Local Kubernetes

Docker and Kubernetes are fairly mature and now have many alternative implementations that you can run localy. Some alternatives are explored below.

Minikube and Colima

Minikube - Colima

Minikube is a lightweight k8s implementation that creates a local cluster with a simple one node cluster.

Prerequisites

You need a container service. You can use Docker or Colima as a light weight alternative

Installing Colima is easy with your typical OSX package managers: Colima Mac Install

brew install Colima
colima start --kubernetes

Useful commands

colima start: starts colima. Useful Options: --cpu, --memory (GBs), --disk (GBs), --arch (deafult: aarch64), --kubernetes
colima list: List all colima profiles
colima ssh -p [default]: SSH into the the colima container matching the profile(-p default: default)
minikube start: start minikube
alias kubectl="minikube kubectl --": You can use minikube’s kubectl for guaranteed compatibility
minikube dashboard: bring up a dashboard displaying the status of your minikube cluster in a web browser
minikube status: Show the the status of minkube in thwe CLI

Podman and K3D

Using Podman instead of Docker

You need a container service. Docker should probably be your default but I’ve been playing with podman because it offers rootless alternative to docker which is largely drop-in compatible.

Installing podman

brew install podman
podman machine init
podman machine start

Working locally with k3d

see: https://k3d.io/v5.5.1/usage/advanced/podman/#macos

podman system connection ls

Create a cluster

export DOCKER_HOST=ssh://root@localhost:53685
export DOCKER_SOCK=/run/podman/podman.sock

Setup podman network

podman network create k3d
podman network inspect k3d -f '{{ .DNSEnabled }}'

k0S

k0sproject.io k0s is the simple, solid & certified Kubernetes distribution that works on any infrastructure: bare-metal, on-premises, edge, IoT, public & private clouds. It’s 100% open source & free.

K3S

k3s.io Lightweight Kubernetes built for IoT & Edge computing - Rancher

MicroK8s

microk8s Zero-ops, pure-upstream, HA Kubernetes, from developer workstations to production

〈 Local Kubernetes