Learn Kubernetes Basics

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Setup

Kubernetes v1.13 documentation is no longer actively maintained. The version you are currently viewing is a static snapshot. For up-to-date documentation, see the latest version.

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Picking the Right Solution

Kubernetes can run on various platforms: from your laptop, to VMs on a cloud provider, to a rack of bare metal servers. The effort required to set up a cluster varies from running a single command to crafting your own customized cluster. Use this guide to choose a solution that fits your needs.

If you just want to “kick the tires” on Kubernetes, use the local Docker-based solutions.

When you are ready to scale up to more machines and higher availability, a hosted solution is the easiest to create and maintain.

Turnkey cloud solutions require only a few commands to create and cover a wide range of cloud providers. On-Premises turnkey cloud solutions have the simplicity of the turnkey cloud solution combined with the security of your own private network.

If you already have a way to configure hosting resources, use kubeadm to easily bring up a cluster with a single command per machine.

Custom solutions vary from step-by-step instructions to general advice for setting up a Kubernetes cluster from scratch.

Local-machine Solutions
Hosted Solutions
Turnkey Cloud Solutions
On-Premises turnkey cloud solutions
Custom Solutions
Table of Solutions

Local-machine Solutions

Community Supported Tools

Minikube is a method for creating a local, single-node Kubernetes cluster for development and testing. Setup is completely automated and doesn’t require a cloud provider account.
Kubeadm-dind is a multi-node (while minikube is single-node) Kubernetes cluster which only requires a docker daemon. It uses docker-in-docker technique to spawn the Kubernetes cluster.
Kubernetes IN Docker is a tool for running local Kubernetes clusters using Docker container “nodes”. It is primarily designed for testing Kubernetes 1.11+. You can use it to create multi-node or multi-control-plane Kubernetes clusters.

Ecosystem Tools

Docker Desktop is an easy-to-install application for your Mac or Windows environment that enables you to start coding and deploying in containers in minutes on a single-node Kubernetes cluster.
Minishift installs the community version of the Kubernetes enterprise platform OpenShift for local development & testing. It offers an all-in-one VM (minishift start) for Windows, macOS, and Linux. The container start is based on oc cluster up (Linux only). You can also install the included add-ons.
MicroK8s provides a single command installation of the latest Kubernetes release on a local machine for development and testing. Setup is quick, fast (~30 sec) and supports many plugins including Istio with a single command.
IBM Cloud Private-CE (Community Edition) can use VirtualBox on your machine to deploy Kubernetes to one or more VMs for development and test scenarios. Scales to full multi-node cluster.
IBM Cloud Private-CE (Community Edition) on Linux Containers is a Terraform/Packer/BASH based Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scripts to create a seven node (1 Boot, 1 Master, 1 Management, 1 Proxy and 3 Workers) LXD cluster on Linux Host.
Ubuntu on LXD supports a nine-instance deployment on localhost.

Hosted Solutions

AppsCode.com provides managed Kubernetes clusters for various public clouds, including AWS and Google Cloud Platform.
APPUiO runs an OpenShift public cloud platform, supporting any Kubernetes workload. Additionally APPUiO offers Private Managed OpenShift Clusters, running on any public or private cloud.
Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes offers managed Kubernetes service.
Azure Kubernetes Service offers managed Kubernetes clusters.
Containership Kubernetes Engine (CKE) intuitive Kubernetes cluster provisioning and management on GCP, Azure, AWS, Packet, and DigitalOcean. Seamless version upgrades, autoscaling, metrics, workload creation, and more.
DigitalOcean Kubernetes offers managed Kubernetes service.
Giant Swarm offers managed Kubernetes clusters in their own datacenter, on-premises, or on public clouds.
Google Kubernetes Engine offers managed Kubernetes clusters.
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service offers managed Kubernetes clusters with isolation choice, operational tools, integrated security insight into images and containers, and integration with Watson, IoT, and data.
Kubermatic provides managed Kubernetes clusters for various public clouds, including AWS and Digital Ocean, as well as on-premises with OpenStack integration.
Kublr offers enterprise-grade secure, scalable, highly reliable Kubernetes clusters on AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premise. It includes out-of-the-box backup and disaster recovery, multi-cluster centralized logging and monitoring, and built-in alerting.
KubeSail is an easy, free way to try Kubernetes.
Madcore.Ai is devops-focused CLI tool for deploying Kubernetes infrastructure in AWS. Master, auto-scaling group nodes with spot-instances, ingress-ssl-lego, Heapster, and Grafana.
Nutanix Karbon is a multi-cluster, highly available Kubernetes management and operational platform that simplifies the provisioning, operations, and lifecycle management of Kubernetes.
OpenShift Dedicated offers managed Kubernetes clusters powered by OpenShift.
OpenShift Online provides free hosted access for Kubernetes applications.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) is a fully-managed, scalable, and highly available service that you can use to deploy your containerized applications to the cloud.
Platform9 offers managed Kubernetes on-premises or on any public cloud, and provides 24/7 health monitoring and alerting. (Kube2go, a web-UI driven Kubernetes cluster deployment service Platform9 released, has been integrated to Platform9 Sandbox.)
Stackpoint.io provides Kubernetes infrastructure automation and management for multiple public clouds.
SysEleven MetaKube offers managed Kubernetes as a service powered on our OpenStack public cloud. It includes lifecycle management, administration dashboards, monitoring, autoscaling and much more.
VEXXHOST VEXXHOST proudly offers Certified Kubernetes on our public cloud, which also happens to be the largest OpenStack public cloud in Canada.
VMware Cloud PKS is an enterprise Kubernetes-as-a-Service offering in the VMware Cloud Services portfolio that provides easy to use, secure by default, cost effective, SaaS-based Kubernetes clusters.

Turnkey Cloud Solutions

These solutions allow you to create Kubernetes clusters on a range of Cloud IaaS providers with only a few commands. These solutions are actively developed and have active community support.

On-Premises turnkey cloud solutions

These solutions allow you to create Kubernetes clusters on your internal, secure, cloud network with only a few commands.

Custom Solutions

Kubernetes can run on a wide range of Cloud providers and bare-metal environments, and with many base operating systems.

If you can find a guide below that matches your needs, use it.

Universal

If you already have a way to configure hosting resources, use kubeadm to bring up a cluster with a single command per machine.

Cloud

These solutions are combinations of cloud providers and operating systems not covered by the above solutions.

On-Premises VMs

Cloud Foundry Container Runtime (CFCR)
CloudStack (uses Ansible)
Fedora (Multi Node) (uses Fedora and flannel)
Nutanix AHV
OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) Kubernetes platform by Red Hat
oVirt
VMware Essential PKS
VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere, OpenStack, or Bare Metal (uses Juju, Ubuntu and flannel)

Bare Metal

Digital Rebar
Docker Enterprise
Fedora (Single Node)
Fedora (Multi Node)
Kubernetes on Ubuntu
OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) Kubernetes platform by Red Hat
VMware Essential PKS

Integrations

These solutions provide integration with third-party schedulers, resource managers, and/or lower level platforms.

DCOS
- Community Edition DCOS uses AWS
- Enterprise Edition DCOS supports cloud hosting, on-premises VMs, and bare metal

Table of Solutions

Below is a table of all of the solutions listed above.

IaaS Provider	Config. Mgmt.	OS	Networking	Docs	Support Level
Agile Stacks	Terraform	CoreOS	multi-support	docs	Commercial
Alibaba Cloud Container Service For Kubernetes	ROS	CentOS	flannel/Terway	docs	Commercial
any	any	multi-support	any CNI	docs	Project (SIG-cluster-lifecycle)
any	any	any	any	docs	Community (@erictune)
any	any	any	any	docs	Commercial and Community
any	RKE	multi-support	flannel or canal	docs	Commercial and Community
any	Gardener Cluster-Operator	multi-support	multi-support	docs	Project/Community and Commercial
AppsCode.com	Saltstack	Debian	multi-support	docs	Commercial
AWS	CoreOS	CoreOS	flannel	docs	Community
AWS	Saltstack	Debian	AWS	docs	Community (@justinsb)
AWS	kops	Debian	AWS	docs	Community (@justinsb)
AWS	Juju	Ubuntu	flannel/calico/canal	docs	Commercial and Community
Azure	Juju	Ubuntu	flannel/calico/canal	docs	Commercial and Community
Azure (IaaS)		Ubuntu	Azure	docs	Community (Microsoft)
Azure Kubernetes Service		Ubuntu	Azure	docs	Commercial
Bare-metal	custom	CentOS	flannel	docs	Community (@coolsvap)
Bare-metal	custom	Fedora	none	docs	Project
Bare-metal	custom	Fedora	flannel	docs	Community (@aveshagarwal)
Bare Metal	Juju	Ubuntu	flannel/calico/canal	docs	Commercial and Community
Bare-metal	custom	Ubuntu	flannel	docs	Community (@resouer, @WIZARD-CXY)
CloudStack	Ansible	CoreOS	flannel	docs	Community (@sebgoa)
DCOS	Marathon	CoreOS/Alpine	custom	docs	Community (Kubernetes-Mesos Authors)
Digital Rebar	kubeadm	any	metal	docs	Community (@digitalrebar)
Docker Enterprise	custom	multi-support	multi-support	docs	Commercial
Giant Swarm		CoreOS	flannel and/or Calico	docs	Commercial
GCE	CoreOS	CoreOS	flannel	docs	Community (@pires)
GCE	Juju	Ubuntu	flannel/calico/canal	docs	Commercial and Community
GCE	Saltstack	Debian	GCE	docs	Project
Google Kubernetes Engine			GCE	docs	Commercial
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service		Ubuntu	IBM Cloud Networking + Calico	docs	Commercial
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service		Ubuntu	calico	docs	Commercial
IBM Cloud Private	Ansible	multi-support	multi-support	docs	Commercial and Community
Kublr	custom	multi-support	multi-support	docs	Commercial
Kubermatic		multi-support	multi-support	docs	Commercial
KVM	custom	Fedora	flannel	docs	Community (@aveshagarwal)
libvirt	custom	Fedora	flannel	docs	Community (@aveshagarwal)
lxd	Juju	Ubuntu	flannel/canal	docs	Commercial and Community
Madcore.Ai	Jenkins DSL	Ubuntu	flannel	docs	Community (@madcore-ai)
Mirantis Cloud Platform	Salt	Ubuntu	multi-support	docs	Commercial
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure	Juju	Ubuntu	flannel/calico/canal	docs	Commercial and Community
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE)			multi-support	docs	Commercial
oVirt				docs	Community (@simon3z)
Platform9		multi-support	multi-support	docs	Commercial
Rackspace	custom	CoreOS	flannel/calico/canal	docs	Commercial
Red Hat OpenShift	Ansible & CoreOS	RHEL & CoreOS	multi-support	docs	Commercial
Stackpoint.io		multi-support	multi-support	docs	Commercial
Vagrant	CoreOS	CoreOS	flannel	docs	Community (@pires, @AntonioMeireles)
VMware vSphere	any	multi-support	multi-support	docs	Community
VMware vSphere	Juju	Ubuntu	flannel/calico/canal	docs	Commercial and Community
VMware Cloud PKS		Photon OS	Canal	docs	Commercial
VMware Enterprise PKS	BOSH	Ubuntu	VMware NSX-T/flannel	docs	Commercial
VMware Essential PKS	any	multi-support	multi-support	docs	Commercial

Definition of columns

IaaS Provider is the product or organization which provides the virtual or physical machines (nodes) that Kubernetes runs on.
OS is the base operating system of the nodes.
Config. Mgmt. is the configuration management system that helps install and maintain Kubernetes on the nodes.
Networking is what implements the networking model. Those with networking type none may not support more than a single node, or may support multiple VM nodes in a single physical node.
Support Levels
- Project: Kubernetes committers regularly use this configuration, so it usually works with the latest release of Kubernetes.
- Commercial: A commercial offering with its own support arrangements.
- Community: Actively supported by community contributions. May not work with recent releases of Kubernetes.
- Inactive: Not actively maintained. Not recommended for first-time Kubernetes users, and may be removed.
Notes has other relevant information, such as the version of Kubernetes used.

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