Kubernetes Administration

Architecture

Kubernetes

Kubernetes, also known as k8s, is an open-source container management platform. It handles the life-cycle of Pods which are a collection of related containers required to run an application. Kubernetes clusters contain two types of servers:

  • Control Plane Node (previously known as Master Node) = Manages the state of the Nodes and their Pods.

  • Worker Node (previously known as Node, Worker, Worker Machines, or Minion) = Run user applications in containers and respond to requests from the Control Plane Nodes.

Control Plane Node services:

  • etcd = The most common database for storing all of the Kubernetes configuration data.

  • kube-apiserver = Handles authentication requests and retrieving/storing data from/to etcd.

  • kube-controller-manager = Monitors and controls Kubernetes resources. It will perform recovery tasks if a failure is detected. This binary runs many different controller processes:

    • attachdetach, bootstrapsigner, cloud-node-lifecycle, clusterrole-aggregation, cronjob, csrapproving, csrcleaner, csrsigning, daemonset, deployment, disruption, endpoint, endpointslice, garbagecollector, horizontalpodautoscaling, job, namespace, nodeipam, nodelifecycle, persistentvolume-binder, persistentvolume-expander, podgc, pv-protection, pvc-protection, replicaset, replicationcontroller, resourcequota, root-ca-cert-publisher, route, service, serviceaccount, serviceaccount-token, statefulset, tokencleaner, ttl, ttl-after-finished [18]

  • kube-scheduler = Determines what Node to schedule a Pod on.

Worker Node services:

  • Container runtime = Any service for executing containers that supports the Container Runtime Interface (CRI). Kubernetes officially supports containerd, CRI-O, and docker. [42]

  • kubelet = Manages containers using the container runtime.

  • kube-proxy = Handles virtual networking connections for internal (containers across different Nodes) and external (Kubernetes Services) use.

[1]

Networking

Pod Networking

Kubernetes requires a Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin to create an overlay network for inter-communication between Pods across all of the Control Plane and Worker Nodes. The default Pod network CIDR (as configured by kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr) is normally assumed to be 10.244.0.0/16. The default Service network CIDR (as configured by kubeadm init --service-cidr) is 10.96.0.0/12. [61]

Ports

Depending on the role of the Node and what Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin is used, different ports need to be opened in the firewall.

Control Plane Nodes:

Port

Description

2379/TCP

etcd client.

2380/TCP

etcd server.

6443/TCP

kube-api-server.

10250/TCP

kubelet.

10251/TCP

kube-scheduler.

10252/TCP

kube-controller-manager.

10254/TCP

Ingress Controller probes.

30000-32767/TCP+UDP

Default NodePort ports when a port is not specified.

Worker Nodes:

Port

Description

10250/TCP

kubelet.

30000-32767/TCP+UDP

Default NodePort ports when a port is not specified.

CNI Ports (All Nodes) [60]:

Port

Description

179/TCP

Calico BGP.

8472/UDP

Flannel VXLAN overlay network (Linux).

4789/UDP

Flannel VXLAN overlay network (Windows).

4789/UDP

Antrea VXLAN overlay network.

6081/UDP

Antrea Geneve overlay network.

7471/TCP

Antrea STT overlay network.

9099/TCP

Flannel probes.

6783/TCP

Weave.

6783-6784/UDP

Weave.

10349-10250/TCP

Antrea.

[47]

k3s

Networking

Ports

firewalld is not supported on k3s. iptables is the recommended firewall. [92]

Control Plane Nodes:

Port

Description

22/TCP

SSH for the Node Driver.

80/TCP

Proxy to use with an external SSL/TLS termination app.

443/TCP

Rancher UI and API. Rancher Catalogs.

2376/TCP

Docker TLS port for Docker Machine.

6443/TCP

kube-api-server.

8472/UDP

Flannel VXLAN overlay network (Linux).

10250/TCP

kubelet.

Worker Nodes:

Port

Description

22/TCP

SSH for the Node Driver.

443/TCP

Rancher Catalogs.

2376/TCP

Docker TLS port for Docker Machine.

8472/UDP

Flannel VXLAN overlay network (Linux).

10250/TCP

kubelet.

[47]

OpenShift

The Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (RHOCP) is an enterprise product based on Google’s Kubernetes. [16] It has a stronger focus on security with support for having access control lists (ACLs) for managing containers in separate projects and full SELinux support. It also provides more features to extend Kubernetes functionality.

The Origin Kubernetes Distribution (OKD), originally known as OpenShift Origin, is the free and open source community edition of RHOCP. [4] OKD 4.5 was the first stable release for the 4.Y series. [21] It supports being deployed ontop of Red Hat CoreOS and Fedora CoreOS. [21]

OpenShift has 3 primary architectures:

  • Single Node (OKD only) = Proof-of-concept deployments with all OpenShift services running on a single Node.

  • Three Node = Edge deployments using multiple Single Nodes.

  • Full = Production deployments (recommended minimum requirements). [23]

    • x3 Control Nodes

    • x2 Logging and monitoring Nodes

    • x3 Routing Nodes

    • x2 Worker Nodes

Node types and services:

  • Control = These Nodes have to be deployed using Red Hat CoreOS (RHOCP) or Fedora CoreOS (OKD). [24] All other Nodes can use RHEL (RHOCP) or Fedora (OKD).

    • etcd

    • kube-api

    • kube-controller-manager

  • Logging and Monitoring [25]

    • EFK stack

      • Fluentd = Log collection.

      • Elasticsearch = Log storage.

      • Kibana = Visualization.

    • Curator = Log filtering (based on timestamps) in OpenShift < 4.5.

  • Router = This Node is optional and is combined with the Control Node by default. [26]

    • Ingress = HAProxy and/or F5 BIG-IP.

  • Worker/Compute = The life-cycle of these Nodes are handled by the MachineSet API. Control Plane Nodes do not use the MachineSet API as to prevent accidental deletion of the control plane. [24]

    • CRI-O (container runtime)

    • kubelet

Supported infrastructure for installing OpenShift on [27]:

  • Public cloud

    • Amazon Web Services (AWS)

    • Google Compute Platform (GCP)

    • Microsoft Azure

  • On-site

    • Bare metal

    • OpenStack

    • Red Hat Virtualization (RHV)

    • VMware vSphere

PersistentVolume support [3]:

  • AWS Elastic Block Store (EBS)

  • Azure Disk

  • Azure File

  • Cinder

  • Container Storage Interface (CSI) = Any storage provider that uses CSI as a front-end can be used with OpenShift.

  • Fibre Channel

  • Google Compute Engine (GCE) Persistent Disk

  • HostPath

  • iSCSI

  • Local volume

  • NFS

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage (Ceph RBD)

  • VMware vSphere

Tanzu

Tanzu (pronounced tawn-zoo) Kubernetes Grid (TKG) is developed by VMware as a collection of different products to install upstream Kubernetes.

There are currently four offerings for TKG [54]:

  • TKG Multicloud (TKGm) or TKG = TKGm, sometimes referred to as just TKG, supports creating and managing infrastructure on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and VMware vSphere 6. For VMware vSphere 7, TKGm can be used but TKGS is recommended instead.

  • Tanzu Community Edition (TCE) = The free and open source upstream version of TKGm.

  • TKG Services (TKGS) = VMware vSphere 7 creates and manages the Kubernetes cluster.

  • TKG Integrated Edition (TKGI) = Previously known as Enterprise PKS. Uses BOSH to deploy and manage virtual machines for the Kubernetes cluster. BOSH supports creating infrastructure on Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, and VMware vSphere. [55]

TKGm

TKGm stands for TKG Multicloud. It is a product for installing Kubernetes on-top of virtual infrastructure provided by AWS, Azure, GCE, or VMware vSphere. It first deploys an all-in-one TKG Management Cluster using kind. This then uses the Cluster API to deploy and manage one or more production Kubernetes clouds. [32]

TCE

Tanzu Community Edition (TCE) was the upstream and open source variant of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Multi-cloud (TKGm) and Tanzu Application Platform (TAP). In 2022, about one year after TCE’s launch, the project was retired and replaced by a free version of TKGm for personal use for up to 100 processor cores. [105] These are the components that the project provided from the top-down [104]:

  • Observability:

    • Fluent Bit = Log forwarding.

    • Grafana = Visualization.

    • Prometheus = Monitoring and alerting.

  • Build and deploy:

    • Cartographer and Trivy = Supply chain choreography and container scanning. [119]

    • Flux = Git monitoring.

    • Harbor = Container registry.

    • Knative = Serverless.

    • kpack = Build service.

    • Kubeapps = Application catalog.

  • Services:

    • cert-manager = Certificates.

    • Open Policy Agent (OPA) = Policy management.

    • Pinniped = Authentication.

    • Velero = Data protection.

  • Connectivity:

    • Contour and External DNS = Ingress and load balancing.

    • Antrea, Calico, and Multus = Container networking.

  • Compute runtime:

    • Cluster API = Lifecycle management.

    • Carvel = Package management.

    • Kubernetes = Container runtime.

TCE can run on these environments [104]:

  • docker and Minikube = Local.

  • VMware vSphere = On-premises.

  • AWS and Microsoft Azure = Public cloud.

Supported storage classes [90]:

  • Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

  • Azure Disk

  • Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI)

  • Network File System (NFS)

  • vSphere Cloud Native Storage (CNS)

TKGS

TKG Service (TKGS) is a product built into VMware vSphere 7 that provides heavy integration with Kubernetes.

Requirements for TKGS:

  • ESXi hypervisors = At least two are required. For the best results, use three or more.

  • vSphere HA = Highly available vSphere clusters.

  • HAProxy load balancer = Virtual machines running HAProxy are used for load balancing requests to Kubernetes.

  • DRS = Distributed Resource Scheduler.

  • vSAN = Virtual Storage Area Network.

  • vDS = vSphere Distributed Switch.

Layers of TKGS:

  1. Supervisor cluster = The Kubernetes workload management cluster. Only vSphere itself has full access to the administrative account. End-users are expected to log into a namespace to create a production Kubernetes cluster.

  2. Supervisor cluster namespace = This namespace exists in both vSphere and Kubernetes. It is used to isolate teams and resources. This is used to create the production Kubernetes cluster using the TanzuKubernetesCluster API.

  3. TanzuKubenretesCluster (tkc) = This is the Kubernetes cluster that will be used for deploying applications.

[73]

Networking

CNI plugin [74][99]:

  • Kubernetes >= 1.18 = Antrea

  • Kubernetes <= 1.17 = Calico

Service LoadBalancer = HAProxy or NSX-T Load Balancer. [75]

Releases

Kubernetes

Kubernetes was originally created by Google in 2003 and was called the Borg System. In 2014, it was renamed to Kubernetes and released as open-source software under the Apache License version 2.0. [2]

Release highlights:

  • 1.0

    • First stable public release of Kubernetes.

  • 1.1

    • Horizontal Pod Autoscaler added to automatically scale the number of containers based on metrics inside of a running Pod.

    • Ingress now supports HTTP load balancing.

    • Job objects are added to allow an app to run until it successfully completes.

  • 1.2

    • ConfigMap objects now support Dynamic Configuration to allow Pod changes at any time.

    • Deployment objects now supports Turnkey Deployments to automate the full life-cycle of a Pod.

    • DaemonSet objects added to run one Pod on every Node.

    • Ingress now supports TLS.

    • Introduced kubectl drain to force all Pods to be moved off one Node to other Nodes.

    • Added an optional web graphical user interface (GUI) known as the Kubernetes Dashboard.

  • 1.3

  • 1.4

    • kubeadm introduced for installing Kubernetes clusters.

    • ScheduledJob objects (later named to CronJob) added to run an application during a regularly scheduled time.

    • PodSecurityPolicies object added for setting the security context of containers.

    • Anti- and Inter-Affinity for helping to select which Nodes a Pod will be deployed on.

    • AppArmor support.

    • Azure Data Disk and Quobyte volume plugins.

  • 1.5

  • 1.6

    • The first release of Kubernetes not from Google (from CoreOS).

    • etcd now defaults to version 3.

    • docker is no longer a dependency. Other runtimes such as rkt and CRI-O are supported.

    • RBAC is now in beta.

    • PersistentVolumeClaim objects will now be created automatically.

  • 1.7

    • Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) allows existing APIs to have expanded functionality.

    • API Aggregation allows new APIs to be natively added to Kubernetes.

    • Secrets can now be encrypted in etcd.

    • Nodes can now have limited access to a subset of the Kubernetes APIs (only the ones it needs).

    • Extensible External Admission Control adds additional security policies and checks.

    • NetworkPolicy API is now stable.

  • 1.8

    • RBAC is now stable.

    • Storage mount options are now stable.

    • kubectl plugins are now supported to extend the CLI’s functionality.

  • 1.9

    • Workloads APIs are now stable.

    • Introduced Container Storage Interface (CSI) for adding additional storage back-ends to Kubernetes.

    • CoreDNS installation is now supported by kubeadm.

  • 1.10

    • Third-party authentication can now be used with kubectl.

  • 1.11

  • 1.12

  • 1.13

  • 1.14

    • Windows Nodes is now stable.

    • Persistent Local Volumes is now stable.

    • kubectl plugin mechanism is now stable.

  • 1.15

    • CRDs now support default settings.

    • Storage plugins are being converted to use CSI instead.

    • Cloning CSI Persistent Volumes is now supported.

  • 1.16

    • CRDs are now stable.

    • Metrics now use a registry (just as how all other Kubernetes services do).

    • kubeadm now supports joining and resetting Windows Nodes.

    • CSI support on Windows.

    • EndpointSlice API introduced as a scalable alternative to Endpoints.

  • 1.17

    • Cloud Provider Labels are now stable.

  • 1.18

    • Topology Manager API now supports NUMA CPU pinning.

    • kubectl alpha debug argument introduced to attach a temporary container to a running container for troubleshooting purposes.

    • Windows CSI now supports privileged storage configurations.

  • 1.19

    • Each major Kubernetes release is now supported for 12 months (up from 9).

    • APIs that are in-development must reach the next tier of stability during the next Kubernetes release. If not, they will be deprecated and removed from the project.

    • New APIs:

      • EndpointSlice

      • CSIStorageCapacity = An object is automatically created for a supported CSI driver to report back the available storage.

    • Stable APIs:

      • CertificateSigningRequest

      • Event

      • Ingress

    • TLS 1.3 support.

    • Ephemeral PVCs.

    • Consistent log format for all Kubernetes control plane logs.

  • 1.20

    • Dockershim has been deprecated. In a future release, Kubernetes will no longer directly use the docker binary to manage containers.

    • Exec probes have been fixed to finally timeout properly.

    • Alpha APIs:

      • Graceful shutdown of pods during a node shutdown is now supported (but disabled by default): kube-apiserver --feature-gates=GracefulNodeShutdown=false

    • Beta APIs:

      • kubectl debug

    • Stable APIs:

    • API Priority and Fairness (APF) is enabled by default: kube-apiserver --feature-gates=APIPriorityAndFairness=true

    • PID limits are enabled by default: kube-apiserver --feature-gates=SupportNodePidsLimit=true,SupportPodPidsLimit=true

    • Dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6 support has been re-added to Kubernetes.

  • 1.21

    • PodSecurityPolicy is now deprecated.

    • service.spec.topologyKeys is now deprecated.

    • Dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6 support is now beta.

    • pod.spec.securityContext.sysctls is now stable.

    • configmap.immutable and secret.immutable are now stable.

    • Alpha APIs:

      • Volume health monitoring is now supported as part of the CSI integration within kubelet. This feature requires a supported External Health Monitor controller.

    • Beta APIs:

      • Graceful shutdown of pods during a node shutdown is now enabled by default: kube-apiserver --feature-gates=GracefulNodeShutdown=true

    • Stable APIs:

      • CronJobs

      • EndpointSplice

      • PodDisruptionBudgets

  • 1.22

    • Server-Side Apply is now stable.

    • Credential plugins are now stable.

    • cgroupsv2 can now be used to restrict both CPU and memory allocations for pods (disabled by default): kubelet --feature-gates=MemoryQoS=false. cgroupsv1 was only able to restrict CPU allocations for pods.

    • Swap is now supported (disabled by default): kubelet --feature-gates=NodeSwap=false

    • Windows CSI is now stable.

    • Default seccomp profiles can now be used.

    • kubeadm can deploy the control plane as a non-root user (disabled by default): kubelet --feature-gates=KubeletInUserNamespace=false

    • kubectl debug now requires features only found in kubectl version 1.22 and is not backwards compatible with version 1.21.

  • 1.23

    • Dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6 support is now stable.

    • Generic ephemeral volumes are now stable. Any persistent volume provider that supports this feature will automatically delete a persistent volume claim if it is marked as ephemeral.

    • Skip volume ownership change is now stable. Kubernetes can now optionally configure a mount to not have a chmod and chown run on the mount to speed up the start time of a pod.

    • Migration from built-in to CSI storage plugins is now beta for plugins relating to public cloud storage providers.

    • Structured logging is now beta.

    • Invalid YAML manifests can better feedback about validation issues when using kubectl create or kubectl apply. This is disabled by default: kube-apiserver --feature-gates=ServerSideFieldValidation=false.

    • OpenAPI v3 is now availble in alpha to provide more features to the Kuberntes API endpoint.

    • klog is now deprecated.

    • FlexVolume storage driver is now deprecated.

    • Stable APIs:

      • HorizontalPodAutoscaler (autoscaling/v2)

  • 1.24

    • Dockershim has been removed. The docker binary will no longer work with Kubernetes. Install and use containerd or CRI-O instead.

    • CNI introduces breaking changes. For containerd, first upgrade to version >= 1.6.4 or >= 1.5.11. For CRI-O, first upgrade to version >= 1.24.

    • Dynamic Kubelet configuration has been removed from the kubelet (but not yet for the kube-apiserver).

    • Any new beta APIs will be disabled by default. Previously, alpha APIs are disabled and beta APIs are enabled. Now only stable APIs will be enabled by default.

    • Kubernetes release signing is available in an alpha state.

    • Service objects that are of type LoadBalancer now support more than one back-end using the annotation service.kubernetes.io/load-balancer-class: <LOAD_BALANCER_CLASS>.

    • OpenAPI v3 is now beta.

    • gRPC pod probes are now beta.

    • kubelet credential provider is now beta (disabled by default).

    • Service types of ClusterIP now support static IP ranges (disabled by default): kube-apiserver --feature-gates=ServiceIPStaticSubrange=false

    • Stable APIs:

      • CSIStorageCapacity

  • 1.25 [115][116]

    • cgroups v2 support is now stable.

    • kube-scheduler ComponentConfig is now stable for dynamically configuring the service.

    • User-scoped namespaces are now supported.

    • Ephemeral containers via kubectl debug for troubleshooting purposes is now stable.

    • PodSecurity admission controller is now a stable replacement for the PodSecurityPolicy API.

    • PodSecurityPolicy API has been removed.

    • GlusterFS storage volume driver has been deprecated.

    • Flocker, Quobyte, and StorageOS volume drivers have been removed.

    • vSphere volume driver now requires vSphere >= 7.0u2.

  • 1.26 [117][118]

    • Official Kubernetes container images are now hosted on a new registry: registry.k8s.io.

    • Kubenretes release signing is now in beta.

    • containerd minimum requirment is now 1.6.0.

    • Dynamic kubelet configuration via a ConfigMap has been removed.

    • Service LoadBalancers now support both UDP and TCP on the same port.

    • Service.spec.trafficPolicy added for more control over traffic routing.

    • Windows containers now support running in a privileged mode.

    • Cinder (OpenStack) and GlusterFS storage volume driver has been removed.

  • 1.27 [120]

    • Container images from the Kubernetes project are now hosted on registry.k8s.io (instead of k8s.gcr.io).

    • Services can now use more than one CIDR for internal IP addresses.

    • DownwardAPIHugePages API is now stable for managing dedicated RAM allocation size.

    • SeccompDefault API is now stable for managing default Linux kernel security capabilities for processes.a

    • storage.k8s.io/v1beta1 from CSIStorageCapacity has been removed in favor of storage.k8s.io/v1.

OpenShift

Below is a list of RHOCP and OKD versions that correspond with the upstream Kubernetes release. The RHOCP 4.0 release was skipped and used for internal testing only. RHOCP 4 introduced Operators and OperatorHub. It also requires all Control Plane Nodes to be installed on Red Hat CoreOS. [5]

RHOCP/OKD

Kubernetes

4.10

1.23

4.9

1.22

4.8

1.21

4.7

1.20

4.6

1.19

4.5

1.18

4.4

1.17

4.3

1.16

4.2

1.14

4.1

1.13

3.11

1.11

3.10

1.10

3.9

1.9

Every release of RHOCP is supported for about 1.5 years. When <RHOCP_RELEASE> + 3 is released, the <RHOCP_RELEASE> soon becomes end-of-life. Starting with RHOCP 4.8, all even numbered minor releases are labelled as Extended Update Support (EUS). Red Hat recommends using EUS releases and supports upgrading from one EUS release to the next (skipping the odd numbered release in-between). [6]

Tanzu

TKGm

Each Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Multicloud (TKGm) release supports up to three versions of Kubernetes. Listed below is the minimum TKGm version to deploy the specified Kubernetes versions. [33]

TKGm

Kubernetes

1.5.0

1.22.5, 1.21.8, and 1.20.14

1.4.0

1.21.2, 1.20.8, and 1.19.2

1.3.0

1.20.4, 1.19.8, 1.18.16, and 1.17.16

1.2.0

1.19.1, 1.18.8, and 1.17.11

1.1.0

1.18.6 and 1.17.9

1.0.0

1.17.3

TCE

Tanzu Community Edition (TCE) was the upstream variant of both TKGm and TAP. Based on similar release dates, here are the equivalent versions. Version 0.13.0-dev.2 was the last release of TCE before the project was retired in 2022. [88][105][106]

TCE

TKGm

0.13.0-dev.2

1.6.0

0.12.1

1.5.0

0.8.0

1.4.0

0.4.0

1.3.0

TCE

TAP

0.13.0-dev.2

1.3

0.12.1

1.2

0.11.0

1.1

0.10.0

1.0

0.8.0

0.1.0

TKGS

Each version of VMware vSphere supports a range of Kubernetes versions that can be deployed using the TanzuKubernetesCluster (TKC) API. [74]

vSphere

Kubernetes Minimum

Kubernetes Maximum

7.0 Update 3

v1.21.2—vmware.1-tkg.1.ee25d55

TBD

7.0 Update 2

v1.17.7+vmware.1-tkg.1.154236c

v1.20.12+vmware.1-tkg.1.b9a42f3

7.0 Update 1

v1.16.12+vmware.1-tkg.1.da7afe7

v1.18.15+vmware.1-tkg.2.ebf6117

View all available Kubernetes versions of TKC in TKGS:

$ tanzu kubernetes-release get
$ kubectl get tanzukubernetesrelease
$ kubectl get tkr

View all of the available patch versions of TKC for a specified version of Kubernetes:

$ tanzu kubernetes-release get v<KUBERNETES_VERSION_MAJOR>.<KUBERNETES_VERSION_MINOR>

View valid versions of TKC that can be upgraded to from the specified version:

$ tanzu kubernetes-release available-upgrades get <TANZU_KUBERNETES_RELEASE_FULL>

[62]

VMware vSphere 7 provides support for the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service (TKGS). This is a graphical interface and framework for managing Kubernetes on vSphere. It is recommended to only use TKG for vSphere <= 6. [54]

Installation

minikube

minikube deploys containers or a virtual machine with Kubernetes pre-installed as a test environment for developers. The Docker container driver is the default as of minikube 1.12.0. [89] AMD/Intel, Arm (including Apple Silicon), and PowerPC processor architectures are all supported.

Define the processor architecture to use.

  • Linux

    • AMD/Intel:

      $ export MINIKUBE_ARCH="linux-amd64"
      
    • Arm:

      $ export MINIKUBE_ARCH="linux-arm64"
      
  • macOS

    • Intel:

      $ export MINIKUBE_ARCH="darwin-amd64"
      
    • Arm:

      $ export MINIKUBE_ARCH="darwin-arm64"
      

Download the latest minikube release from here.

$ sudo curl -L https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/releases/latest/download/minikube-${MINIKUBE_ARCH} -o /usr/local/bin/minikube
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/minikube

Select the virtualization driver to use. The minikube installer will automatically download it if it cannot be found. A full list of the available drivers can be found here.

  • All

    • docker

    • qemu2

    • virtualbox

  • Linux

    • kvm2

    • podman

  • macOS

    • hyperkit

    • parallels

    • vmwarefusion

  • Windows

    • hyperv

    • vmware

Deploy Kubernetes. Optionally specify the Kubernetes version to use. If using the kvm2 driver as the root user on Linux, the --force argument is also required.

$ minikube start --driver ${MINIKUBE_DRIVER} --kubernetes-version ${KUBERNETES_VERSION}

[7]

kubeadm

Supported operating systems:

  • Debian >= 9, Ubuntu >= 16.04

  • Fedora >= 25, RHEL/CentOS >= 7

  • Flatcar Container Linux

  • HypriotOS >= 1.0.1

The official kubeadm utility is used to quickly create production environments and manage their life-cycle. This tool had became stable and supported since the Kubernetes 1.13 release. [8] Pre-requisite steps include disabling swap partitions, enabling IP forwarding, and installing a container runtime interface (CRI) such as containerd or CRI-O. On Fedora-based distributions, SELinux needs to be disabled as it is not supported for use with kubeadm.

$ sudo swapoff --all
$ echo "br_netfilter" | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/br_netfilter.conf
$ sudo modprobe br_netfilter
$ echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
$ sudo sysctl -p

Setup the Kubernetes repository.

  • Debian:

    $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl
    $ sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/kubernetes-archive-keyring.gpg https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg
    $ echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/kubernetes-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.kubernetes.io/ kubernetes-xenial main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list
    $ sudo apt-get update
    

Search for a specific version of Kubernetes and install it:

  • Debian:

    $ apt-cache madison kubeadm
    $ export KUBE_VERSION="1.18.20-00"
    $ sudo -E apt-get install kubeadm=${KUBE_VERSION} kubelet=${KUBE_VERSION} kubectl=${KUBE_VERSION}
    

Prevent those packages from being accidently upgraded:

  • Debian:

    $ sudo apt-mark hold kubeadm kubelet kubectl
    

[59]

Initialize a Kubernetes Control Plane Node. This will bootstrap a kubelet container which will read manifest files generated in /etc/kubernetes/manifests/ to create all of the other required Kubernetes daemons as containers.

Syntax for a single Control Plane Node:

$ sudo kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr=10.244.0.0/16

Syntax for the first of many Control Plane Nodes (take note of the [upload-certs] Using certificate key message that will appear as it will be required later):

$ sudo kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr=10.244.0.0/16 --upload-certs --control-plane-endpoint <LOAD_BALANCED_IP>:6443

Although it is possible to change the Control Plane endpoint for a highly available cluster, it is not recommended. Ensure it is configured to a load balanced IP address and not just a single IP address of one of the Control Plane Nodes.

Load the administrator Kubernetes configuration file as root and continue. Otherwise, copy the configuration file to the local user.

$ su -
# export KUBECONFIG=/etc/kubernetes/admin.conf
$ mkdir -p $HOME/.kube
$ sudo cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf $HOME/.kube/config
$ sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) $HOME/.kube/config

Install the Canal (Flannel and Calico) Container Network Interface (CNI) plugins. Otherwise, the first Control Plane Node will be stuck in the “NotReady” state as seen by kubectl get nodes.

Flannel [48]:

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/coreos/flannel/raw/master/Documentation/kube-flannel.yml

Calico [49]:

$ kubectl apply -f https://docs.projectcalico.org/manifests/canal.yaml

Create an authentication token if the original deployment token expired.

$ kubeadm token list
$ kubeadm token create

Look-up the discovery token hash by using the certificate authority file.

$ openssl x509 -pubkey -in /etc/kubernetes/pki/ca.crt | openssl rsa -pubin -outform der 2>/dev/null | openssl dgst -sha256 -hex | sed 's/^.* //'

On the Worker Nodes, add them to the cluster by running:

$ sudo kubeadm join --token <TOKEN> <MASTER_IP_ADDRESS>:6443 --discovery-token-ca-cert-hash sha256:<HASH>

Optionally allow Control Plane Nodes to also run Pods.

$ kubectl taint nodes --all node-role.kubernetes.io/master-

[9]

k3s

k3s was created by Rancher Labs as a simple way to deploy small Kubernetes clusters quickly. It supports both x86 and ARM processors. It uses the containerd runtime by default, CoreDNS for hostname resolution and management, and Flannel for networking. All of the tools and resources are provided in a single k3s binary. All beta and alpha features of Kubernetes have been removed to keep the binary small.

Pre-requisites:

cgroupsv2 were not supported until v1.20.4+ks1. For older releases, force the use of cgroupsv1 and then reboot the Node.

$ sudo vim /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet cgroup_enable=cpuset cgroup_memory=1 cgroup_enable=memory"
$ sudo update-grub

k3s does not support firewalld. [92] Disable the service and switch to iptables before installing.

$ sudo systemctl stop firewalld
$ sudo systemctl disable firewalld
$ sudo yum install iptables-services
$ sudo systemctl start iptables
$ sudo systemctl enable iptables
  • If k3s was accidently installed with firewalld running, it must uninstalled completely before re-installing it. [93]

    $ sudo k3s-killall.sh
    $ sudo k3s-uninstall.sh
    

Common installation environment variables [50]:

  • INSTALL_K3S_VERSION = The version of k3s to install. Specify a k3s tag from GitHub.

  • INSTALL_K3S_CHANNEL = stable (default), latest, or testing. The current version tied to the channel is listed here.

  • INSTALL_K3S_EXEC = CLI arguments to pass to the k3s binary.

    • --disable=traefik = Disable the Traefik Ingress Controller.

  • K3S_URL = The Control Plane endpoint URL to connect to. The URL is provided after a successful installation of the first Control Plane Node. This variable will also set the Node to become a Worker Node.

  • K3S_TOKEN = Required for the Worker Node. The token credential to connect to the Kubernetes cluster.

The installation script will download the k3s binary, setup the systemd unit file, enable the service (k3s for Control Plane Nodes and k3s-agent for Worker Nodes), then start the service.

Control Plane Node:

$ curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | INSTALL_K3S_CHANNEL=latest sh -

Find the token:

$ sudo cat /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token

Worker Nodes:

$ curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_TOKEN=<TOKEN> K3S_URL=https://<MASTER_HOST>:6443 INSTALL_K3S_CHANNEL=latest sh -

Commands

Access the kubectl command through k3s to manage resources on the cluster.

$ sudo k3s kubectl --help

For using the kubectl command on other systems, copy the configuration from the Control Plane Node.

$ scp root@<MASTER>:/etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml ~/.kube/config
$ sed -i s'/localhost/<MASTER_HOST>/'g ~/.kube/config

[10]

For storage, k3s supports all of the stable Container Storage Interface (CSI) and sample driver providers. As of k3s v0.4.0 (Kubernetes 1.14.0), these are the supported providers:

  • Alicloud Elastic Block Storage

  • Alicloud Elastic File System

  • Alicloud OSS

  • AWS Elastic File System

  • AWS Elastic Storage

  • AWS FSx for Lustre

  • CephFS

  • Cinder

  • cloudscale.ch

  • Datera

  • DigitalOcean Block Storage

  • DriveScale

  • Flexvolume

  • GlusterFS

  • Hitachi Vantra

  • HostPath

  • Linode Block Storage

  • LINSTOR

  • MapR

  • NFS

  • Portworx

  • QingCloud CSI

  • QingStor CSI

  • Quobyte

  • RBD

  • ScaleIO

  • StorageOS

  • Synology NAS

  • XSKY

  • VFS Driver

  • vSphere

  • YanRongYun

[11]

Remove Traefik

By default, k3s provides Traefik as the Ingress Controller. It may be preferred to disable this to use a different Ingress Controller instead.

  • Install k3s with Traefik disabled.

    $ curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | INSTALL_K3S_EXEC="--disable=traefik" sh -
    
  • If k3s was already installed with Traefik enabled, it can be disabled manually. [114]

    $ sudo helm -n kube-system delete traefik traefik-crd
    $ sudo kubectl -n kube-system delete helmchart traefik traefik-crd
    $ sudo touch /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/manifests/traefik.yaml.skip
    $ sudo systemctl restart k3s
    

Minishift

Requirements:

  • Minimum

    • 2 CPU cores

    • 4 GB RAM

  • Recommended

    • 4 CPU cores

    • 8 GB RAM

Minishift deploys a virtual machine with OpenShift pre-installed as a test environment for developers. This is only supported on x86_64 processors.

Install (Fedora):

  • Download the latest release of Minishift from here and the latest release of OC from here.

$ MINISHIFT_VER=1.34.2
$ wget https://github.com/minishift/minishift/releases/download/v${MINISHIFT_VER}/minishift-${MINISHIFT_VER}-linux-amd64.tgz
$ tar -v -x -f minishift-${MINISHIFT_VER}-linux-amd64.tgz
$ sudo curl -L https://github.com/dhiltgen/docker-machine-kvm/releases/download/v0.10.0/docker-machine-driver-kvm-centos7 -o /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-kvm
$ sudo chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-kvm
$ wget https://github.com/openshift/origin/releases/download/v3.11.0/openshift-origin-client-tools-v3.11.0-0cbc58b-linux-64bit.tar.gz
$ tar -v -x -f openshift-origin-client-tools-v3.11.0-0cbc58b-linux-64bit.tar.gz
$ sudo cp openshift-origin-client-tools-v3.11.0*/oc /usr/local/bin/
$ cd ./minishift-${MINISHIFT_VER}-linux-amd64/
$ ./minishift openshift version list
$ ./minishift start --openshift-version v3.11.0
  • Optionally access the virtual machine.

$ ./minishift ssh

[12][13]

Install (RHEL 7):

Enable the Red Hat Developer Tools repository first. Then Minishift can be installed.

$ sudo subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-devtools-rpms
$ sudo yum install cdk-minishift
$ minishift setup-cdk --force --default-vm-driver="kvm"
$ sudo ln -s ~/.minishift/cache/oc/v3.*/linux/oc /usr/bin/oc
$ minishift openshift version list
$ minishift start --openshift-version v3.11.0

[14]

For installing newer versions of Minishift, the old environment must be wiped first.

$ minishift stop
$ minishift delete
$ rm -rf ~/.kube ~/.minishift
$ sudo rm -f $(which oc)

[17]

CodeReady Containers (CRC)

Requirements:

  • 4 CPU cores

  • 9 GB RAM

  • 35 GB of storage

  • Operating system: Enterprise Linux >= 7.5 or Fedora

Red Hat CodeReady Containers (CRC) deploys a minimal RHOCP 4 environment into a virtual machine without machine-config and monitoring services. It requires a free developer account from Red Hat to download the crc binary and copy the pull secret from here.

$ tar -x -v -f ~/Downloads/crc-linux-amd64.tar.xz
$ mv ~/Downloads/crc-linux-*-amd64/crc ~/.local/bin/

Delete any existing CRC virtual machines if they exist, prepare the hypervisor, and then start a new OpenShift virtual machine. All installation files are stored in ~/.crc.

$ crc delete
$ crc setup
$ crc start
? Image pull secret <PASTE_PULL_SECRET_HERE>

Find the path to the oc binary to use.

$ crc oc-env

Optionally log into the virtual machine.

$ crc console

Stop the virtual machine at any time.

$ crc stop

[28]

kind

kind is a tool written in Go that is used by upstream Kubernetes developers. It simulates different Kubernetes nodes via the use of containers on a single local workstation. As of kind v0.8.0, a single node deployment of Kubernetes will have persistent storage and survive if the container restart. Multi-node Kubernetes clusters will break if the containers are restarted. [91]

Installation:

  • All operating systems:

    $ GO111MODULE="on" go get sigs.k8s.io/kind@v0.17.0
    
  • Linux:

    $ export KIND_VER="v0.17.0"
    $ sudo -E wget https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/dl/${KIND_VER}/kind-linux-amd64 -O /usr/local/bin/kind
    $ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/kind
    
  • macOS:

    $ brew install kind
    

Usage:

  • Create a cluster:

    $ kind create cluster
    
  • Or create a cluster using a specific tag from here:

    $ export KIND_NODE_VER="v1.25.3"
    $ kind create cluster --image kindest/node:${KIND_NODE_VER} --name <KIND_CLUSTER_NAME>
    
  • Or create a cluster using a Kubernetes manifest file for the Cluster API. This allows for more configuration options.

    • Syntax:

      $ kind create cluster --config=<CLUSTER_MANIFEST>.yaml
      
    • Create a cluster using the default values:

      $ cat <<EOF | kind create cluster --config=-
      kind: Cluster
      apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
      nodes:
      - role: control-plane
      EOF
      
    • Create a cluster with an Ingress Controller that is port-forwarded to the host (required for Docker on macOS and Windows, not Linux) [79]:

      $ cat <<EOF | kind create cluster --config=-
      kind: Cluster
      apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
      nodes:
      - role: control-plane
        kubeadmConfigPatches:
        - |
          kind: InitConfiguration
          nodeRegistration:
            kubeletExtraArgs:
              node-labels: "ingress=true"
        extraPortMappings:
        - containerPort: 80
          hostPort: 80
          protocol: TCP
        - containerPort: 443
          hostPort: 443
          protocol: TCP
      - role: control-plane
      - role: control-plane
      - role: worker
      - role: worker
      - role: worker
      - role: worker
      - role: worker
      EOF
      $ kubectl apply --filename https://projectcontour.io/quickstart/contour.yaml
      $ kubectl patch daemonsets --namespace projectcontour envoy --patch '{"spec":{"template":{"spec":{"nodeSelector":{"ingress":"true"},"tolerations":[{"key":"node-role.kubernetes.io/master","operator":"Equal","effect":"NoSchedule"}]}}}}'
      

[45]

  • Create a cluster with Calico as the container networking interface (CNI) instead of kindnet. [107][108]

    • Create a kind cluster with the CNI disabled and configure the default Pod subnet used by Calico:

      $ cat <<EOF | kind create cluster --config=-
      kind: Cluster
      apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
      networking:
        disableDefaultCNI: true
        podSubnet: 192.168.0.0/16
      EOF
      
    • Install the latest version of Calico:

      $ kubectl apply -f https://docs.projectcalico.org/manifests/calico.yaml
      
    • Disable the reverse path filtering (RPF) check because it is not used in kind clusters and will lead to Calico being in a failed state on older versions of Kubernetes and kind:

      $ kubectl -n kube-system set env daemonset/calico-node FELIX_IGNORELOOSERPF=true
      
  • Configure kubectl to use the kind cluster (this happens automatically after kind create cluster):

    $ kubectl config get-contexts
    $ kubectl config use-context kind-<CLUSTER_NAME>
    

OpenShift Ansible

The OpenShift Ansible project is an official collection of Ansible playbooks to manage the installation and life-cycle of production OpenShift clusters.

$ git clone https://github.com/openshift/openshift-ansible.git
$ cd openshift-ansible
$ git checkout release-3.11

Settings for the deployment are defined in a single inventory file. Examples can be found in the inventory directory. [OSEv3:children] is a group of groups that should contain all of the hosts.

Inventory file variables:

  • openshift_deployment_type = origin for the upstream OKD on CentOS or openshift-enterprise for the downstream OCP on Red Hat CoreOS.

  • openshift_release = The OpenShift release to use. Example: v3.11.

  • openshift_master_identity_providers=[{'name': 'htpasswd_auth', 'login': 'true', 'challenge': 'true', 'kind': 'HTPasswdPasswordIdentityProvider'}] = Enable htpasswd authentication.

  • openshift_master_htpasswd_users={'<USER1>': '<HTPASSWD_HASH>', '<USER2>': '<HTPASSWD_HASH>'} = Configure OpenShift users. Create a password for the user by running htpasswd -nb <USER> <PASSWORD>.

  • openshift_disable_check=memory_availability,disk_availability = Disable certain checks for a minimal lab deployment.

  • openshift_master_cluster_hostname = The private internal hostname.

  • openshift_master_cluster_public_hostname = The public internal hostname.

[15]

The container registry is ephemeral so after a reboot the data will be wiped. All of the storage inventory configuration options and settings can be found here. For lab environments using NFS, unsupported options will need to be enabled using openshift_enable_unsupported_configurations=True. The nfs group will also need to be created and added to the OSEv3:children group of groups.

$ sudo yum -y ansible pyOpenSSL python-cryptography python-lxml
$ sudo ansible-playbook -i <INVENTORY_FILE> playbooks/prerequisites.yml
$ sudo ansible-playbook -i <INVENTORY_FILE> playbooks/deploy_cluster.yml

Persistent container application storage can also be configured after installation by using one of the configurations from here.

Uninstall OpenShift services from Nodes by specifying them in the inventory and using the uninstall playbook.

$ sudo ansible-playbook -i <INVENTORY_FILE> playbooks/adhoc/uninstall.yml

Tanzu

TKGm

Before installing a Kubernetes cloud with Tanzu, the tkg utility has to be set up.

  • Install both docker and kubectl.

  • Download the Tanzu-related binaries from here. A VMware account is required to login and download it.

  • Extract the binaries: tar -v -x -f tkg-linux-amd64-v${TKG_VERSION}-vmware.1.tar.gz

  • Move them into an executable location in $PATH: chmod +x ./tkg/* && mv ./tkg/* ~/.local/bin/

  • Symlink the tkg binary: ln -s ~/.local/bin/tkg-linux-amd64-v${TKG_VERSION}+vmware.1 ~/.local/bin/tkg

  • Verify that tkg works: tkg-linux-amd64-<VERSION>+vmware.1 version.

  • Create the configuration files in ~/.tkg/ by running: tkg get management-cluster

[34]

AWS

Setup a TKG Management Cluster and then the production Kubernetes cluster using infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

  • Install jq.

  • Install the dependencies for the aws command: glibc, groff, and less.

  • Install the aws utility and verify it works. Find the latest version from here. [35]

    $ export AWS_CLI_VERSION="2.0.59"
    $ curl -O "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64-${AWS_CLI_VERSION}.zip"
    $ unzip awscli-*.zip
    $ sudo ./aws/install
    $ aws --version
    
  • Generate a SSH key pair: aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name default --output json | jq .KeyMaterial -r > default.pem

  • Kubernetes installation:

    • Creat the AWS CloudFormation stack and then initialize/create the TKG Management Cluster. [36]

      # CLI setup.
      $ export AWS_REGION=<REGION>
      $ export AWS_SSH_KEY_NAME="default"
      $ tkg config permissions aws
      $ tkg init --infrastructure aws --plan [dev|prod]
      
      # Alternatively, use the web dashboard setup.
      $ tkg init --ui
      
    • Optionally create a configuration file for the production Kubernetes cluster. By default, the “dev” plan will create one Control Plane Node and the “prod” plan will create three. Both will create one Worker Node.

      $ tkg config cluster <KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_NAME> --plan [dev|prod] --controlplane-machine-count <CONTROLPLANE_COUNT> --worker-machine-count <WORKER_COUNT> --namespace <NAMESPACE> > ~/.tkg/cluster_config.yaml
      
    • Deploy the production Kubernetes cluster and give it a unique and descriptive name. [37]

      $ tkg create cluster <KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_NAME> --plan [dev|prod] --kubernetes-version=v1.19.1
      
    • Verify that the production Kubernetes cluster can now be accessed. [38]

      $ tkg get cluster
      $ tkg get credentials <KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_NAME>
      Credentials of workload cluster '<KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_NAME>' have been saved
      You can now access the cluster by running 'kubectl config use-context <KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_NAME>-admin@<KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_NAME>'
      $ kubectl config use-context <KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_NAME>-admin@<KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_NAME>
      $ kubectl get nodes -o wide
      $ kubectl get -n kube-system pods
      
VMware vSphere

Prerequisites:

  • Library

  • Cluster with HA and fully automated DRS [11]

Configure the vSphere credentials either via environment variables or the TKG configuration file.

---
# File: ~/.tkg/config.yaml
VSPHERE_SERVER:
VSPHERE_USERNAME:
VSPHERE_PASSWORD:
VSPHERE_DATACENTER:
VSPHERE_DATASTORE:
VSPHERE_NETWORK:
VSPHERE_RESOURCE_POOL:
VSPHERE_FOLDER:
VSPHERE_SSH_AUTHORIZED_KEY:
SERVICE_CIDR:
CLUSTER_CIDR:
VSPHERE_WORKER_DISK_GIB:
VSPHERE_WORKER_NUM_CPUS:
VSPHERE_WORKER_MEM_MIB:
VSPHERE_CONTROL_PLANE_DISK_GIB:
VSPHERE_CONTROL_PLANE_NUM_CPUS:
VSPHERE_CONTROL_PLANE_MEM_MIB:

Settings for small nodes:

---
SERVICE_CIDR: 100.64.0.0/13
CLUSTER_CIDR: 100.96.0.0/11
VSPHERE_WORKER_DISK_GIB: "20"
VSPHERE_WORKER_NUM_CPUS: "2"
VSPHERE_WORKER_MEM_MIB: "2048"
VSPHERE_CONTROL_PLANE_DISK_GIB: "20"
VSPHERE_CONTROL_PLANE_NUM_CPUS: "2"
VSPHERE_CONTROL_PLANE_MEM_MIB: "2048"

[111]

Tanzu Application Platform (TAP)

Tanzu Application Platform (TAP) packages are the downstream variants of Tanzu Packages from Tanzu Community Edition (TCE). They are a collection of cloud-native developer-focused applications that are installed using Carvel tools and container images. It requires a valid subscription to setup.

  • Create a VMware Tanzu Network account. This is used to download local CLI tools and to access the container registry to pull the container images for TAP.

  • Download the tanzu-tap-cli.

  • Extrace the CLI tools.

    $ mkdir ~/tanzu/
    $ tar -x -v -f ~/Downloads/tanzu-framework-[darwin|linux]-amd64.tar -C ~/tanzu
    $ sudo install ~/tanzu/cli/core/*/tanzu-core-[darwin|linux]_amd64 /usr/local/bin/tanzu
    $ tanzu version
    
  • Install the Tanzu CLI plugins. [103]

    $ export TANZU_CLI_NO_INIT=true
    $ tanzu plugin install --local ~/tanzu/cli all
    $ tanzu plugin list
    
  • Download the Cluster Essentials for VMware Tanzu.

  • Extract the installation files. For example, TAP 1.3.

    $ mkdir ~/tanzu-cluster-essentials
    $ tar -x -v -f ~/Downloads/tanzu-cluster-essentials-[darwin|linux]-amd64-1.3.0.tgz -C ~/tanzu-cluster-essentials
    
  • Configure the installation by creating a new exports script. The correct checksum can be found in this guide.

    $ ${EDITOR} ~/tanzu-cluster-essentials/exports.sh
    
    export INSTALL_BUNDLE=registry.tanzu.vmware.com/tanzu-cluster-essentials/cluster-essentials-bundle@sha256:<SHA256_CHECKSUM>
    export INSTALL_REGISTRY_HOSTNAME=registry.tanzu.vmware.com
    export INSTALL_REGISTRY_USERNAME='<VMWARE_TANZU_NETWORK_USERNAME>'
    export INSTALL_REGISTRY_PASSWORD='<VMWARE_TANZU_NETWORK_PASSWORD>'
    
  • Install the Kubernetes applications.

    $ cd ~/tanzu-cluster-essentials/
    $ . ./exports.sh
    $ ./install.sh --yes
    
  • Load the other optional client tools temporarily or install them globally.

    $ export PATH="${PATH}:${HOME}/tanzu-cluster-essentials"
    
    $ sudo install ~/tanzu-cluster-essentials/imgpkg /usr/local/bin/
    $ sudo install ~/tanzu-cluster-essentials/kapp /usr/local/bin/
    $ sudo install ~/tanzu-cluster-essentials/kbld /usr/local/bin/
    $ sudo install ~/tanzu-cluster-essentials/ytt /usr/local/bin/
    
  • Setup the TAP repository. For example, TAP 1.3.0.

    $ kubectl create ns tap-install
    $ tanzu secret registry add tap-registry \
      --username ${INSTALL_REGISTRY_USERNAME} \
      --password ${INSTALL_REGISTRY_PASSWORD} \
      --server ${INSTALL_REGISTRY_HOSTNAME} \
      --namespace tap-install \
      --export-to-all-namespaces \
      --yes
    $ tanzu package repository add tanzu-tap-repository \
      --url registry.tanzu.vmware.com/tanzu-application-platform/tap-packages:1.3.0 \
      --namespace tap-install
    
  • View all of the available packages to install.

    $ tanzu package available list --namespace tap-install
    

[101][102]

TCE

Tanzu Community Edition (TCE) was retired in 2022. For public or private cloud deployments, it is recommended to use see the free version of TKGm for personal use for up to 100 processors. For local workstation labs, it is recommended to use minikube or kind instead. [104]

Install the tanzu CLI utility. [82]

  • Linux:

    $ export TCE_VER="v0.12.1"
    $ wget https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/community-edition/releases/download/${TCE_VER}/tce-linux-amd64-${TCE_VER}.tar.gz
    $ tar -x -v -f tce-linux-amd64-${TCE_VER}.tar.gz
    $ cd tce-linux-amd64-${TCE_VER}
    $ ./install.sh
    
  • macOS:

    $ brew install vmware-tanzu/tanzu/tanzu-community-edition
    $ /usr/local/Cellar/tanzu-community-edition/*/libexec/configure-tce.sh
    

For lab deployments, create a single standalone cluster. [87]

$ tanzu unmanaged-cluster create <STANDALONE_CLUSTER_NAME>
  • secretgen-controller is not installed by default on the unmanaged cluster. This set of APIs are commonly used for other Tanzu applications. Use tanzu package to install it. [100]

    $ tanzu package install secretgen-controller --package-name secretgen-controller.community.tanzu.vmware.com --version 0.7.1 --namespace tkg-system
    

For production deployments, a single management Kubernetes cluster is created and then one or more Kubernetes workload clusters are created from that.

  • Create a management cluster using the Docker Engine. [83]

    $ tanzu management-cluster create -i docker --name <MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_NAME> -v 10 --plan dev --ceip-participation=false
    
  • Create one or more workload clusters using the management cluster. [83]

    $ kubectl config get-contexts
    $ kubectl config use-context <MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER-NAME>-admin@<MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER-NAME>
    $ tanzu cluster create <WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_NAME> --plan dev
    $ tanzu cluster kubeconfig get <WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_NAME> --admin
    $ kubectl config use-context <WORKLOAD_CLUSTER-NAME>-admin@<WORKLOAD_CLUSTER-NAME>
    
Tanzu Packages

Tanzu Packages provided by Tanzu Community Edition (TCE) are the upstream variants of Tanzu Application Platform (TAP). They are a collection of cloud-native developer-focused applications that are installed using Carvel tools and container images.

Setup the Tanzu Packages repository globally for TCE 0.12.1:

$ tanzu package repository add tce-repo --url projects.registry.vmware.com/tce/main:0.12.1 --namespace tanzu-package-repo-global

View the available packages to install:

$ tanzu package available list

Install a package:

$ tanzu package install <PACKAGE_NAME_SHORT> --package-name <PACKAGE_NAME_FULL> --version <PACKAGE_VERSION>

[85]

TKGS

Applications
Harbor

IMPORTANT: The version of Harbor provided by TKGS in VMware vSphere <= 7.0U2 is an older version and lacks many of the features found in the upstream release. It only provides basic push and pull capabilities. It is recommended to install the Helm chart instead.

Enable Harbor in TKGS [67]:

  • vSphere Client > Workload Management > Clusters > (select the workload cluster) > Configure > Namespaces > Image Registry > Embedded Harbor: ENABLE

Each Kubernetes Namespace will now have two secrets created: a pull and push Secret. These are named <VSPHERE_NAMESPACE>-default-image-[pull|push]-secret. In the specification of a Pod, use the pull Secret in pod.spec.imagePullSecrets.name. When interacting with the container registry manually via docker login, use a vSphere user that has “edit” permissions with the cluster. [68]

Uninstall

minikube

Stop all running instances, delete them, and then delete the minikube cache and configuration directory. [7]

$ minikube stop --all
$ minikube delete --all
$ rm -r -f ~/.minikube/

CodeReady Containers (CRC)

Stop CRC, delete the virtual machine, and cleanup system-wide configuration changes the installer made. Then delete all of the CRC files or at least remove the ~/.crc/cache/ directory to free up storage space.

$ crc stop
$ crc delete
$ crc cleanup
$ rm -rf ~/.crc/

kubeadm

Any Node provisioned with kubeadm init or kubeadm join can uninstall Kubernetes.

$ sudo kubeadm reset
$ sudo rm -f /etc/cni/net.d/*
$ sudo ipvsadm --clear

Reset the iptables rules [51]:

$ sudo iptables -F
$ sudo iptables -t nat -F
$ sudo iptables -t mangle -F
$ sudo iptables -X

k3s

Control Plane Nodes:

$ sudo /usr/local/bin/k3s-killall.sh
$ sudo /usr/local/bin/k3s-uninstall.sh

Worker Nodes:

$ sudo /usr/local/bin/k3s-killall.sh
$ sudo /usr/local/bin/k3s-agent-uninstall.sh

kind

Remove all kind containers by running this command [45]

$ kind delete cluster

Tanzu

TKGm

  • First, uninstall the production Kubernetes cluster(s). [39]

    $ tkg delete cluster <TKG_CLUSTER>
    
  • Finally, delete the Management Cluster. [40]

    $ tkg delete management-cluster <TKG_MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER>
    
    • This error may occur. Workaround the issue by setting the environment variable AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS to any value. [41]

      Logs of the command execution can also be found at: /tmp/tkg-20201031T164426485425119.log
      Verifying management cluster...
      
      Error: : unable to delete management cluster: unable to get management cluster provider information: error verifying config variables: value for variables [AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS] is not set. Please set the value using os environment variables or the tkg config file
      
      Detailed log about the failure can be found at: /tmp/tkg-20201031T164426485425119.log
      
      $ export AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS=foobar
      $ tkg delete management-cluster <TKG_MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER>
      

TCE

  • Servers

    • Delete all standalone clusters. [87]

      $ tanzu unmanaged-cluster delete <STANDALONE_CLUSTER_NAME>
      
    • Delete all workload clusters.

      $ tanzu cluster delete <WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_NAME>
      
    • Delete the management cluster. [84]

      $ tanzu management-cluster delete <MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_NAME>
      
      • If there are any problems deleting a management cluster, try forcing a delete.

        $ tanzu management-cluster delete <MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_NAME>
        
        • If there are still problems, then manually delete the containers (Docker Engine) or virtual machines (vSphere, AWS, or Azure).

          • Docker Engine:

            $ sudo docker ps -a | egrep "haproxy|vmware" | awk '{print $1}' | xargs docker stop
            $ sudo docker ps -a | egrep "haproxy|vmware" | awk '{print $1}' | xargs docker rm
            
      • Then delete the configuration.

        $ tanzu config server delete <MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_NAME>
        
  • Client

    • Linux

      $ ~/.local/share/tce/uninstall.sh
      
    • macOS

      $ ~/Library/Application\ Support/tce/uninstall.sh
      

[86]

Upgrade

Introduction

Upgrades can be done from one minor or patch release to another. Minor version upgrades cannot skip a version. For example, upgrading from 1.17.0 to 1.18.4 can be done but from 1.17.0 to 1.19.0 will not work. [30]

Compatibility guarantees differ between services [31]:

  • kube-apiserver = No other component in the cluster can have a minor version higher than this.

  • kubelet and kube-proxy = Supports two versions behind the kube-apiserver.

  • cloud-controller-manager, kube-controller-manager, and kube-scheduler = Supports one version behind kube-apiserver.

  • kubectl (client) = Supports one version older than, later than, or equal to the kube-apiserver.

Common upgrade scenarios (for a Kubernetes and/or operating system upgrade), in order of recommendation:

  1. Upgrade one Node at a time. Workloads will be migrated off the Node.

    • Use kubectl drain to remove all workloads from the Node.

    • Once the upgrade is complete, use kubectl uncordon to allow workloads to be scheduled on the Node again.

  2. Upgrade one Node at a time to new hardware. Workloads will be migrated off the Node.

    • Use kubectl drain to remove all workloads from the old Node.

    • Use kubectl delete node to delete the old Node.

  3. Upgrade all Nodes at the same time. This will cause downtime.

minikube

minikube can be upgraded by starting with a specified Kubernetes version (or use “latest”). [29]

$ minikube stop
$ minikube start --kubernetes-version ${KUBERNETES_VERSION}

kubeadm

Control Plane Nodes

Check for a newer version of kubeadm.

$ apt update
$ apt-cache madison kubeadm

Update kubeadm to the desired Kubernetes version to upgrade to.

$ sudo apt-get install -y --allow-change-held-packages kubeadm=<KUBERNETES_PACKAGE_VERSION>

View the modifications that a kubeadm upgrade would make.

$ sudo kubeadm upgrade plan

Upgrade to the specified X.Y.Z version on the first Control Plane Node

$ sudo kubeadm upgrade apply vX.Y.Z

Log into the other Control Plane Nodes and upgrade those.

$ sudo kubeadm upgrade node vX.Y.Z

Upgrade the kubelet service on all of the Control Plane Nodes.

$ apt-get install -y --allow-change-held-packages kubelet=<KUBERNETES_PACKAGE_VERSION> kubectl=<KUBERNETES_PACKAGE_VERSION>
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl restart kubelet

[30]

Worker Nodes

Update kubeadm.

Drain all objects from one of the Worker Nodes.

$ kubectl drain --ignore-daemonsets <NODE>

Upgrade the Worker Node.

$ sudo kubeadm upgrade node

Upgrade the kubelet service.

Allow objects to be scheduled onto the Node again.

$ kubectl uncordon <NODE>

Verify that all Nodes have the “READY” status.

$ kubectl get nodes

[30]

k3s

Either update the local git repository and checkout the desired version tag to upgrade to or curl the latest installer script and specify the version using an environment variable.

Control Plane Nodes:

$ curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | INSTALL_K3S_VERSION=<GITHUB_VERSION_TAG> sh -a

Work Nodes:

$ curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_TOKEN=<TOKEN> K3S_URL=https://<MASTER_HOST>:6443 INSTALL_K3S_VERSION=<GITHUB_VERSION_TAG> sh -a

Verify that the upgrade worked.

$ k3s --version

[10]

kind

kind does not officially support upgrades. It was designed for developers to spin up new Kubernetes clusters temporarily for testing. However, it is technically possible to use kubeadm to upgrade each Node. [46]

Ingress Controllers

Introduction

The Ingress API requires at least one Ingress Controller to be installed. That controller creates a Service of type LoadBalancer using an external IP address that is available on all of the Nodes. Domain names should have their DNS resolve to that IP address.

The Ingress Controller will handle all incoming HTTP connections on port 80. It also supports handling TLS termination for incoming HTTPS connections on port 443. Custom layer 7 routing rules for the HTTP/S traffic can be defined via the API.

Other ports and protocols are not supported. Use a Service of type LoadBalancer or NodePort instead for applications that do not use HTTP or require a custom port. [58]

These are the most popular Ingress controllers [57] in order of the number of GitHub stars they have:

  1. Traefik

  2. Istio

  3. NGINX (Kubernetes)

  4. Emissary (formerly known as Ambassador)

  5. NGINX (NGINX, Inc.)

  6. Contour

  7. Kong

  8. Voyager

  9. HAProxy

A full list of Ingress Controllers can be found here.

Recommended Ingress Controller for each use case:

  • Proof-of-concept = NGINX (Kubernetes). A basic Ingress Controller that is maintained by the Kubernetes project.

  • Home lab = Traefik. This is the most popular Ingress Controller and is known to work out-of-the-box.

  • Work lab = Contour. It uses Enovy in the back-end to provide advanced routing capabilities, similar to what Istio does, but is more lightweight on resources and easier to manage.

  • Security = Istio. This is the most secure but it uses the most amount of resources (every pod has a side car container to manager network traffic) and upgrades are difficult.

Contour

The official Contour project does not have a Helm chart to help install their Ingress Controller. Instead, the Bitnami project has a collection of installers including a Helm Chart for Contour. [70]

View the Helm chart values here.

Installation [63]:

$ helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
$ helm repo update
$ helm install contour bitnami/contour

NGINX

There are two different Ingress Controllers that use the NGINX reverse-proxy server: (1) kubernetes/ingress-nginx and (2) nginxinc/kubernetes-ingress. The first one is the official Ingress Controller supported by the Kubernetes project. The second one is provided by NGINX, Inc. that adds more advanced features. [64]

kubernetes/ingress-nginx

Installation [65]:

$ helm repo add ingress-nginx https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx
$ helm repo update
$ helm install ingress-nginx-kubernetes ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx

nginxinc/kubernetes-ingress

Installation [66]:

$ helm repo add nginx-stable https://helm.nginx.com/stable
$ helm repo update
$ helm install ingress-nginx-nginxinc nginx-stable/nginx-ingress

Traefik

Traefik provides features such as advancing routing, SSL/TLS certificate management, and LetsEncrypt support for automatically creating and signing new certificates. [43]

Installation [44]:

$ helm repo add traefik https://helm.traefik.io/traefik
$ helm repo update
$ helm install traefik traefik/traefik
$ helm history traefik

Concepts

Admission Controllers

Admission Controllers provide a way to regulate the Kubernetes APIs. Here are all of the available ones that can be configured:

$ kubectl exec --namespace kube-system -it kube-apiserver-controlplane -- kube-apiserver --help | grep enable-admission
      --enable-admission-plugins strings       admission plugins that should be enabled in addition to default enabled ones (NamespaceLifecycle, LimitRanger, ServiceAccount, TaintNodesByCondition, Priority, DefaultTolerationSeconds, DefaultStorageClass, StorageObjectInUseProtection, PersistentVolumeClaimResize, RuntimeClass, CertificateApproval, CertificateSigning, CertificateSubjectRestriction, DefaultIngressClass, MutatingAdmissionWebhook, ValidatingAdmissionWebhook, ResourceQuota). Comma-delimited list of admission plugins: AlwaysAdmit, AlwaysDeny, AlwaysPullImages, CertificateApproval, CertificateSigning, CertificateSubjectRestriction, DefaultIngressClass, DefaultStorageClass, DefaultTolerationSeconds, DenyEscalatingExec, DenyExecOnPrivileged, EventRateLimit, ExtendedResourceToleration, ImagePolicyWebhook, LimitPodHardAntiAffinityTopology, LimitRanger, MutatingAdmissionWebhook, NamespaceAutoProvision, NamespaceExists, NamespaceLifecycle, NodeRestriction, OwnerReferencesPermissionEnforcement, PersistentVolumeClaimResize, PersistentVolumeLabel, PodNodeSelector, PodSecurityPolicy, PodTolerationRestriction, Priority, ResourceQuota, RuntimeClass, SecurityContextDeny, ServiceAccount, StorageObjectInUseProtection, TaintNodesByCondition, ValidatingAdmissionWebhook. The order of plugins in this flag does not matter.

A detailed explanation of each built-in Kubernetes Admission Controller can be found here.

Find which Admission Controllers are enabled or disabled:

$ grep -P "[enable|disable]-admission" /etc/kubernetes/manifests/kube-apiserver.yaml

[112]

All Admission Controllers are configured via a single file. This file must be passed through to the kube-apiserver with the argument --admission-control-config-file=<PATH_TO_YAML_FILE>.

---
kind: AdmissionConfiguration
apiVersion: apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1
plugins:
  - name: <ADMISSION_CONTROLLER_1>
    configuration:
      <CONFIGURATION>
  - name: <ADMISSION_CONTROLLER_2>
    configuration:
      <CONFIGURATION>

[113]

Container Network Interface (CNI) Plugins

The kubelet service on each Node interacts with a CNI plugin to manage the network connections between Pods. The cloud operator must pick at least one plugin. For using more than one plugin, use the Multus CNI project. Canal (both Calico and Flannel combined into a single plugin) is recommended for most use cases.

Plugin

Arm Support

Ease of Configuration

Resource Usage

Network Layer

Encryption

NetworkPolicy Support

Windows Support

Use Case

Antrea

Yes

Easy

Low

3 and 4

Yes

Yes

Yes

Windows and VMware TKG

Calico

Yes

Medium

Low

3

No

Yes

No

Highly configurable

Canal

Yes

Medium

Low

3

No

Yes

No

Combine the easiness of Flannel and the NetworkPolicy support of Calico

Cilium

No

Easy

High

3

No

Yes

No

BPF Linux kernel integration

Flannel

Yes

Easy

Low

2

No

No

No

Simple overlay network management

kubenet

Yes

Easy

Low

2

No

No

No

Very basic Linux bridge management

kube-router

Yes

Medium

Low

3

No

Yes

No

Feature rich

Weave Net

Yes

Hard

Medium

3

No

Yes

No

Manage mesh networks

Weave Net (Encrypted)

Yes

Hard

High

3

Yes

Yes

No

Secure networks

Recommended CNI plugin for each use case:

  • Proof-of-concept = kubenet. It is built into Kubernetes and does not require any additional setup.

  • Home lab = Flannel. Easy to setup and provides container network separation.

  • Work lab = Canal. It expands upond Flannel by adding support for other features such as the NetworkPolicy API.

  • Security = Weave Net. Designed to be scalable and secure.

  • Windows Node = Antrea. The only vendor-agnostic CNI plugin that works on Windows Nodes.

Legacy plugins that are no longer maintained:

  • Romana

[19][20]

CoreDNS

CoreDNS is the standard internal DNS server used by Kubernetes. All of the Pods in the Kubernetes cluster use it to resolve the internal domain (“cluster.local” by default) and then forward all other DNS requests to the DNS resolvers configured in /etc/resolv.conf file on the actual Node.

It is configured through a ConfigMap and Deployment in the “kube-system” namespace. Here is an example of what it should look like on a default installation of Kubernetes.

$ kubectl --namespace kube-system get configmap coredns --output yaml
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: coredns
  namespace: kube-system
data:
  Corefile: |
    .:53 {
        errors
        health {
           lameduck 5s
        }
        ready
        kubernetes cluster.local in-addr.arpa ip6.arpa {
           pods insecure
           fallthrough in-addr.arpa ip6.arpa
           ttl 30
        }
        prometheus :9153
        forward . /etc/resolv.conf
        cache 30
        loop
        reload
        loadbalance
    }
$ kubectl --namespace kube-system get deployment coredns --output yaml
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  annotations:
    deployment.kubernetes.io/revision: "1"
  labels:
    k8s-app: kube-dns
  name: coredns
  namespace: kube-system
spec:
  progressDeadlineSeconds: 600
  replicas: 2
  revisionHistoryLimit: 10
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      k8s-app: kube-dns
  strategy:
    rollingUpdate:
      maxSurge: 25%
      maxUnavailable: 1
    type: RollingUpdate
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        k8s-app: kube-dns
    spec:
      containers:
      - args:
        - -conf
        - /etc/coredns/Corefile
        image: k8s.gcr.io/coredns:1.6.7
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        livenessProbe:
          failureThreshold: 5
          httpGet:
            path: /health
            port: 8080
            scheme: HTTP
          initialDelaySeconds: 60
          periodSeconds: 10
          successThreshold: 1
          timeoutSeconds: 5
        name: coredns
        ports:
        - containerPort: 53
          name: dns
          protocol: UDP
        - containerPort: 53
          name: dns-tcp
          protocol: TCP
        - containerPort: 9153
          name: metrics
          protocol: TCP
        readinessProbe:
          failureThreshold: 3
          httpGet:
            path: /ready
            port: 8181
            scheme: HTTP
          periodSeconds: 10
          successThreshold: 1
          timeoutSeconds: 1
        resources:
          limits:
            memory: 170Mi
          requests:
            cpu: 100m
            memory: 70Mi
        securityContext:
          allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
          capabilities:
            add:
            - NET_BIND_SERVICE
            drop:
            - all
          readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
        terminationMessagePath: /dev/termination-log
        terminationMessagePolicy: File
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /etc/coredns
          name: config-volume
          readOnly: true
      dnsPolicy: Default
      nodeSelector:
        kubernetes.io/os: linux
      priorityClassName: system-cluster-critical
      restartPolicy: Always
      schedulerName: default-scheduler
      securityContext: {}
      serviceAccount: coredns
      serviceAccountName: coredns
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 30
      tolerations:
      - key: CriticalAddonsOnly
        operator: Exists
      - effect: NoSchedule
        key: node-role.kubernetes.io/master
      volumes:
      - configMap:
          defaultMode: 420
          items:
          - key: Corefile
            path: Corefile
          name: coredns
        name: config-volume

It is possible to modify CoreDNS to serve its own DNS records for testing purposes.

  • Append a new configuration for a custom domain name. Then add a new data field for that custom domain.

    ---
    apiVersion: v1
    kind: ConfigMap
    metadata:
      name: coredns
      namespace: kube-system
    data:
      Corefile: |
        .:53 {
            errors
            health {
               lameduck 5s
            }
            ready
            kubernetes cluster.local in-addr.arpa ip6.arpa {
               pods insecure
               fallthrough in-addr.arpa ip6.arpa
               ttl 30
            }
            prometheus :9153
            forward . /etc/resolv.conf
            cache 30
            loop
            reload
            loadbalance
        }
        # Add this extra configuration for CoreDNS.
        <DOMAIN>.<TOP_LEVEL_DOMAIN> {
            file <DOMAIN>.<TOP_LEVEL_DOMAIN>
        }
      # Add this new data field and value that will be used as another configuration file.
      <DOMAIN>.<TOP_LEVEL_DOMAIN>: |
        $ORIGIN lab.com.
        @    IN    SOA    coredns.example.com.    <EMAIL_USER>.<EMAIL_DOMAIN>. (
            2021022823
            7200
            3600
            1209600
            3600
        )
        <SUBDOMAIN>    IN    A    <IP_ADDRESS_FOR_SUBDOMAIN>
        *    IN    A    <IP_ADDRESS_FOR_WILDCARD>
    
  • Update the Deployment to load the new data field from the ConfigMap as a file.

    $ kubectl --namespace kube-system edit deployment coredns
    
    volumes:
    - configMap:
        defaultMode: 420
        items:
        - key: Corefile
          path: Corefile
        # Add a new item with these two lines.
        - key: <DOMAIN>.<TOP_LEVEL_DOMAIN>
          path: <DOMAIN>.<TOP_LEVEL_DOMAIN>
        name: coredns
      name: config-volume
    

Service LoadBalancers

A Service with the type of LoadBalancer provides an external IP address that can be used to access an application from outside of the Kubernetes cluster. Most public cloud providers have built-in support for their own load balancing services to integrate with Kubernetes.

An installation of Kubernetes on bare-metal requires a special third-party Service LoadBalancer to be installed and configured to be able to access applications without using an internal Service of the type ClusterIP or a Service of the type NodePort on an undesired port number.

Bare-metal:

  1. MetalLB = The most popular and widely used bare-metal Service LoadBalancer.

  2. kube-vip = A basic Kubernetes load balancer.

  3. Seesaw = No binaries are packaged so it must be compiled from source code.

  4. Klipper Service Load Balancer = Designed for Rancher’s k3s.

MetalLB

Installation

  • Manual:

    • Find the desired version from the GitHub metallb/metallb releases page.

    • Install MetalLB into the metallb-system namespace. [76]

      $ export METALLB_VERSION=v0.10.3
      $ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metallb/metallb/${METALLB_VERSION}/manifests/namespace.yaml
      $ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metallb/metallb/${METALLB_VERSION}/manifests/metallb.yaml
      
    • Configure the external IP range to use for Service LoadBalancers. [77] As soon as this ConfigMap object is created, Service objects of type LoadBalancer will get an external IP address. If not, there is an issue with the installation or configuration.

      $ cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
      ---
      apiVersion: v1
      kind: ConfigMap
      metadata:
        name: config
        namespace: metallb-system
      data:
        config: |
          address-pools:
            - name: default
              protocol: layer2
              addresses:
                - <IP_ADDRESS_FIRST>-<IP_ADDRESS_LAST>
                - <NETWORK_ADDRESS>/<CIDR>
      EOF
      
  • Automatic (Helm) [78]:

    $ helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
    $ helm repo update
    $ helm install --create-namespace --namespace metallb-system --set 'configInline.address-pools[0].name'=default --set 'configInline.address-pools[0].protocol'=layer2 --set 'configInline.address-pools[0].addresses[0]'="<IP_ADDRESS_FIRST>-<IP_ADDRESS_LAST>" metallb bitnami/metallb
    

cert-manager

cert-manager provides integration with various SSL/TLS certificate providers such as Let’s Encrypt. Through annotations, it can automatically generate certificates for Ingress objects.

Installation using the Helm chart [98]:

$ helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io
$ helm repo update
$ helm install \
  cert-manager jetstack/cert-manager \
  --namespace cert-manager \
  --create-namespace \
  --set installCRDs=true

Container Registries

Harbor

harbor/harbor

The harbor Helm chart from https://helm.goharbor.io is the official chart for installing Harbor.

Harbor will use the default StorageClass for the PersistentVolumeClaim. Set these Helm chart variables to a different StorageClass or use “-” to disable persistent storage:

  • persistence.persistentVolumeClaim.[chartmuseum|database|jobservice|redis|registry|trivy].storageClass

The default storage sizes for Harbor are small by default. The container registry itself will only have 5 GiB of available space. These can be adjusted by setting different <SIZE>Gi values in these Helm chart variables.

  • persistence.persistentVolumeClaim.[chartmuseum|database|jobservice|redis|registry|trivy].size

Optionally configure a universal image pull Secret to use.

  • 'imagePullSecrets[0].name'

View the Helm chart values here.

Install:

$ helm repo add harbor https://helm.goharbor.io
$ helm update
$ helm install harbor harbor/harbor

Log in with the default account [71]:

  • Username: admin

  • Password: Harbor12345

Uninstall:

$ helm uninstall harbor
$ kubectl delete pvc -l chart=harbor

[69]

bitnami/harbor

The harbor Helm chart from https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami is an unofficial chart based on the upstream Helm chart. It is developed by VMware and provides additional features such as consolidated variables, secure/random admin password, automatic external Service LoadBalancer, and more.

Unlike the harbor/harbor chart, this chart supports setting a global StorageClass for all PersistentVolumeClaims:

  • global.storageClass

Optionally configure a universal image pull Secret to use.

  • 'global.imagePullSecrets[0]'

View the Helm chart values here.

Install:

$ helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
$ helm repo update
$ helm install harbor-bitnami bitnami/harbor

Locate the admin acocunt password:

$ echo Password: $(kubectl get secret bitnami-harbor-core-envvars -o jsonpath="{.data.HARBOR_ADMIN_PASSWORD}" | base64 --decode)
Password: bzOLNxqrhq

Uninstall:

$ helm uninstall harbor-bitnami
$ kubectl delete pvc bitnami-harbor-chartmuseum bitnami-harbor-jobservice bitnami-harbor-registry data-bitnami-harbor-postgresql-0 data-bitnami-harbor-trivy-0 redis-data-bitnami-harbor-redis-master-0

[72]

Serverless

Serverless is a concept of being able to scale an application down to zero. This helps to save resources and money.

Knative

Knative is the most popular implementation of serverless. The project originally had three components but now it only has two:

  1. Knative Serving = The serverless component of Knative. It provides scaling and routing capabilities.

  2. Knative Eventing = A messaging queue that sends events from a specified event provider to an event sink (such as an application). An event source handles taking a message from the provider and sending it to the sink. A full list of supported event sources can be found here.

  3. Knative Build = This project is no longer maintained as part of Knative. It has been forked into the Tekton Pipelines project. [80]

Install:

  • Find a desired version of Knative Serving from the releases page.

    $ export KNATIVE_VERSION=v1.1.0
    
  • Install Knative Serving:

    $ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/knative/serving/releases/download/knative-${KNATIVE_VERSION}/serving-crds.yaml
    $ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/knative/serving/releases/download/knative-${KNATIVE_VERSION}/serving-core.yaml
    $ kubectl get pods --namespace knative-serving
    
  • Install a CNI plugin that is specifically configured for use by Knative by following the instructions from here. Ambassador, Contour, Istio, and Kourier are all supported. Installing a CNI plugin from a Knative release will ensure that it does not conflict with other CNI plugins.

    • Contour:

      $ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/knative/net-contour/releases/download/knative-${KNATIVE_VERSION}/contour.yaml
      $ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/knative/net-contour/releases/download/knative-${KNATIVE_VERSION}/net-contour.yaml
      $ kubectl patch configmap/config-network \
          --namespace knative-serving \
          --type merge \
          --patch '{"data":{"ingress-class":"contour.ingress.networking.knative.dev"}}'
      $ kubectl get service envoy --namespace contour-external
      
    • Istio:

      $ kubectl apply -l knative.dev/crd-install=true -f https://github.com/knative/net-istio/releases/download/knative-${KNATIVE_VERSON}/istio.yaml
      $ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/knative/net-istio/releases/download/knative-${KNATIVE_VERSION}/istio.yaml
      $ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/knative/net-istio/releases/download/knative-${KNATIVE_VERSION}/net-istio.yaml
      $ kubectl get service istio-ingressgateway --namespace istio-system
      
    • Kourier (recommended default):

      $ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/knative/net-kourier/releases/download/knative-${KNATIVE_VERSION}/kourier.yaml
      $ kubectl patch configmap/config-network \
          --namespace knative-serving \
          --type merge \
          --patch '{"data":{"ingress-class":"kourier.ingress.networking.knative.dev"}}'
      $ kubectl get service kourier --namespace kourier-system
      
  • Install cert-manager support:

    $ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/knative/net-certmanager/releases/download/knative-${KNATIVE_VERSION}/release.yaml
    

[81]

Falco

Installation [109]:

$ helm repo add falcosecurity https://falcosecurity.github.io/charts
$ helm repo update
$ helm install --create-namespace --namespace falco falco falcosecurity/falco

Files:

  • /etc/falco/falco.yaml = Configuration file.

  • /etc/falco/falco_rules.yaml = Default rules.

  • /etc/falco/falco_rules.local.yaml = Custom defined rules.

Configuration settings:

  • rules_file = a YAML list of YAML files and/or directories containing more rules.

  • json_output = log to JSON.

  • log_stderr

  • log_syslog

  • log_level = Logs for Falco itself.

  • priority = Logs to send (default is “debug”)

  • stdoutput:

    • enabled: true

  • file_output:

  • enabled: true

  • filename: /opt/falco/events.txt

The full rules documentation can be found here.

Common filters:

  • container.id

  • container.name

  • proc.name

  • fd.name

  • evt.type

  • user.name

  • container.image.tag

  • container.image.repository

  • proc.cmdline = The command that was run.

View events from falco:

$ sudo journalctl -u falco

Reload the configuration wihtout restart the service:

$ sudo systemctl status falco | grep PID
 Main PID: 3927 (falco)
$ kill -1 3927

Tanzu Administration

TKGS

Supervisor Cluster Access

Access to the TKGS Supervisor cluster is restricted and only meant to be used accessed by automated APIs and VMware support for troubleshooting. Any modifications made to the Supervisor cluster WILL revoke the ability of VMware to provide support for it. In that case, the Supervisor cluster will need to be completely re-deployed.

  • SSH into the vCenter host.

    $ ssh -l root <VCENTER_SERVER_IP>
    
    VMware vCenter Server 7.0.2.00000
    
    Type: vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller
    
    root@<VCENTER_SERVER_IP>'s password:
    Connected to service
    
        * List APIs: "help api list"
        * List Plugins: "help pi list"
        * Launch BASH: "shell"
    
    Command>
    
  • Open a shell and then find the password used by all SuperVisorControlPlaneVMs.

    Command> shell
    Shell access is granted to root
    root@<VCENTER_HOSTNAME> [ ~ ]# /usr/lib/vmware-wcp/decryptK8Pwd.py
    Read key from file
    
    Connected to PSQL
    
    Cluster: domain-c8:446a411e-7f5c-4d4a-8e35-720c6a07ff44
    IP: 10.213.212.45
    PWD: VHFSZbeMPYZIxZcKOhB9dNAR35UrAsE9gMILZQz5QjsK6obI0/PX7CiTKFeIx2vbcmC6OmeILeweue3PlkHHWMUzixMRHAugtHx5TyDgqYxazEsQrMBi47v8H0wHjyYJCdyleGviTRbSvN8LcnipvgDltcTl0cab94KRYJ5BkzY=
    ------------------------------------------------------------
    
  • From vSphere, find an IP address of one of the SupervisorControlPlaneVM virtual machines. Ignore the IP address from the previous command. Use the “PWD” password to log in.

    root@<VCENTER_HOSTNAME> [ ~ ]# ssh -l root <SUPERVISOR_CONTROL_PLANE_VM_IP>
    FIPS mode initialized
    Password: VHFSZbeMPYZIxZcKOhB9dNAR35UrAsE9gMILZQz5QjsK6obI0/PX7CiTKFeIx2vbcmC6OmeILeweue3PlkHHWMUzixMRHAugtHx5TyDgqYxazEsQrMBi47v8H0wHjyYJCdyleGviTRbSvN8LcnipvgDltcTl0cab94KRYJ5BkzY=
    Last login: Fri Aug 27 21:35:36 2021 from 10.213.212.14
     21:40:15 up 23 days,  3:12,  0 users,  load average: 12.10, 8.86, 7.46
    
    41 Security notice(s)
    Run 'tdnf updateinfo info' to see the details.
    root@<SUPERVISOR_CONTROL_PLANE_VM_HOSTNAME> [ ~ ]#
    
  • The default Kubernetes configuration provides full “admin” access to the cluster via kubectl.

[56]

Troubleshooting

Errors

Error when installing Flannel with kubectl apply -f https://github.com/coreos/flannel/raw/master/Documentation/kube-flannel.yml:

$ kubectl -n kube-system describe pod kube-flannel-ds-rgzpn
E0304 04:04:44.958281       1 main.go:292] Error registering network: failed to acquire lease: node "<NODE_HOSTNAME>" pod cidr not assigned

Solution:

  • Kubernetes was not installed with a Pod network CIDR assigned. For kubeadm, uninstall the cluster and reinstall with the argument: kubeadm --pod-network-cidr=10.244.0.0/16.


CoreDNS container is stuck in the STATUS of ContainerCreating with the error message failed to find plugin "<PLUGIN>" in path [<PATH>].

$ kubectl -n kube-system describe pod coredns-f9fd979d6-cr7p6
  Warning  FailedCreatePodSandBox  69s (x17 over 4m40s)  kubelet            (combined from similar events): Failed to create pod sandbox: rpc error: code = Unknown desc = failed to setup network for sandbox "76c5c21331dd5998d9a6efd5ac6d74c45b10386db7d34555c7e0f22f5969ee13": failed to find plugin "loopback" in path [/usr/lib/cni]

Solutions:

  • The CNI plugins might be installed to a different path such as /opt/cni/bin/ instead of /usr/lib/cni/. Run this command to create a symlink to it: ln -s /opt/cni/bin /usr/lib/cni.

  • If the CNI plugins are missing from the system, then download the source code, compile the plugins, and then copy them to the correct directory. [52]

    $ git clone https://github.com/containernetworking/plugins.git
    $ cd plugins
    $ ./build_linux.sh
    $ sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/cni/ # Or use '/opt/cni/bin/'.
    $ sudo cp ./bin/* /usr/lib/cni/
    

CoreDNS container is stuck in STATUS of ContainerCreating with the error message error getting ClusterInformation: connection is unauthorized: Unauthorized:

$ kubectl -n kube-system describe pod coredns-f9fd979d6-72lh2
  Warning  FailedCreatePodSandBox  3m3s (x17 over 6m33s)  kubelet            (combined from similar events): Failed to create pod sandbox: rpc error: code = Unknown desc = failed to setup network for sandbox "dcc4d29a213211977d0aa11195980a11533d722cfcd9ef11cf7b1385ef9dde10": error getting ClusterInformation: connection is unauthorized: Unauthorized

Solution:

  • Calico/Canal or another CNI plugin was uninstalled. CNI plugins usually leave configuration files on the system. Manually delete those files.

    $ sudo rm -f /etc/cni/net.d/10-canal.conflist /etc/cni/net.d/calico-kubeconfig
    

k3s keeps reporting the error x509: certificate has expired or is not yet valid:

$ sudo cat /var/log/syslog
Mar 10 21:11:18 kube0 k3s[438]: E0310 21:11:18.648950     438 reflector.go:153] k8s.io/client-go/informers/factory.go:135: Failed to list *v1beta1.Event: Unauthorized
Mar 10 21:11:18 kube0 k3s[438]: E0310 21:11:18.664390     438 authentication.go:104] Unable to authenticate the request due to an error: x509: certificate has expired or is not yet valid
Mar 10 21:11:18 kube0 k3s[438]: I0310 21:11:18.665009     438 log.go:172] http: TLS handshake error from 127.0.0.1:45154: remote error: tls: bad certificate
Mar 10 21:11:18 kube0 k3s[438]: E0310 21:11:18.666361     438 reflector.go:153] k8s.io/client-go/informers/factory.go:135: Failed to list *v1beta1.CSIDriver: Get https://127.0.0.1:6443/apis/storage.k8s.io/v1beta1/csidrivers?limit=500&resourceVersion=0: x509: certificate has expired or is not yet valid
Mar 10 21:11:18 kube0 k3s[438]: E0310 21:11:18.667607     438 reflector.go:153] k8s.io/client-go/informers/factory.go:135: Failed to list *v1.Pod: Unauthorized
Mar 10 21:11:18 kube0 k3s[438]: E0310 21:11:18.696824     438 authentication.go:104] Unable to authenticate the request due to an error: x509: certificate has expired or is not yet valid

Solutions:

  • The system time is set incorrectly.

  • Upgrade to >= v1.19.1+k3s1 where certificate rotation was fixed.

  • Restart the k3s service. Once it starts, if it detects that a certificate is going to expire within 90 days or less, it will recreate the certificates.

    # Control-plane Node
    $ sudo systemctl restart k3s
    # Worker Node
    $ sudo systemctl restart k3s-agent
    
  • The certificate has already expired. k3s will only rotate certificates that are about to expire (not ones that have expired). Manually set the date back to force the certificates to be regenerated.

    $ kubectl get nodes
    Unable to connect to the server: x509: certificate has expired or is not yet valid: current time 2021-03-10T21:34:56Z is after 2021-02-27T21:54:59Z
    
    # Stop the 'k3s' (Control Plane) or 'k3s-agent' (Worker Node) service.
    $ sudo systemctl stop k3s
    # Manually set the date to be within 90 days before the certificate has expired.
    $ sudo date -s 20210220
    # Start k3s to rotate the certificates.
    $ sudo systemctl start k3s
    # Verify it works now.
    $ kubectl get nodes
    # Stop k3s.
    $ sudo systemctl stop k3s
    # Set the date back manually. Or use a time synchronization program such as 'chronyd' or 'ntpd'.
    $ sudo date -s 20210310
    

[53]


Error use of <SIGNER_NAME> signer with system:masters group is not allowed when creating a CertificateSigningRequest object:

$ kubectl apply -f csr-user-foobar.yaml
Error from server (Forbidden): error when creating "csr-user-foobar.yaml": certificatesigningrequests.certificates.k8s.io "csr-user-foobar" is forbidden: use of kubernetes.io/kube-apiserver-client signer with system:masters group is not allowed

Solutions:

  • Manually create/sign the certificate with openssl and the Kubernetes CA.

  • Or use openssl to generate a new certificate signing request that does not include /O=system:masters.

History

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