Setting up Kubernetes with Minikube on an Elastic Metal Server

Reviewed on 27 August 2024 • Published on 27 May 2019

Kubernetes
Minikube
Elastic-Metal

Kubernetes is a powerful open-source platform designed for managing containerized workloads and services, boasting a rapidly expanding ecosystem. It orchestrates computing, networking, and storage infrastructure to streamline user workloads efficiently. Originally released by Google in 2014, Kubernetes offers declarative configuration and automation capabilities, making it a preferred choice for modern software development and deployment.

With Kubernetes, you gain access to several features, serving as:

a robust container platform
an efficient microservices platform
a portable cloud platform, and much more.

Minikube is a valuable tool that simplifies Kubernetes development and testing workflows by running a single-node Kubernetes cluster within a virtual machine on your local computer or cloud server.

Minikube provides support for various essential Kubernetes features, including:

DNS resolution
NodePort services
ConfigMaps and Secrets management
Dashboard visualization
Compatibility with multiple container runtimes: Docker, rkt, CRI-O, and containerd
Integration with Container Network Interface (CNI)
Ingress configuration for routing external traffic to Kubernetes services.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

A Scaleway account logged into the console
Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization
An SSH key
An Elastic Metal server running on Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (18.04)

Downloading and Installing Minikube

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

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
```

Download the Minikube binary and make it executable:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64 && sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube

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

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

Download and install kubectl, a CLI tool to manage 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
```

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

Start Minikube:

minikube start --vm-driver=kvm2

An output informs you about the status of Minikube:

😄  minikube v1.31.1 on linux (amd64)
✨  Automatically selected the docker driver. Other choices: virtualbox, ssh
📌  Using Docker Desktop driver with root privileges
👍  Starting control plane node minikube in cluster minikube
🚜  Pulling base image ...
💾  Downloading Kubernetes v1.27.3 preload ...
🔥  Creating docker container (CPUs=2, Memory=4000MB) ...
🐳  Preparing Kubernetes v1.27.3 on Docker 24.0.4 ...
	▪ Generating certificates and keys ...
	▪ Booting up control plane ...
	▪ Configuring RBAC rules ...
🔗  Configuring bridge CNI (Container Networking Interface) ...
	▪ Using image gcr.io/k8s-minikube/storage-provisioner:v5
🔎  Verifying Kubernetes components...
🌟  Enabled addons: storage-provisioner
🏄  Done! kubectl is now configured to use "minikube" cluster and "default" namespace by default

Check the health status of minikube:

minikube status

minikube
type: Control Plane
host: Running
kubelet: Running
apiserver: Running
kubeconfig: Configured

Start a deployment that manages a pod. The pod runs a container based on the provided Docker image:

kubectl create deployment hello-node --image=registry.k8s.io/e2e-test-images/agnhost:2.39 -- /agnhost netexec --http-port=8080

Once the deployment is created, a message confirms the step:

deployment.apps/hello-node created

Check the running pods and configured deployments:

kubectl get deployments

NAME         READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
hello-node   1/1     1            1           98s

Expose the pod to the public internet using the kubectl expose command

kubectl expose deployment hello-node --type=LoadBalancer --port=8080

The --type=LoadBalancer flag indicates that you want to expose your service outside of the cluster.

View the service you created in the previous step:

NAME         TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)          AGE
hello-node   LoadBalancer   10.102.149.85   <pending>     8080:32112/TCP   2s
kubernetes   ClusterIP      10.96.0.1       <none>        443/TCP          11m

Run the following command to open a browser window that serves the app and shows the app’s response:

minikube service hello-node

Delete the hello-node service:

kubectl delete services hello-node

Delete the deployment:

kubectl delete deployment hello-node

A confirmation displays:

deployment.extensions "hello-node" deleted

Stop Minikube:

minikube stop

A confirmation displays:

✋  Stopping node "minikube"  ...
🛑  Powering off "minikube" via SSH ...
🛑  1 node stopped.

For more information regarding Minikube and Kubernetes, check out the official documentation and the Minikube GitHub repository.