How to set up three Kubernetes test labs on your laptop
In this tutorial, we set up three Kubernetes test labs on our laptop with three different Kubernetes distributions.
We install the three Kubernetes clusters on different virtual machines to prevent them from interfering with each other. We use Multipass for creating the virtual machines.
In each Kubernetes test lab, we will deploy an Nginx web server and test it with curl. To expose our Nginx web server to the external network we will use an Ingress Controller.
Some of the Kubernetes distributions have built-in Ingress Controllers. For others, we install an Ingress Controller.
System requirements
You can build these test labs on Linux, Mac (both Intel and Apple Silicon), or Windows.
A virtual machine for running a Kubernetes test lab needs at least 2GB of memory and 2 CPU cores. So if you wish to run all three test labs simultaneously your laptop needs at least 16GB of memory. If you have less memory, you can keep the other two virtual machines shut while running one test lab.
Outline of steps
Install Multipass
Multipass is a handy tool for running Ubuntu virtual machines on Linux, Mac(both Intel and Apple Silicon), or Windows. Install Multipass following the installation instructions for your platform.
To launch the virtual machines we use the multipass CLI.
Set up K0s test lab
K0s is a kubernetes distribution from Mirantis.
Launch a virtual machine
Open the terminal on your laptop.
Launch a new virtual machine named k0s10 with 5GB storage, 2GB memory, and 2 CPU cores. We use Ubuntu Jammy for the OS.
multipass launch -d 5G -m 2G -c 2 -n k0s10 22.04
Log in to the virtual machine.
multipass shell k0s10
This virtual machine is the host for our K0s cluster.
Install K0s
On the virtual machine k0s10, run the K0s installation script to download the latest K0s version and install it to /usr/local/bin. The script will detect your CPU architecture (amd64 or arm64) and download the appropriate binary of K0s.
curl -sSLf https://get.k0s.sh | sudo sh
Run k0s as a service.
sudo k0s install controller --single
Start k0s.
sudo k0s start
Check the status of k0s service with systemctl.
sudo systemctl status k0scontroller.service
The service should be in active state.
Check k0s status with k0s status command.
sudo k0s status
Version: v1.28.4+k0s.0
Process ID: 1887
Role: controller
Workloads: true
SingleNode: true
Kube-api probing successful: true
Kube-api probing last error:
K0s is bundled with kubectl so we do not have to install it separately.
Check the Pods running in the cluster.
sudo k0s kubectl get pods -A
NAMESPACE NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
kube-system kube-proxy-lj88q 1/1 Running 0 5m7s
kube-system kube-router-jrncp 1/1 Running 0 5m7s
kube-system coredns-85df575cdb-wjhv6 1/1 Running 0 5m8s
kube-system metrics-server-7556957bb7-njn4j 1/1 Running 0 5m8s
Configure alias for kubectl so we can simply type in kubectl instead of sudo k0s kubectl.
echo 'alias kubectl="sudo k0s kubectl"' >> .bash_aliases
Refresh bash profile to activate the new alias.
source .bashrc
Now, you can use kubectl more easily.
kubectl get pods -A
Install Ingress-NGINX controller
K0s does not install an ingress controller by default. So. let’s install Ingress-NGINX controller.
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/controller-v1.1.3/deploy/static/provider/baremetal/deploy.yaml
Check the status of the Ingress-NGINX Pods.
kubectl get pods -n ingress-nginx
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
ingress-nginx-admission-create-hrc7q 0/1 Completed 0 2m52s
ingress-nginx-admission-patch-2hnvr 0/1 Completed 0 2m52s
ingress-nginx-controller-65c7dccc44-tcf2n 1/1 Running 0 2m52s
Nginx controller is running. The other two Pods are Kubernetes Jobs for setting up the ingress controller and must be in Completed state.
At the installation, the Ingress-Nginx controller will also set up a NodePort service to forward external traffic to the Ingress Controller. This is required because we don’t have a load balancer.
Check the NodePort Service.
kubectl get services -n ingress-nginx
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
ingress-nginx-controller NodePort 10.110.146.246 <none> 80:31675/TCP,443:31665/TCP 3h11m
ingress-nginx-controller-admission ClusterIP 10.111.175.92 <none> 443/TCP 3h11m
The Ingress-NGINX controller uses the NodePort service ingress-nginx-controller to connect to external networks. Note the IP address 10.110.146.246 of the NodePort Service, as we will need it later to connect to our Nginx web server. (Note that your IP address will be different.)
Annotate the IngressClass to make it the default.
kubectl -n ingress-nginx annotate ingressclasses nginx ingressclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class="true"
Deploy an Nginx web server
Create Kubernetes Deployment for Nginx web app.
kubectl create deployment nginx-app --image=nginx --port=80
Check the Deployment status.
kubectl get deployments -o wide
NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE CONTAINERS IMAGES SELECTOR
nginx-app 1/1 1 1 11s nginx nginx app=nginx-app
Create Service.
kubectl create service clusterip nginx-app --tcp=8000:80
Check the status of the service.
kubectl get services -o wide
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE SELECTOR
kubernetes ClusterIP 10.96.0.1 <none> 443/TCP 3h55m <none>
nginx-app ClusterIP 10.100.213.222 <none> 8000/TCP 8s app=nginx-app
Create ingress.
kubectl create ingress nginx-app --rule=/=nginx-app:8000 --class=nginx
Check the ingress.
kubectl get ingress
NAME CLASS HOSTS ADDRESS PORTS AGE
nginx-app nginx * 192.168.64.28 80 2m14s
If the Ingress resource and the Ingress Controller are properly configured, an IP address will be assigned to the Ingress. (Note that your IP address will be different).
If you don’t see an IP address, wait a while and check again as Kubernetes may take about one minute to assign an IP address to a newly created Ingress resource.
Test the Nginx web server with curl. Use the IP address of the NodePort service obtained by kubectl get services -n ingress-nginx (Note that your IP address will be different).
curl 10.110.146.246:80
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to nginx!</title>
<style>
html { color-scheme: light dark; }
body { width: 35em; margin: 0 auto;
font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to nginx!</h1>
<p>If you see this page, the nginx web server is successfully installed and
working. Further configuration is required.</p>
<p>For online documentation and support please refer to
<a href="http://nginx.org/">nginx.org</a>.<br/>
Commercial support is available at
<a href="http://nginx.com/">nginx.com</a>.</p>
<p><em>Thank you for using nginx.</em></p>
</body>
</html>
If things are working correctly, curl will print the Nginx home page.
If you have enough memory in your laptop, you can keep this virtual machine running while setting up the other test labs. If not, log out from the virtual machine and shut it down to regain the memory and CPU resources.
Exit the virtual machine.
exit
Shut down the virtual machine from the terminal on your laptop.
multipass stop k0s10
You can start the K0s test lab anytime you want in the future.
multipass start k0s10
Set up K3s test lab
K3s is a lightweight Kubernetes distribution originally developed by Rancher.
Launch a virtual machine
From the terminal on the laptop, launch a new virtual machine named k3s10 with 5GB storage, 2GB memory, and 2 CPU cores.
multipass launch -d 5G -m 2G -c 2 -n k3s10 22.04
Log in to the virtual machine.
multipass shell k3s10
This is the host for our K3s cluster.
Install K3s
Inside the k3s10 virtual machine, install the latest version of K3s using the installation script from the K3s project.
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE=644 sh -
The parameter K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE writes the kubeconfig files at /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml with permission 644 so we can run kubectl without root privileges.
K3s is bundled with kubectl so you do not have to install it separately.
List all Pods running in the cluster.
kubectl get pods -A
NAMESPACE NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
kube-system local-path-provisioner-84db5d44d9-2sk8c 1/1 Running 0 22m
kube-system metrics-server-67c658944b-bqgc7 1/1 Running 0 22m
kube-system coredns-6799fbcd5-wmzbx 1/1 Running 0 22m
kube-system helm-install-traefik-crd-wbcsf 0/1 Completed 0 22m
kube-system helm-install-traefik-wcp5l 0/1 Completed 1 22m
kube-system svclb-traefik-f41b4ca0-k28ng 2/2 Running 0 21m
kube-system traefik-f4564c4f4-x9jpg 1/1 Running 0 21m
Ingress controller
K3s installs Traefik Ingress controller and ServiceLB Load balancer by default.
Deploy an Nginx web server
Create Kubernetes Deployment for Nginx web app.
kubectl create deployment nginx-app --image=nginx --port=80
Check the Deployment status.
kubectl get deployments -o wide
NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE CONTAINERS IMAGES SELECTOR
nginx-app 1/1 1 1 71s nginx nginx app=nginx-app
Create Service.
kubectl create service clusterip nginx-app --tcp=8000:80
Check the status of the service.
kubectl get services -o wide
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE SELECTOR
kubernetes ClusterIP 10.43.0.1 <none> 443/TCP 41m <none>
nginx-app ClusterIP 10.43.178.8 <none> 8000/TCP 8s app=nginx-app
Create ingress.
kubectl create ingress nginx-app --rule=/=nginx-app:8000
Check the ingress.
kubectl get ingress
NAME CLASS HOSTS ADDRESS PORTS AGE
nginx-app traefik * 192.168.64.29 80 8s
If the IP address is still blank, check again after about 1 minute. (Note that your IP address will be different.)
Test the Nginx web server with curl. Since K3s cluster includes a load balancer, we can use the ingress IP address.
curl http://192.168.64.29
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to nginx!</title>
<style>
html { color-scheme: light dark; }
body { width: 35em; margin: 0 auto;
font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to nginx!</h1>
<p>If you see this page, the nginx web server is successfully installed and
working. Further configuration is required.</p>
<p>For online documentation and support please refer to
<a href="http://nginx.org/">nginx.org</a>.<br/>
Commercial support is available at
<a href="http://nginx.com/">nginx.com</a>.</p>
<p><em>Thank you for using nginx.</em></p>
</body>
</html>
Our K3s cluster is working fine now. Let’s log out and shut down the virtual machine.
Log out from the virtual machine terminal.
exit
Shutdown the virtual machine from the laptop terminal.
multipass stop k3s10
You can start the K3s test lab anytime you want in the future by using this command from the laptop terminal.
multipass start k3s10
Set up MicroK8s test lab
MicroK8s is a lightweight Kubernetes distribution from Canonical.
Launch virtual machine
Launch a virtual machine named microk8s with 5GB storage, 2GB memory, and 2 CPU cores.
multipass launch -d 5G -m 2G -c 2 -n microk8s 22.04
Log in to the virtual machine.
multipass shell microk8s
This virtual machine is the host for our MicroK8s cluster.
Install MicroK8s
Install Microk8s snap on the microk8s virtual machine.
sudo snap install microk8s --classic --channel=1.29
Check MicroK8s status.
sudo microk8s status
microk8s is running
high-availability: no
datastore master nodes: 127.0.0.1:19001
datastore standby nodes: none
addons:
enabled:
dns # (core) CoreDNS
ha-cluster # (core) Configure high availability on the current node
helm # (core) Helm - the package manager for Kubernetes
helm3 # (core) Helm 3 - the package manager for Kubernetes
disabled:
cert-manager # (core) Cloud native certificate management
cis-hardening # (core) Apply CIS K8s hardening
community # (core) The community addons repository
dashboard # (core) The Kubernetes dashboard
host-access # (core) Allow Pods connecting to Host services smoothly
hostpath-storage # (core) Storage class; allocates storage from host directory
ingress # (core) Ingress controller for external access
kube-ovn # (core) An advanced network fabric for Kubernetes
mayastor # (core) OpenEBS MayaStor
metallb # (core) Loadbalancer for your Kubernetes cluster
metrics-server # (core) K8s Metrics Server for API access to service metrics
minio # (core) MinIO object storage
observability # (core) A lightweight observability stack for logs, traces and metrics
prometheus # (core) Prometheus operator for monitoring and logging
rbac # (core) Role-Based Access Control for authorisation
registry # (core) Private image registry exposed on localhost:32000
rook-ceph # (core) Distributed Ceph storage using Rook
storage # (core) Alias to hostpath-storage add-on, deprecated
Add the current user to the microk8s group so we can run microk8s CLI tool without sudo.
sudo usermod -a -G microk8s $USER
sudo chown -f -R $USER ~/.kube
We must log out and log in again for the changes to be applied.
Log out from the virtual machine terminal.
exit
Log in to the virtual machine from the terminal on the laptop.
multipass shell microk8s
MicroK8s is bundled with the kubectl CLI tool.
List the Pods.
microk8s kubectl get pods -A
NAMESPACE NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
kube-system calico-node-t7lx2 1/1 Running 0 26m
kube-system coredns-864597b5fd-hcrgs 1/1 Running 0 26m
kube-system calico-kube-controllers-77bd7c5b-k62sm 1/1 Running 0 26m
Configure an alias so we can use kubectl without typing microk8s.
echo 'alias kubectl="microk8s kubectl"' >> .bash_aliases
source .bashrc
Install ingress controller
Microk8s is shipped with a range of add-ons including Ingress-NGINX and MetalLB load balancer.
Enable Ingress-NGINX.
microk8s enable ingress
Enable MetalLB. When requested input an IP range to be used by the load balancer. This IP range must not conflict with the IP addresses on the host (microk8s virtual machine).
microk8s enable metallb
Infer repository core for addon metallb
Enabling MetalLB
Enter each IP address range delimited by comma (e.g. '10.64.140.43-10.64.140.49,192.168.0.105-192.168.0.111'): 10.0.0.1-10.0.0.10
Applying Metallb manifest
...
Check the status of newly enabled addons.
microk8s status
microk8s is running
high-availability: no
datastore master nodes: 127.0.0.1:19001
datastore standby nodes: none
addons:
enabled:
dns # (core) CoreDNS
ha-cluster # (core) Configure high availability on the current node
helm # (core) Helm - the package manager for Kubernetes
helm3 # (core) Helm 3 - the package manager for Kubernetes
ingress # (core) Ingress controller for external access
metallb # (core) Loadbalancer for your Kubernetes cluster
disabled:
cert-manager # (core) Cloud native certificate management
cis-hardening # (core) Apply CIS K8s hardening
community # (core) The community addons repository
dashboard # (core) The Kubernetes dashboard
host-access # (core) Allow Pods connecting to Host services smoothly
hostpath-storage # (core) Storage class; allocates storage from host directory
kube-ovn # (core) An advanced network fabric for Kubernetes
mayastor # (core) OpenEBS MayaStor
metrics-server # (core) K8s Metrics Server for API access to service metrics
minio # (core) MinIO object storage
observability # (core) A lightweight observability stack for logs, traces and metrics
prometheus # (core) Prometheus operator for monitoring and logging
rbac # (core) Role-Based Access Control for authorisation
registry # (core) Private image registry exposed on localhost:32000
rook-ceph # (core) Distributed Ceph storage using Rook
storage # (core) Alias to hostpath-storage add-on, deprecated
Deploy Nginx web server
Create Kubernetes Deployment for Nginx web app.
kubectl create deployment nginx-app --image=nginx --port=80
Check the Deployment status.
kubectl get deployments -o wide
NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE CONTAINERS IMAGES SELECTOR
nginx-app 1/1 1 1 78s nginx nginx app=nginx-app
Create Service.
kubectl create service clusterip nginx-app --tcp=8000:80
Check the status of the service.
kubectl get services -o wide
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE SELECTOR
kubernetes ClusterIP 10.152.183.1 <none> 443/TCP 37m <none>
nginx-app ClusterIP 10.152.183.246 <none> 8000/TCP 7s app=nginx-app
Create ingress.
kubectl create ingress nginx-app --rule=/=nginx-app:8000
Check the ingress.
kubectl get ingress
NAME CLASS HOSTS ADDRESS PORTS AGE
nginx-app public * 127.0.0.1 80 17s
If the IP address field is blank, check again after about 1 minute.
Test the Nginx web app. We can use the Ingress IP address because a load balancer is present.
curl 127.0.0.1
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to nginx!</title>
<style>
html { color-scheme: light dark; }
body { width: 35em; margin: 0 auto;
font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to nginx!</h1>
<p>If you see this page, the nginx web server is successfully installed and
working. Further configuration is required.</p>
<p>For online documentation and support please refer to
<a href="http://nginx.org/">nginx.org</a>.<br/>
Commercial support is available at
<a href="http://nginx.com/">nginx.com</a>.</p>
<p><em>Thank you for using nginx.</em></p>
</body>
</html>
Building a Kubernetes test lab - Distro vs vanilla
In this tutorial, we built three Kubernetes test labs with K0s, K3s, and MicroK8s - popular Kubernetes distributions intended for laptops or development workstations.
You can also install a vanilla Kubernetes cluster on your laptop. It’s more work than installing a Kubernetes distribution. But you’ll get exposed to more Kubernetes internals by doing it.