AGE       VERSION
minikube   Ready     <none>    40s       v1.7.5

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Use minikube's built-in docker daemon:

eval $(minikube docker-env)

Running docker ps should now output something like:

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                                         COMMAND                 CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
e97128790bf9        gcr.io/google-containers/kube-addon-manager   "/opt/kube-addons.sh"   22 seconds ago      Up 22 seconds                           k8s_kube-addon-manager_kube-addon-manager-minikube_kube-system_c654b2f084cf26941c334a2c3d6db53d_0
69707e54d1d0        gcr.io/google_containers/pause-amd64:3.0      "/pause"                33 seconds ago      Up 33 seconds                           k8s_POD_kube-addon-manager-minikube_kube-system_c654b2f084cf26941c334a2c3d6db53d_0

Build, deploy and run an image on your local k8s setup

First setup a local registry, so Kubernetes can pull the image(s) from there:

docker run -d -p 5000:5000 --restart=always --name registry registry:2

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Build

First of, store all files (Dockerfile, my-app.yml, index.html) in this gist locally in some new (empty) directory.

You can build the Dockerfile below locally if you want to follow this guide to the letter. Store the Dockerfile locally, preferably in an empty directory and run:

docker build . --tag my-app

You should now have an image named 'my-app' locally, check by using docker images (or your own image of course). You can then publish it to your local docker registry:

docker tag my-app localhost:5000/my-app:0.1.0

Running docker images should now output the following:

REPOSITORY                                             TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
my-app                                                 latest              cc949ad8c8d3        44 seconds ago      89.3MB
localhost:5000/my-app                                  0.1.0               cc949ad8c8d3        44 seconds ago      89.3MB
httpd                                                  2.4-alpine          fe26194c0b94        7 days ago          89.3MB

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Deploy and run

Store the file below my-app.yml on your system and run the following:

kubectl create -f my-app.yml

You should now see your pod and your service:

kubectl get all

The configuration exposes my-app outside of the cluster, you can get the address to access it by running:

minikube service my-app --url

This should give an output like http://192.168.99.100:30304 (the port will most likely differ). Go there with your favorite browser, you should see "Hello world!". You just accessed your application from outside of your local Kubernetes cluster!

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Dashboard

To open the dashboard in your browser when using Minikube to run your Kubernetes cluster, run the following command:

$ minikube dashboard

The dashboard will open in your default browser. Unlike with GKE, you won’t need to enter any credentials to access it.

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Delete deployment of my-app

kubectl delete deploy my-app
kubectl delete service my-app

You're now good to go and deploy other images!

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Reset everything

minikube stop;
minikube delete;
rm -rf ~/.minikube .kube;
brew uninstall kubectl;
brew cask uninstall docker virtualbox minikube;

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Version

Last tested on 2017 October 20th macOS Sierra 10.12.6

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