Our experience with Microk8s

We have used Microk8s for several of our projects and it has truly met our expectations for a Kubernetes cluster. The installation went smoothly and we quickly had a fully functional Kubernetes cluster running on a single virtual machine. With Microk8s we have been able to focus on our applications rather than administrative tasks as it delivers a truly uptime experience.

In our experience, Microk8s has proven to be an excellent solution for small deployments, edge computing, and developer environments. It allowed us to easily deploy and manage our applications without the overhead and complexity of a full-blown Kubernetes cluster.”

What will you need?

• Operating system Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
• Virtual server with at least 2 CPUs, 4 GB of memory and 20 GB of disk space.
• Internet connection.
• Firefox browser.

1. Installing MicroK8s .

MicroK8s will install a minimal, lightweight Kubernetes that can run and be used on virtually any machine. It can be installed in no time:

sudo snap install microk8s --classic --channel=1.29

2. Join the group

MicroK8s creates a group to ensure smooth use of commands that require administrator privileges. To add the current user to a group and access the .kube cache directory, run the following three commands:

sudo usermod -a -G microk8s $USER
sudo mkdir -p ~/.kube
sudo chown -f -R $USER ~/.kube

You will also need to re-enter the session for the group update to occur:

su - $USER

3. Checking status

MicroK8s has a built-in command to display its status. During installation  --wait-ready, you can use the flag to wait for Kubernetes services to initialize:

microk8s status --wait-ready

4. Access to Kubernetes

MicroK8s ships its own version  kubectl for accessing Kubernetes. It can be used to run commands to monitor and manage Kubernetes. For example, to view a node:

microk8s kubectl get nodes

…or to view running services:

microk8s kubectl get services

MicroK8s uses a  kubectl named command to avoid conflicts with existing kubectl installations. If you don’t have an existing installation, it’s easier to add an alias (add to  ~/.bash_aliases), like this:

alias kubectl='microk8s kubectl'

Let’s add command line completion and an alias  k for  kubectl:

echo 'alias k=kubectl' >>~/.bashrc
echo 'source <(kubectl completion bash)' >>~/.bashrc
echo 'complete -F __start_kubectl k' >>~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

5. Application Deployment

Of course, Kubernetes is designed for deploying applications and services. To do this, as with any other Kubernetes, you can use the command  kubectl. Try installing the demo application:

kubectl create deployment nginx --image=nginx

The installation may take a minute or two, but you can check the status:

kubectl get pods

6. Using add-ons

MicroK8s uses a minimum of components to create clean, lightweight Kubernetes. However, a lot of additional functionality can be achieved with a few keystrokes by using “add-ons” – ready-made components that will provide additional capabilities to your Kubernetes, from simple DNS management to machine learning with Kubeflow !

To begin with, it is recommended to add control  DNSto facilitate interaction between services. For applications that require storage, the add-on  hostpath-storage provides directory space on the host. They are easy to configure:

microk8s enable dns
microk8s enable hostpath-storage

7. Starting and stopping MicroK8s

MicroK8s will run until you decide to stop it. You can stop and start MicroK8s using the following simple commands:

microk8s stop

will stop MicroK8s and its services. You can start them again at any time by running the command:

microk8s start

Please note that if you leave MicroK8s running, it will automatically restart after a reboot. If you don’t want this to happen, just remember to run the command  microk8s stop before turning off the power.