Create Local Kubernetes Cluster In a Minute

Testing our applications or prototyping some new operators needs fresh cluster more often, which will be a daunting task, If you have created a kubernetes cluster in bare metal. But now, thanks to community, there are awesome products which can be used to create kubernetes clusters, let it be single node or multi node. 2 of the major projects are

k3d(docker implementation of k3s, a minimal kubernetes distribution by Rancher)
kinD(Kubernetes in Docker, which is used for kubernetes sig testing)

We’ll be using k3d in our usecase, as that is more faster and includes some batteries like

local path provisioner for PV and PVCs
traefik for ingress controller

Code⌗

Create a local kubernetes cluster

start docker
```
sudo systemctl start docker.service
```

Creating kubernets cluster

k3d cluster create my-first-kube-cluster

Accssing cluster.

Note: By default, k3d will merge the kubeconfig with your ~/.kube/config and make it as default context
```
kubectl cluster-info
```

Deploy sample application

kubectl apply -f - << EOF
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: hello-world
  namespace: default
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: hello-world
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: hello-world
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: hello-world
        image: rancher/hello-world
        resources:
          requests:
            cpu: 100m
            memory: 200Mi
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: hello-world
  namespace: default
spec:
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 80
  selector:
    app: hello-world
---
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: hello-world
  namespace: default
spec:
  rules:
  - http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        backend:
          serviceName: hello-world
          servicePort: 80
EOF

Accessing application, using ingress ip. Copy the ip address from below command, and paste that in browser. You are now accessing the application running in kubernetes using an ingress
```
# Check the ingressip
kubectl get ingress
```
Note: This method will only work on linux machines. In Mac and Windows, docker is running in it’s own vm, which will be isolated from the host machine. In such cases, while creating the K3d cluster, expose the port.

If you don’t want ingress, or want to try out your own ingresses, you can create cluster with⌗

k3d cluster create \
  --k3s-server-arg --no-deploy \
  --k3s-server-arg traefik \

--k3s-server-arg will pass the suffix to k3s as an argument.
here we’re saying --no-deploy traefik which is the ingress