Minikube

Minikube runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster inside a virtual machine on local computer for users looking to try out Kubernetes or develop with it day-to-day.

Installing

Minikube can be installed on Linux, Windows and Mac.

Linux

On Linux, download the binary from the repository and add the execution right to it.

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

Windows

Chocolatey is a command line application installer for Windows. It adds, updates, and uninstalls programs in the background requiring very little user interaction.

To install Minikube on Windows with Chocolatey, run these commands as administrator.

choco install minikube
choco install kubernetes-cli

Mac

Homebrew is a package manager for macOS that can be used to install Minikube by following these steps.

brew cask install minikube
brew install kubernetes-cli

Once Minikube is installed, each configuration files can be found in the home directory :

%HOMEPATH%\.minikube

Starting

Simply start Minikube with all the default options or restart a stopped Minikube cluster.

minikube start

This command can be customized with external parameters explain in the next sections.

VM driver

Depending on the operating system, the provider used to start the Kubernetes virtual machine can be changed in command line at the first starting boot. When it's done, a virtual machine will be created locally on the desired provider.

Virtualbox

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. It can be installed on Linux, Windows and Mac operating system.

When it's done, just run these command to run Minikube locally.

minikube start --vm-driver virtualbox

Hyper-V

Microsoft Hyper-V (formerly known as Windows Server Virtualization), is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. It has to enable on Windows operating system to run the Minikube instance locally.

Here is an example to enable Hyper-V on a Windows 10 operating system.

When it's done, just start Minikube by specifiying the desired VM driver.

minikube start --vm-driver hyperv

Kubernetes version

It can be useful for some reasons to deploy a specific Kubernetes version. This can be done at the first boot time of the Minikube cluster in command line.

minikube start --kubernetes-version="v1.12.0"

The Kubernetes versions available can be displayed with a getting command explain below.

Flavor

The default Minikube flavor can be updated at the first boot by giving arguments at the command line.

minikube start --memory 5120 --cpus=4

Stopping

Stopping Minikube will not destroy the virtual machine created, it just gonna stop it.

minikube stop

Deleting

Deleting Minikube will gonna destroyed the virtual machine created at the first boot of the cluster. This will not affect the local configuration file of Kubectl.

minikube delete

Getting

Once Minikube cluster is up and running, it can be useful to get information about the Kubernetes node.

Minikube version

Getting the Minikube version.

minikube version

Kubernetes version

Getting the Kubernetes versions available.

minikube get-k8s-versions

Cluster status

Getting the status of the Minikube cluster.

minikube status

IP address

Getting the public IP of the cluster to be able to work with the deployed resources.

minikube ip

Service URL

Getting the Minikube URL of a service already deployed in the cluster.

minikube service --url=true SERVICE_NAME

Connecting

Once the Minikube cluster is up and running, it can be useful to connect to the node with SSH to manage some Kubernetes resources.

minikube ssh

Dashboard

Minikube automatically deployed the Kubernetes dashboard when a cluster is bootstrapped. The minikube command line can automatically open it in the default Web browser on port 8001.

minikube dashboard

The default Minikube dashboard url should be : http://localhost:8001/ui

Updating

Once the Minikube cluster is up and running, it may be updated in command line.

minikube update-context

Logging

For debug purpose, it can be interesting to read the Minikube logs.

minikube logs

Customizing

Some add-ons exist to automatically deploy some useful principles in a Kubernetes cluster to easily managed it.

Install

The Minikube add-ons installation has to be made in command line.

minikube addons enable ADDONS_NAME

List

Getting a exhaustive list of the available add-ons in Minikube.

minikube addons list

External documentation

To go further in the management of Minikube, please refer to these documentations :

• Official Minikube GitHub repository

• Official Kubernetes documentation of Minikube

• Official Kubernetes documentation for running Minikube