Setting up the Kubernetes cluster on Windows by minikube

By nature, Docker and Kubernetes are based on a Linux-based OS. Although it is not ideal to use the Windows OS to explore Kubernetes, many people are using the Windows OS as their desktop or laptop machine. Luckily, there are a lot of ways to run the Linux OS on Windows using virtualization technologies, which makes running a Kubernetes cluster on Windows machines possible. Then, we can build a development environment or do a proof of concept on our local Windows machine.

You can run the Linux VM by using any hypervisor on Windows to set up Kubernetes from scratch, but using minikube (https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube) is the fastest way to build a Kubernetes cluster on Windows. Note that this recipe is not ideal for a production environment because it will set up a Kubernetes on Linux VM on Windows.

Getting ready

To set up minikube on Windows requires a hypervisor, either VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org) or Hyper-V, because, again, minikube uses the Linux VM on Windows. This means that you cannot use the Windows virtual machine (for example, running the Windows VM on macOS by parallels).

However, kubectl , the Kubernetes CLI, supports a Windows native binary that can connect to Kubernetes over a network. So, you can set up a portable suite of Kubernetes stacks on your Windows machine.

The following diagram shows the relationship between kubectl, Hypervisor, minikube, and Windows:

Hyper-V is required for Windows 8 Pro or later. While many users still use Windows 7, we will use VirtualBox as the minikube hypervisor in this recipe.

How to do it...

First of all, VirtualBox for Windows is required:

1. Go to the VirtualBox website (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) to download the Windows installer.
2. Installation is straightforward, so we can just choose the default options and click Next:

3. Next, create the Kubernetes folder, which is used to store the minikube and kubectl binaries. Let's create the k8s folder on top of the C: drive, as shown in the following screenshot:

4. This folder must be in the command search path, so open System Properties, then move to the Advanced tab.
5. Click the Environment Variables... button, then choose Path , and then click the Edit... button, as shown in the following screenshot:

6. Then, append c:\k8s , as follows:

7. After clicking the OK button, log off and logo on to Windows again (or reboot) to apply this change.
8. Next, download minikube for Windows. It is a single binary, so use any web browser to download https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/releases/download/v0.26.1/minikube-windows-amd64 and then copy it to the c:\k8s folder, but change the filename to minikube.exe.

9. Next, download kubectl for Windows, which can communicate with Kubernetes. It is also single binary like minikube. So, download https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/v1.10.2/bin/windows/amd64/kubectl.exe and then copy it to the c:\k8s folder as well.
10. Eventually, you will see two binaries in the c:\k8s folder, as shown in the following screenshot:

If you are running anti-virus software, it may prevent you from running kubectl.exe and minikube.exe. If so, please update your anti-virus software setting that allows running these two binaries.

How it works...

Let's get started!

1. Open Command Prompt and then type minikube start , as shown in the following screenshot:

2. minikube downloads the Linux VM image and then sets up Kubernetes on the Linux VM; now if you open VirtualBox, you can see that the minikube guest has been registered, as illustrated in the following screenshot:

3. Wait for a few minutes to complete the setup of the Kubernetes cluster.
4. As per the following screenshot, type kubectl version to check the Kubernetes master version.
5. Use the kubectl get nodes command to check whether the Kubernetes node is ready or not:

6. Now you can start to use Kubernetes on your machine! Again, Kubernetes is running on the Linux VM, as shown in the next screenshot.
7. Using minikube ssh allows you to access the Linux VM that runs Kubernetes:

Therefore, any Linux-based Docker image is capable of running on your Windows machine.

8. Type minikube ip to verify which IP address the Linux VM uses and also minikube dashboard, to open your default web browser and navigate to the Kubernetes UI ,as shown in the following screenshot:

9. If you don't need to use Kubernetes anymore, type minikube stop or open VirtualBox to stop the Linux guest and release the resource, as shown in the following screenshot:

See also

This recipe describes how to set up a Kubernetes cluster on your Windows OS using minikube. It is the easiest way to start using Kubernetes. It also describes kubectl, the Kubernetes command-line interface tool, which is the entry point form which to control your Kubernetes.