How to Setup Lightweight Kubernetes with MicroK8s and Snap on Ubuntu 22.04

Kubernetes is the most trending container-orchestration system that can be used to automating application deployment, scaling and management. But you can not deploy Kubernetes easily it can be very expensive. MicroK8s is an upstream Kubernetes deployment that allows you to run Kubernetes in Snap. MicroK8s is a single package that runs on all major Linux-based operating systems. It comes with a docker registry so you can easily create, push and deploy containers on your system. Microk8s is a fast, lightweight and runs all Kubernetes services natively.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to install MicroK8s and get your Kuberenetes cluster up and running. 

Requirements

• A cloud server running  with Ubuntu 22.04 and 4 GB RAM.
• A root password set up on your cloud vps server. 

Starting

First, update your server to the last versión with the following command:

# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

Once your cloud server is updated, restart it to apply all the changes.

Install MicroK8s

First, you'll need to install Snap in order to install afterwards MicroK8s. You can install Snap with the following command:

# apt-get install snapd -y

Once Snap has been installed, you can install MicroK8s using the Snap command as it is shown below:

# snap install microk8s --classic

Once MikroK8s has been installed, you can check the MicroK8s information with the following command:

# snap info microk8s

You should see the following result:

  name: microk8s
  summary: Kubernetes for workstations and appliances
  publisher: Canonical✓
  contact: https://github.com/ubuntu/microk8s
  license: unset
  description: |
  MicroK8s is a small, fast, secure, single node Kubernetes that installs on just
  about any Linux
  box. Use it for offline development, prototyping, testing, or use it on a VM
  as a small, cheap,  reliable k8s for CI/CD. It's also a great k8s for 
  appliances - develop your IoT apps for k8s and deploy them to MicroK8s on your   boxes.

You can also check the MicroK8s deployment state with the following command: 

# microk8s.status

You can check the MicroK8s state with the available addons in the following result:

  microk8s is running
  addons:
  knative: disabled
  jaeger: disabled
  fluentd: disabled
  gpu: disabled
  storage: disabled
  registry: disabled
  rbac: disabled
  ingress: disabled
  dns: disabled
  metrics-server: disabled
  linkerd: disabled
  prometheus: disabled
  istio: disabled
  dashboard: disabled

To check the cluster information, you can do it with the following command:

# microk8s.kubectl cluster-info

You should see the following result:

Kubernetes master is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443

To diagnose and debug possible cluster problems, use ‘kubectl cluster-info dump’.

Working with MicroK8s

You can also list the MicroK8s nodes with the following command:

# microk8s.kubectl get nodes

You should see the following command:

  NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION
  ubuntu2204 Ready 2m14s v1.15.0

Or with the following command:

# microk8s.kubectl get nodes -o wide

You should see the following result:

  NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION INTERNAL-IP EXTERNAL-IP OS-IMAGE KERNEL-VERSION
  CONTAINER-RUNTIME
  ubuntu2204 Ready 3m5s v1.15.0 192.168.0.2 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-20-generic
  containerd://1.2.5

MicroK8s comes with a lot of incorporated addons. You can enable them or disable them depending on your needs:

You can enable addons dns from the dashboard with the follwing command:

# microk8s.enable dashboard dns

You should see the following result:

  Applying manifest
  secret/kubernetes-dashboard-certs created
  serviceaccount/kubernetes-dashboard created
  role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/kubernetes-dashboard-minimal created
  rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/kubernetes-dashboard-minimal created
  deployment.apps/kubernetes-dashboard created
  service/kubernetes-dashboard created
  service/monitoring-grafana created
  service/monitoring-influxdb created
  service/heapster created
  deployment.extensions/monitoring-influxdb-grafana-v4 created
  serviceaccount/heapster created
  clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/heapster created
  configmap/heapster-config created
  configmap/eventer-config created
  deployment.extensions/heapster-v1.5.2 created

If RBAC is not enabled, Access the dashboard using the predeterminated token recovered with:

# token=$(microk8s.kubectl -n kube-system get secret | grep default-token | cut -d " " -f1)
# microk8s.kubectl -n kube-system describe secret $token

In a setup enabled for RBAC (microk8s.enable RBAC) you need to créate a user with permissions restricted s shown on 

https://github.com/kubernetes/dashboard/wiki/Creating-sample-user

  Enabling DNS
  Applying manifest
  serviceaccount/coredns created
  configmap/coredns created
  deployment.apps/coredns created
  service/kube-dns created
  Restarting kubelet
  DNS is enabled

To enable the storage extensions, do it with the following command:

# microk8s.enable storage

You should see the following result:

  Enabling default storage class
  deployment.extensions/hostpath-provisioner created
  storageclass.storage.k8s.io/microk8s-hostpath created
  Storage will be available soon

After enabling the required extensions, check the cluster information with the following command:

# microk8s.kubectl cluster-info

You should see the following result:

  Kubernetes master is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443
  Heapster is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/heapster/proxy
  CoreDNS is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy
  Grafana is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/monitoring-grafana/proxy
  InfluxDB is running at https://127.0.0.1:16443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/monitoring-influxdb:http/proxy

How to Deply Pods and Containers

You can create and deploy pods and containers with MicroK8s easily.

We'll create an Nginx deployment with the container with the following command: 

# microk8s.kubectl run nginx --replicas 1 --image nginx

You should see the following result:

  kubectl run --generator=deployment/apps.v1 is DEPRECATED and will be removed
  in a future version. Use kubectl run --generator=run-pod/v1 or kubectl create
  instead.
  deployment.apps/nginx created

Now you can make a list of the deployments with the following command:

# microk8s.kubectl get deployments

You should see the following result:

  NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
  nginx 1/1 1 1 2m33s

And make a list with all the pods with the following command:

# microk8s.kubectl get pods

You should see the following result:

  NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
  nginx-7bb7cd8db5-n88qm 1/1 Running 0 2m47s

After the Nginx container deployment, you´ll see the Nginx service with the following command:

# microk8s.kubectl get services

You should see the following result:

  NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
  kubernetes ClusterIP 10.152.183.1 443/TCP 18m
  nginx ClusterIP 10.152.183.127 80/TCP 45s

If you want to erase MicroK8s, first erase the Nginx deployment and service with the following command: 

# microk8s.kubectl delete deployment nginx
# microk8s.kubectl delete service nginx

Then, erase MicroK8s completely from your system with the following command:

# microk8s.reset
# snap remove microk8s

Congratulations! You can now implement and manage containers with MicroK8.

Any questions? Don´t hesitate to contact us. We'll be pleased to help you out at anything you need 🙂