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Unni P
Unni P

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at Medium

Building a local Kubernetes cluster using k3d

k3d is a lightweight wrapper to run k3s (minimal Kubernetes distribution from Rancher Labs) in Docker.

By using k3d, we can create single and multi node k3s clusters in Docker for local development purpose.

In this blog, we are going to use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for setting up k3d.


Install Docker using the convenience script

$ curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh

$ sudo sh get-docker.sh
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Add your user to the docker group to execute commands as non-root user and log out from the current session

$ sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
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Log back in and verify the Docker commands as non-root user

$ docker info

$ docker container run hello-world
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Download and install k3d

$ curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/k3d-io/k3d/main/install.sh | bash

$ k3d version
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Download and install kubectl

$ curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"

$ sudo install kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

$ kubectl version --client
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Create the cluster using the below configuration file

$ cat config.yml
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apiVersion: k3d.io/v1alpha4
kind: Simple
metadata:
  name: dev
servers: 1
agents: 2
image: rancher/k3s:v1.25.2-k3s1
ports:
- port: 30000-30100:30000-30100
  nodeFilters:
  - server:*
registries:
  create:
    name: dev
    host: 0.0.0.0
    hostPort: "5000"
options:
  k3s:
    extraArgs:
    - arg: --disable=traefik
      nodeFilters:
      - server:*
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$ k3d cluster create --config config.yml
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Check the cluster details and nodes

$ kubectl cluster-info

$ kubectl get nodes
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Create a sample index.html file

$ echo "Hello from Pod!" > index.html
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Build a custom Docker image using the below Dockerfile

$ cat Dockerfile
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FROM nginx:1.23
COPY index.html /usr/local/nginx/html
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$ docker image build -t app:v1 .
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Tag the custom built image and push to the container registry created by k3d

$ docker image tag app:v1 localhost:5000/app:v1

$ docker image push localhost:5000/app:v1
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Deploy a pod using the custom built image

$ cat app-pod.yml
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apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  labels:
    run: app
  name: app
spec:
  containers:
  - image: dev:5000/app:v1
    name: app
    ports:
    - containerPort: 80
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$ kubectl create -f app-pod.yml
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$ kubectl get pods
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Expose the pod to a node port service

$ cat app-nodeport.yml
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apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  labels:
    run: app
  name: app-nodeport
spec:
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 80
    nodePort: 30000
  selector:
    run: app
  type: NodePort
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$ kubectl create -f app-nodeport.yml
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$ kubectl get svc
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Verify the webpage using browser or curl

$ curl http://localhost:30000
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Top comments (8)

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michelsylvestre profile image
Michel Sylvestre

Nice and simple!
Small typo :
kubectl create -f app.yml

should be

kubectl create -f app-pod.yml

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iamunnip profile image
Unni P

Thank you, corrected the typo.

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adriens profile image
adriens

Hi, nice post : would mind also add (k)native install to your post ? To achieve serverless deployments ?

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iamunnip profile image
Unni P

Thank you! I will check about (k)native.

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adriens profile image
adriens

Great !

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tanmaygi profile image
Tanmay Shukla

Great 👍 one

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iamunnip profile image
Unni P

Thank you!

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didof profile image
Francesco Di Donato

Amazing post. Thank you.