Beginner's Tutorial: Installing and Using MiniKube

Beginner's Tutorial: Installing and Using MiniKube

Beginner's Guide to Deploying Kubernetes with MiniKube

Amitt Ashok's photo
Amitt Ashok
·

4 min read

Table of Contents

  1. What is Minikube

  2. Installation and setup of Minikube

  3. deploy a first application with minikube

What is Minikube...

As the name suggests, Minikube is a smaller version of Kubernetes that we use to learn and develop Kubernetes.

Minikube is used on a local machine, where a single-node architecture helps in learning and understanding.

Some Features of Minikube:

  • Local cluster - allows us to test and develop on our local machine

  • Single-node cluster - master and single-node cluster for easy understanding

  • Multiple drivers - supports various drivers like VMware, Docker, etc.

  • Integrated with Kubernetes CLI - we can access kubectl with Minikube

  • Dashboard - provides a GUI to visually understand each component

  • Add-ons - bundled with various add-ons like ingress and more

  • Resource management - allows us to configure resources and memory for the cluster

Installation and Setup

Pre-requisites for minikube installation

  • 2 CPUS or more

  • 2GB of free memory

  • 20GB Free disk space

  • Docker to be installed and change permission for docker

ubuntu% sudo apt-get install docker.io

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64
sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube && rm minikube-linux-amd64

ubuntu% sudo usermood -aG docker $USER

Minikube installation is completed.

Let's start the cluster now with the minikube start command.

ubuntu% minikube start                

😄  minikube v1.33.1 on Ubuntu 24.04
✨  Using the docker driver based on existing profile
👍  Starting "minikube" primary control-plane node in "minikube" cluster
🚜  Pulling base image v0.0.44 ...
🏃  Updating the running docker "minikube" container ...

It will take some time to retrieve all files and dependencies for Minikube; once all installations and setup are complete.

Namespace for the application.

  • A namespace allows us to logically partition resources to organize them properly and avoid collisions between different applications.

  • Namespaces are useful for separating different environments, projects, teams, or applications within the same cluster

ubuntu% kubectl create namespace demo

Let's check the created namespace with the kubectl get ns command, we can see here demo namespace is created here

ubuntu% kubectl get ns        
NAME                   STATUS   AGE
default                Active   162m
demo                   Active   56s
kube-node-lease        Active   162m
kube-public            Active   162m
kube-system            Active   162m
kubernetes-dashboard   Active   149m
ubuntu%

POD Creation and Apply

Now, let's create the first pod in the cluster. Here, I am creating a pod for my application named Slambook.

Creating a Pod involves writing a manifest file, which can be in JSON or YAML syntax. Here, I am using YAML syntax.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: slambook
  namespace: demo
  labels:
    app: slambook-app

spec:
  containers:
    - name: slambook-container
      image: amittashok/slambook-cicd:latest
      ports:
        - containerPort: 3000

The type is Pod, as I am creating a manifest file for Pod creation. I am placing this application in my demo namespace with the label slambook-app. In the spec section, we need to provide details of the container to be created in the pod. The name of my container is slambook-container, and the image is pulled from Docker Hub under the name amittashok/slambook-cicd: latest. It will run on port number 3000.

Now, apply this pod manifest file using the command:

ubuntu% kubectl apply -f slambook.yaml 
pod/slambook created
ubuntu%

List Pod

Let's check the created pod using the command kubectl get pod, and it shows the created pod name as slambook.

ubuntu% kubectl get pod
NAME       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS      AGE
slambook   1/1     Running   1 (26m ago)   104m
ubuntu%

We can check which pods are running in the created namespace by using the command: kubectl get pods --namespace=<namespace_name>

ubuntu% kubectl get pods --namespace=demo
NAME       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
slambook   1/1     Running   0          2m33s
ubuntu%

Service file

The service manifest file is a gateway file that tells us how to connect with containers inside a pod. It ensures that traffic should route through the correct Pods.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: slambook-service
spec:
  selector:
    app: slambook-app
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 80
      targetPort: 5000
  type: NodePort

The type is Service, and the name of the service is slambook-service. The spec section selector ensures that the correct service is attached to the created pods. The protocol is TCP, with port 80 for external connections and targetPort 5000 for routing traffic to the container inside the pod and type NodePort.

To summarize this article, we have seen what Minikube is with installation and setup. Then we delved into how to start and create a cluster. We also checked some important commands used with kubectl for the creation of pods and other tasks.

Thank you for the day...

Seen you soon...

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