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Minikube

Minimum system requirements for minikube

  • 2 GB RAM or more
  • 2 CPU / vCPUs or more
  • 20 GB free hard disk space or more
  • Docker / Virtual Machine Manager – KVM & VirtualBox. Docker, Hyperkit, Hyper-V, KVM, Parallels, Podman, VirtualBox, or VMWare are examples of container or virtual machine managers.

Pre-requisite

We will need 1 VM to create a single node kubernetes cluster using minikube. We are using following setting for this purpose:

  • 1 Linux machine for master, ubuntu-22.04-x86_64 or your choice of Ubuntu OS image, cpu-su.2 flavor with 2vCPU, 8GB RAM, 40GB storage - also assign Floating IP to this VM.
  • setup Unique hostname to the machine using the following command:
echo "<node_internal_IP> <host_name>" >> /etc/hosts
hostnamectl set-hostname <host_name>

For example,

echo "192.168.0.62 minikube" >> /etc/hosts
hostnamectl set-hostname minikube

Install Minikube on Ubuntu

Run the below command on the Ubuntu VM:

  • SSH into minikube machine

  • Switch to root user: sudo su

  • Update the repositories and packages:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y
  • Install curl, wget, and apt-transport-https
apt-get update && apt-get install -y curl wget apt-transport-https

Very Important

Run the following step as non-root user i.e. ubuntu.

Download and install the latest version of Docker CE

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh get-docker.sh
  • Configure the Docker daemon:
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER && newgrp docker

Install kubectl

  • Install kubectl binary

    • kubectl: the command line util to talk to your cluster.

sudo snap install kubectl --classic

This outputs: kubectl 1.26.1 from Canonical✓ installed

  • Now verify the kubectl version:
sudo kubectl version -o yaml

Install the container runtime i.e. containerd on master and worker nodes

To run containers in Pods, Kubernetes uses a container runtime.

By default, Kubernetes uses the Container Runtime Interface (CRI) to interface with your chosen container runtime.

  • Install container runtime - containerd

The first thing to do is configure the persistent loading of the necessary containerd modules. This forwarding IPv4 and letting iptables see bridged trafficis is done with the following command:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/k8s.conf
overlay
br_netfilter
EOF

sudo modprobe overlay
sudo modprobe br_netfilter
  • Ensure net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables is set to 1 in your sysctl config:
# sysctl params required by setup, params persist across reboots
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/k8s.conf
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables  = 1
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 1
net.ipv4.ip_forward                 = 1
EOF
  • Apply sysctl params without reboot:
sudo sysctl --system
  • Install the necessary dependencies with:
sudo apt install -y curl gnupg2 software-properties-common apt-transport-https ca-certificates
  • The containerd.io packages in DEB and RPM formats are distributed by Docker. Add the required GPG key with:
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable"

It's now time to Install and configure containerd:

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install -y containerd.io
containerd config default | sudo tee /etc/containerd/config.toml

# Reload the systemd daemon with
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

# Start containerd
sudo systemctl restart containerd
sudo systemctl enable --now containerd

You can verify containerd is running with the command:

sudo systemctl status containerd

Installing minikube

  • Install minikube
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube_latest_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i minikube_latest_amd64.deb

OR, install minikube using wget:

wget https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64
cp minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/bin/minikube
chmod +x /usr/bin/minikube
  • Verify the Minikube installation:
minikube version

minikube version: v1.29.0
commit: ddac20b4b34a9c8c857fc602203b6ba2679794d3
  • Install conntrack: Kubernetes 1.26.1 requires conntrack to be installed in root's path:
sudo apt-get install -y conntrack
  • Start minikube: As we are already stated in the beginning that we would be using docker as base for minikue, so start the minikube with the docker driver,
minikube start --driver=docker --container-runtime=containerd

Note

  • To check the internal IP, run the minikube ip command.
  • By default, Minikube uses the driver most relevant to the host OS. To use a different driver, set the --driver flag in minikube start. For example, to use others or none instead of Docker, run minikube start --driver=none. To persistent configuration so that you to run minikube start without explicitly passing i.e. in global scope the --vm-driver docker flag each time, run: minikube config set vm-driver docker.
  • Other start options: minikube start --force --driver=docker --network-plugin=cni --container-runtime=containerd
  • In case you want to start minikube with customize resources and want installer to automatically select the driver then you can run following command, minikube start --addons=ingress --cpus=2 --cni=flannel --install-addons=true --kubernetes-version=stable --memory=6g

Output would like below: Minikube sucessfully started

Perfect, above confirms that minikube cluster has been configured and started successfully.

  • Run below minikube command to check status:
minikube status

minikube
type: Control Plane
host: Running
kubelet: Running
apiserver: Running
kubeconfig: Configured
  • Run following kubectl command to verify the cluster info and node status:
kubectl cluster-info

Kubernetes control plane is running at https://192.168.0.62:8443
CoreDNS is running at https://192.168.0.62:8443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy

To further debug and diagnose cluster problems, use 'kubectl cluster-info dump'.

kubectl get nodes

NAME       STATUS   ROLES                  AGE   VERSION
minikube   Ready    control-plane,master   5m    v1.26.1
  • To see the kubectl configuration use the command:
kubectl config view

The output looks like: Minikube config view

  • Get minikube addon details:
minikube addons list

The output will display like below: Minikube addons list

If you wish to enable any addons run the below minikube command,

minikube addons enable <addon-name>
  • Enable minikube dashboard addon:
minikube dashboard

🔌  Enabling dashboard ...
    ▪ Using image kubernetesui/metrics-scraper:v1.0.7
    ▪ Using image kubernetesui/dashboard:v2.3.1
🤔  Verifying dashboard health ...
🚀  Launching proxy ...
🤔  Verifying proxy health ...
http://127.0.0.1:40783/api/v1/namespaces/kubernetes-dashboard/services/http:kubernetes-dashboard:/proxy/
  • To view minikube dashboard url:
minikube dashboard --url

🤔  Verifying dashboard health ...
🚀  Launching proxy ...
🤔  Verifying proxy health ...
http://127.0.0.1:42669/api/v1/namespaces/kubernetes-dashboard/services/http:kubernetes-dashboard:/proxy/
  • Expose Dashboard on NodePort instead of ClusterIP:

-- Check the current port for kubernetes-dashboard:

kubectl get services -n kubernetes-dashboard

The output looks like below: Current ClusterIP for Minikube Dashboard

kubectl edit service kubernetes-dashboard -n kubernetes-dashboard

-- Replace type: "ClusterIP" to "NodePort":

Current Dashboard Type

-- After saving the file: Test again: kubectl get services -n kubernetes-dashboard

Now the output should look like below: Current NodePort for Minikube Dashboard

So, now you can browser the K8s Dashboard, visit http://<Floating-IP>:<NodePort> i.e. http://140.247.152.235:31881 to view the Dashboard.

Deploy A Sample Nginx Application

  • Create a deployment, in this case Nginx: A Kubernetes Pod is a group of one or more Containers, tied together for the purposes of administration and networking. The Pod in this tutorial has only one Container. A Kubernetes Deployment checks on the health of your Pod and restarts the Pod's Container if it terminates. Deployments are the recommended way to manage the creation and scaling of Pods.

  • Let's check if the Kubernetes cluster is up and running:

kubectl get all --all-namespaces
kubectl get po -A
kubectl get nodes

kubectl create deployment --image nginx my-nginx
  • To access the deployment we will need to expose it:
kubectl expose deployment my-nginx --port=80 --type=NodePort

To check which NodePort is opened and running the Nginx run:

kubectl get svc

The output will show: Minikube Running Services

OR,

minikube service list

|----------------------|---------------------------|--------------|-------------|
|      NAMESPACE       |           NAME            | TARGET PORT  |       URL   |
|----------------------|---------------------------|--------------|-------------|
| default              | kubernetes                | No node port |
| default              | my-nginx                  |           80 | http:.:31081|
| kube-system          | kube-dns                  | No node port |
| kubernetes-dashboard | dashboard-metrics-scraper | No node port |
| kubernetes-dashboard | kubernetes-dashboard      |           80 | http:.:31929|
|----------------------|---------------------------|--------------|-------------|

OR,

kubectl get svc my-nginx
minikube service my-nginx --url

Once the deployment is up, you should be able to access the Nginx home page on the allocated NodePort from the node's Floating IP.

Go to browser, visit http://<Floating-IP>:<NodePort> i.e. http://140.247.152.235:31081/ to check the nginx default page.

For your example,

nginx default page

Deploy A Hello Minikube Application

  • Use the kubectl create command to create a Deployment that manages a Pod. The Pod runs a Container based on the provided Docker image.
kubectl create deployment hello-minikube --image=k8s.gcr.io/echoserver:1.4
kubectl expose deployment hello-minikube --type=NodePort --port=8080
  • View the port information:
kubectl get svc hello-minikube
minikube service hello-minikube --url

Go to browser, visit http://<Floating-IP>:<NodePort> i.e. http://140.247.152.235:31293/ to check the hello minikube default page.

For your example,

Hello Minikube default page

Clean up

Now you can clean up the app resources you created in your cluster:

kubectl delete service my-nginx
kubectl delete deployment my-nginx

kubectl delete service hello-minikube
kubectl delete deployment hello-minikube

Managing Minikube Cluster

  • To stop the minikube, run
minikube stop
  • To delete the single node cluster:
minikube delete
  • To Start the minikube, run
minikube start
  • Remove the Minikube configuration and data directories:
rm -rf ~/.minikube
rm -rf ~/.kube
  • If you have installed any Minikube related packages, remove them:
sudo apt remove -y conntrack
  • In case you want to start the minikube with higher resource like 8 GB RM and 4 CPU then execute following commands one after the another.
minikube config set cpus 4
minikube config set memory 8192
minikube delete
minikube start