Tags
kind
is a very useful tool to quickly standup and
teardown kubernetes clusters. I use it to run clusters locally. Generally
they are short lived clusters for trying, testing, and learning about
kubernetes.
Kind is Kubernetes in Docker, its very fast to get a new cluster up and running. Other than checking a box in docker desktop it is the easiest way currently to get a cluster up and running. I've used docker desktop for k8s before I really developed on k8s and it was buggy at the time and sometimes started and sometimes didn't, when it didnt I had no idea how to fix it. I'd suggest kind as the best option to get a cluster up and running locally.
Not Production
If you are looking for a production ready cluster this is not it. I really
like
k3s
. At the time that I chose k3s it was
the most lightweight option that easily supported multi-node clusters.
Starting a kind cluster
The first step, and maybe only one that you need is to create a cluster and give it a name. This command will edit your $KUBECONFIG file, and set the kind cluster as your default cluster to interact with.
kind create cluster --name <CLUSTER_NAME>
Using podman as a backend
I use podman as my docker engine, kind works with docker and podman, but docker by default, in order to switch to podman you need to set an environment variable.
export KIND_EXPERIMENTAL_PROVIDER=podman
This will tell kind to use podman as the backend provider instead of docker.
Loading images
If your images are not publically available from a registry, you can load them
in kind using the kind load docker-image command.
kind load docker-image $REPOSITORY:$TAG --name <CLUSTER_NAME>
Note
the CLUSTER_NAME is the name that you gave kind when you started the kind cluster.
Argocd
Argocd is a great way to setup gitops workflows in kubernetes. compared to just hand-rolling kubectl apply, argo holds the state and is able to not only apply new and change, but cleanup removed things.
You can stand up argocd in kind for learning argo or getting a nice visual. But often when I use kind its overkill. The cluster is not long lived, I don't care if things are not cleaned up, and I want to quickly apply changes without a commit and push to a git repo.