Easy install Kubernetes cluster with kind on windows 11

Well I was exploring ways to install a Kubernetes cluster in my machine, then I found out about Kind.

Now what is Kind ? Its a tool for running local Kubernetes clusters using Docker containers as nodes. Kind was primarily designed for testing Kubernetes itself, but may be used for local development.

Prerequisites:

• Docker

• Kubectl

To install docker on your machine you can follow the steps here.

For installing kubectl, follow this.

Once this is done lets proceed to install kind.

Setting up Kind:

Run the following command using powershell-

curl.exe -Lo kind-windows-amd64.exe https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/dl/v0.24.0/kind-windows-amd64
Move-Item .\kind-windows-amd64.exe c:\some-dir-in-your-PATH\kind.exe

Under Advanced system settings” > Click on “Environment Variables” under “System Variables” set new “Path” variable to "c:\some-dir-in-your-PATH\kind.exe"

Now to create a default kind cluster -

kind create cluster

It will create a cluster with 1 node --"kind-control-plane"

You can check cluster info with this command -

kubectl cluster-info --context kind-kind

Creating cluster with worker nodes:

Now lets create a kind cluster with 2 worker nodes -

Create a kind.yaml file with content below.

kind: Cluster
apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
nodes:
- role: control-plane
- role: worker
- role: worker

Save the file and when creating the cluster, use the --config option to introduce the new cluster configuration:

kind create cluster --config kind.yaml --name Demo-cluster

Check cluster details:

kubectl cluster-info --context kind-Demo-cluster

Now to create it with ingress, use the below config file

kind: Cluster
apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
name: kind
nodes:
- role: control-plane
  kubeadmConfigPatches:
  - |
    kind: InitConfiguration
    nodeRegistration:
      kubeletExtraArgs:
        node-labels: "ingress-ready=true"
  extraPortMappings:
  - containerPort: 80
    hostPort: 8080
    protocol: TCP
  - containerPort: 443
    hostPort: 44300
    protocol: TCP
- role: worker
- role: worker

Now run the command to create cluster and get the nodes details:

kind create cluster --config kind.yaml --name demo-cluster

PS D:\> kubectl get nodes
NAME                         STATUS   ROLES           AGE     VERSION
demo-cluster-control-plane   Ready    control-plane   3m40s   v1.31.0
demo-cluster-worker          Ready    <none>          3m27s   v1.31.0
demo-cluster-worker2         Ready    <none>          3m27s   v1.31.0

Lets check the pods created:

PS D:\> kubectl get pods -A
NAMESPACE            NAME                                                 READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
kube-system          coredns-6f6b679f8f-5wj7s                             1/1     Running   0          6m15s
kube-system          coredns-6f6b679f8f-fvm2s                             1/1     Running   0          6m15s
kube-system          etcd-demo-cluster-control-plane                      1/1     Running   0          6m22s
kube-system          kindnet-4xrd2                                        1/1     Running   0          6m10s
kube-system          kindnet-ndrrk                                        1/1     Running   0          6m10s
kube-system          kindnet-vgw4q                                        1/1     Running   0          6m15s
kube-system          kube-apiserver-demo-cluster-control-plane            1/1     Running   0          6m22s
kube-system          kube-controller-manager-demo-cluster-control-plane   1/1     Running   0          6m21s
kube-system          kube-proxy-b29wr                                     1/1     Running   0          6m15s
kube-system          kube-proxy-f5ddp                                     1/1     Running   0          6m10s
kube-system          kube-proxy-j8v8v                                     1/1     Running   0          6m10s
kube-system          kube-scheduler-demo-cluster-control-plane            1/1     Running   0          6m22s
local-path-storage   local-path-provisioner-57c5987fd4-zm5fr              1/1     Running   0          6m15s