Install a local Kubernetes with MicroK8s

1. Overview

What is Kubernetes

Kubernetes clusters host containerised applications in a reliable and scalable way. Having DevOps in mind, Kubernetes makes maintenance tasks such as upgrades dead simple.

What is MicroK8s

MicroK8s is a CNCF certified upstream Kubernetes deployment that runs entirely on your workstation or edge device. Being a snap it runs all Kubernetes services natively (i.e. no virtual machines) while packing the entire set of libraries and binaries needed. Installation is limited by how fast you can download a couple of hundred megabytes and the removal of MicroK8s leaves nothing behind.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to…

Get your Kubernetes cluster up and running
Enable core Kubernetes addons such as dns and dashboard
Control your cluster from the kubectl CLI client
Deploy your first container workload

You will only need …

A machine with Linux

2. Deploying MicroK8s

If you are using Ubuntu, the quickest way to get started is to install MicroK8s directly from the snap store by clicking the “Install” button.

However, you can also install MicroK8s from the command line:

sudo snap install microk8s --classic

If you are using a different Linux distribution, you will have to install snapd first. Refer to Snapd documentation for more information on installing snapd on your Linux distribution.

For other platforms (Windows, macOS, Raspberry Pi etc) and install methods, please see the MicroK8s documentation

MicroK8s is a snap and as such it is frequently updated to each release of Kubernetes. To follow a specific upstream release series it’s possible to select a channel during installation. For example, to follow the v1.17 series:

sudo snap install microk8s --classic --channel=1.18/stable

Channels are made up of a track and an expected level of MicroK8s’ stability. Try snap info microk8s to see what versions are currently published. At the time of this writing we have:

channels:
  1.18/stable:      v1.18.3         2020-05-29 (1422) 201MB classic
  1.18/candidate:   v1.18.3         2020-05-25 (1422) 201MB classic
  1.18/beta:        v1.18.3         2020-05-25 (1422) 201MB classic
  1.18/edge:        v1.18.3         2020-05-25 (1438) 201MB classic
  latest/stable:    v1.18.3         2020-06-09 (1443) 211MB classic
  latest/candidate: v1.18.3         2020-05-27 (1443) 211MB classic
  latest/beta:      v1.18.3         2020-05-27 (1443) 211MB classic
  latest/edge:      v1.18.3         2020-06-15 (1481) 210MB classic
  dqlite/stable:    –                                       
  dqlite/candidate: –                                       
  dqlite/beta:      –                                       
  dqlite/edge:      v1.16.2         2019-11-07 (1038) 189MB classic
  1.19/stable:      –                                       
  1.19/candidate:   –                                       
  1.19/beta:        v1.19.0-beta.2  2020-06-13 (1478) 213MB classic
  1.19/edge:        v1.19.0-alpha.3 2020-06-05 (1457) 210MB classic
  1.17/stable:      v1.17.6         2020-06-11 (1437) 179MB classic
  1.17/candidate:   v1.17.6         2020-05-28 (1437) 179MB classic
  1.17/beta:        v1.17.6         2020-05-28 (1437) 179MB classic
  1.17/edge:        v1.17.6         2020-05-25 (1437) 179MB classic
  1.16/stable:      v1.16.8         2020-03-27 (1302) 179MB classic
  1.16/candidate:   v1.16.8         2020-03-27 (1302) 179MB classic
  1.16/beta:        v1.16.8         2020-03-27 (1302) 179MB classic
  1.16/edge:        v1.16.8         2020-03-26 (1302) 179MB classic
  1.15/stable:      v1.15.11        2020-03-27 (1301) 171MB classic
  1.15/candidate:   v1.15.11        2020-03-27 (1301) 171MB classic
  1.15/beta:        v1.15.11        2020-03-27 (1301) 171MB classic
  1.15/edge:        v1.15.11        2020-03-26 (1301) 171MB classic
  1.14/stable:      v1.14.10        2020-01-06 (1120) 217MB classic
  1.14/candidate:   ↑                                       
  1.14/beta:        ↑                                       
  1.14/edge:        v1.14.10        2020-03-26 (1303) 217MB classic
  1.13/stable:      v1.13.6         2019-06-06  (581) 237MB classic
  1.13/candidate:   ↑                                       
  1.13/beta:        ↑                                       
  1.13/edge:        ↑                                       
  1.12/stable:      v1.12.9         2019-06-06  (612) 259MB classic
  1.12/candidate:   ↑                                       
  1.12/beta:        ↑                                       
  1.12/edge:        ↑                                       
  1.11/stable:      v1.11.10        2019-05-10  (557) 258MB classic
  1.11/candidate:   ↑                                       
  1.11/beta:        ↑                                       
  1.11/edge:        ↑                                       
  1.10/stable:      v1.10.13        2019-04-22  (546) 222MB classic
  1.10/candidate:   ↑                                       
  1.10/beta:        ↑                                       
  1.10/edge:        ↑

You may need to configure your firewall to allow pod-to-pod and pod-to-internet communication:

sudo ufw allow in on cni0 && sudo ufw allow out on cni0
sudo ufw default allow routed

3. Enable addons

By default we get a barebones upstream Kubernetes. Additional services, such as dashboard or kube-dns, can be enabled by running the microk8s enable command:

microk8s enable dashboard dns

These addons can be disabled at anytime by running the microk8s disable command:

microk8s disable dashboard dns

With microk8s status you can see the list of available addons and the ones currently enabled.

List of the most important addons

dns: Deploy DNS. This addon may be required by others, thus we recommend you always enable it.
dashboard: Deploy kubernetes dashboard as well as grafana and influxdb.
storage: Create a default storage class. This storage class makes use of the hostpath-provisioner pointing to a directory on the host.
ingress: Create an ingress controller.
gpu: Expose GPU(s) to MicroK8s by enabling the nvidia-docker runtime and nvidia-device-plugin-daemonset. Requires NVIDIA drivers to be already installed on the host system.
istio: Deploy the core Istio services. You can use the microk8s istioctl command to manage your deployments.
registry: Deploy a docker private registry and expose it on localhost:32000. The storage addon will be enabled as part of this addon.

4. Accessing the Kubernetes and Grafana dashboards

Now that we have enabled the dns and dashboard addons we can access the available dashboard. To do so we first check the deployment progress of our addons with microk8s kubectl get all --all-namespaces. It only takes a few minutes to get all pods in the “Running” state:

    NAMESPACE     NAME                                                  READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
    kube-system   pod/coredns-f7867546d-zb9t5                           1/1     Running   0          3m25s
    kube-system   pod/heapster-v1.5.2-844b564688-5bpzs                  4/4     Running   0          64s
    kube-system   pod/kubernetes-dashboard-7d75c474bb-jcglw             1/1     Running   0          3m19s
    kube-system   pod/monitoring-influxdb-grafana-v4-6b6954958c-nc6bq   2/2     Running   0          3m19s


    NAMESPACE     NAME                           TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                  AGE
    default       service/kubernetes             ClusterIP   10.152.183.1     <none>        443/TCP                  3m34s
    kube-system   service/heapster               ClusterIP   10.152.183.7     <none>        80/TCP                   3m19s
    kube-system   service/kube-dns               ClusterIP   10.152.183.10    <none>        53/UDP,53/TCP,9153/TCP   3m25s
    kube-system   service/kubernetes-dashboard   ClusterIP   10.152.183.64    <none>        443/TCP                  3m19s
    kube-system   service/monitoring-grafana     ClusterIP   10.152.183.3     <none>        80/TCP                   3m19s
    kube-system   service/monitoring-influxdb    ClusterIP   10.152.183.203   <none>        8083/TCP,8086/TCP        3m19s


    NAMESPACE     NAME                                             READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
    kube-system   deployment.apps/coredns                          1/1     1            1           3m25s
    kube-system   deployment.apps/heapster-v1.5.2                  1/1     1            1           3m19s
    kube-system   deployment.apps/kubernetes-dashboard             1/1     1            1           3m19s
    kube-system   deployment.apps/monitoring-influxdb-grafana-v4   1/1     1            1           3m19s

    NAMESPACE     NAME                                                        DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
    kube-system   replicaset.apps/coredns-f7867546d                           1         1         1       3m25s
    kube-system   replicaset.apps/heapster-v1.5.2-6b794f77c8                  0         0         0       3m19s
    kube-system   replicaset.apps/heapster-v1.5.2-6f5d55456                   0         0         0       84s
    kube-system   replicaset.apps/heapster-v1.5.2-844b564688                  1         1         1       64s
    kube-system   replicaset.apps/kubernetes-dashboard-7d75c474bb             1         1         1       3m19s
    kube-system   replicaset.apps/monitoring-influxdb-grafana-v4-6b6954958c   1         1         1       3m19s

Kubernetes dashboard

As we see above the kubernetes-dashboard service in the kube-system namespace has a ClusterIP of 10.152.183.64 and listens on TCP port 443. The ClusterIP is randomly assigned, so if you follow these steps on your host, make sure you check the IP adress you got. Point your browser to https://10.152.183.64:443 and you will see the kubernetes dashboard UI. To access the dashboard use the default token retrieved with:

token=$(microk8s kubectl -n kube-system get secret | grep default-token | cut -d " " -f1)
microk8s kubectl -n kube-system describe secret $token

Kubernetes Dashboard

Grafana dashboard

Let’s use an alternative approach to access hosted services. The API server proxies our services, here is how to get to them:

> microk8s kubectl cluster-info
Kubernetes master is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443
Heapster is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/heapster/proxy
CoreDNS is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy
Grafana is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/monitoring-grafana/proxy
InfluxDB is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/monitoring-influxdb:http/proxy

We need to point our browser to https://127.0.0.1:16443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/monitoring-grafana/proxy and use the username and password shown with microk8s config.

Grafana Dashboard

5. Host your first service in Kubernetes

We start by creating a microbot deployment with two pods via the kubectl cli:

microk8s kubectl create deployment microbot --image=dontrebootme/microbot:v1
microk8s kubectl scale deployment microbot --replicas=2

To expose our deployment we need to create a service:

microk8s kubectl expose deployment microbot --type=NodePort --port=80 --name=microbot-service

After a few minutes our cluster looks like this:

> microk8s kubectl get all --all-namespaces
NAMESPACE     NAME                                                  READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
default       pod/microbot-7dd47b8fd6-4rzt6                         1/1     Running   0          46s
default       pod/microbot-7dd47b8fd6-xr49r                         1/1     Running   0          39s
kube-system   pod/coredns-f7867546d-zb9t5                           1/1     Running   0          10m
kube-system   pod/heapster-v1.5.2-844b564688-5bpzs                  4/4     Running   0          8m22s
kube-system   pod/kubernetes-dashboard-7d75c474bb-jcglw             1/1     Running   0          10m
kube-system   pod/monitoring-influxdb-grafana-v4-6b6954958c-nc6bq   2/2     Running   0          10m


NAMESPACE     NAME                           TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                  AGE
default       service/kubernetes             ClusterIP   10.152.183.1     <none>        443/TCP                  10m
default       service/microbot-service       NodePort    10.152.183.69    <none>        80:32648/TCP             25s
kube-system   service/heapster               ClusterIP   10.152.183.7     <none>        80/TCP                   10m
kube-system   service/kube-dns               ClusterIP   10.152.183.10    <none>        53/UDP,53/TCP,9153/TCP   10m
kube-system   service/kubernetes-dashboard   ClusterIP   10.152.183.64    <none>        443/TCP                  10m
kube-system   service/monitoring-grafana     ClusterIP   10.152.183.3     <none>        80/TCP                   10m
kube-system   service/monitoring-influxdb    ClusterIP   10.152.183.203   <none>        8083/TCP,8086/TCP        10m


NAMESPACE     NAME                                             READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
default       deployment.apps/microbot                         2/2     2            2           46s
kube-system   deployment.apps/coredns                          1/1     1            1           10m
kube-system   deployment.apps/heapster-v1.5.2                  1/1     1            1           10m
kube-system   deployment.apps/kubernetes-dashboard             1/1     1            1           10m
kube-system   deployment.apps/monitoring-influxdb-grafana-v4   1/1     1            1           10m

NAMESPACE     NAME                                                        DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
default       replicaset.apps/microbot-7dd47b8fd6                         2         2         2       46s
kube-system   replicaset.apps/coredns-f7867546d                           1         1         1       10m
kube-system   replicaset.apps/heapster-v1.5.2-6b794f77c8                  0         0         0       10m
kube-system   replicaset.apps/heapster-v1.5.2-6f5d55456                   0         0         0       8m42s
kube-system   replicaset.apps/heapster-v1.5.2-844b564688                  1         1         1       8m22s
kube-system   replicaset.apps/kubernetes-dashboard-7d75c474bb             1         1         1       10m
kube-system   replicaset.apps/monitoring-influxdb-grafana-v4-6b6954958c   1         1         1       10m

At the very top we have the microbot pods, service/microbot-service is the second in the services list. Our service has a ClusterIP through which we can access it. Notice, however, that our service is of type NodePort. This means that our deployment is also available on a port on the host machine; that port is randomly selected and in this case it happens to be 32648. All we need to do is to point our browser to http://localhost:32648.

Microbot

6. Integrated commands

There are many commands that ship with MicroK8s. We’ve only seen the essential ones in this tutorial. Explore the others at your own convenience:

microk8s status: Provides an overview of the MicroK8s state (running / not running) as well as the set of enabled addons
microk8s enable: Enables an addon
microk8s disable: Disables an addon
microk8s kubectl: Interact with kubernetes
microk8s config: Shows the kubernetes config file
microk8s istioctl: Interact with the istio services; needs the istio addon to be enabled
microk8s inspect: Performs a quick inspection of the MicroK8s intallation
microk8s reset: Resets the infrastructure to a clean state
microk8s stop: Stops all kubernetes services
microk8s start: Starts MicroK8s after it is being stopped

7. That’s all folks!

Congratulations! You have made it!

Until next time, stop all MicroK8s services:

microk8s stop

Where to go from here?

Learn more about MicroK8s
Tell us what you think and fill in feature requests
Discover Kubernetes opportunities with Canonical
Try Charmed Kubernetes
Contact us

Was this tutorial useful?

Thank you for your feedback.