microk8s-setup-guide.md

Setting up a MicroK8s cluster

This Helm chart should ideally work on any Kubernetes cluster. For local development and iterative testing, we recommend using MicroK8s. This setup enables a rapid development workflow without the need to manage complex infrastructure.

Back up your existing Kubernetes configuration

[ -d $HOME/.kube ] && mv $HOME/.kube $HOME/.kube.old

Install MicroK8s

microk8s install --cpu 8 --mem 24 --disk 200 --channel latest/stable

Configure access to your new MicroK8s Kubernetes cluster

mkdir $HOME/.kube && microk8s config -o yaml > $HOME/.kube/config
chmod 600 $HOME/.kube/config

Enable DNS and local storage addons

microk8s enable dns
microk8s enable hostpath-storage

Enable MetalLB

You will need a valid IP address range on your network that MetalLB can use for LoadBalancer services.

Getting your CIDR

Depending on your OS, you might be running MicroK8s directly on Linux or inside a virtual machine on macOS. Below are example commands for each setup:

Get CIDR on Linux using the eth0 interface

CIDR=$(ip -4 -o addr show scope global | grep 'eth0' | awk '{print $4}' | sed 's|[0-9]\+/|0/|')

Get CIDR on macOS using the MicroK8s VM address

CIDR=$(multipass info microk8s-vm --format json | jq -r '.info["microk8s-vm"].ipv4[0] + "/32"')

You can verify that the CIDR was captured correctly with:

echo $CIDR

Enable MetalLB addon

Once you have your CIDR, you can enable metallb

microk8s enable metallb:$CIDR

Important

If you are running MicroK8s on macOS, you will need to increase the memory map areas per VM process

# only if running microk8s on macOS
multipass exec microk8s-vm -- sudo sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144