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Lightweight Development Kubernetes Options: K3d

In this post we will cover a lightweight development kubernetes called, “k3d” which we will deploy on a mac.

What is k3d

k3d is a binary that provisions a k3s kubernetes cluster on docker

Pre-Requirements

You will require docker and we will be using brew to install k3d on a mac.

Install k3d

Installing k3d is as easy as:

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$ brew install k3d

Verify your installation:

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$ k3d --version
k3d version v1.3.1

Deploy a 3 Node Cluster

Using k3d, we will deploy a 3 node k3s cluster:

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$ k3d create --name="demo" --workers="2" --publish="80:80"

This will deploy a master and 2 worker nodes and we will also publish our host port 80 to our container port 80 (k3s comes default with traefik)

Set your kubeconfig:

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$ export KUBECONFIG="$(k3d get-kubeconfig --name='demo')"

Test it out by listing your nodes:

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$ kubectl get nodes
NAME                STATUS   ROLES    AGE    VERSION
k3d-demo-server     Ready    master   102s   v1.14.6-k3s.1
k3d-demo-worker-0   Ready    worker   102s   v1.14.6-k3s.1
k3d-demo-worker-1   Ready    worker   102s   v1.14.6-k3s.1

That was easy right?

Deploy a Sample App

We will deploy a simple golang web application that will return the container name upon a http request. We will also make use of the traefik ingress for demonstration.

Our deployment manifest that I will save as app.yml:

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apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: k3s-demo
  namespace: default
spec:
  replicas: 2
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: k3d-demo
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: k3d-demo
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: k3d-demo
        image: ruanbekker/hostname:latest
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: k3d-demo
  namespace: default
spec:
  ports:
  - name: http
    targetPort: 8000
    port: 80
  selector:
    app: k3d-demo
---
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: k3d-demo
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: "traefik"

spec:
  rules:
  - host: k3d-demo.example.org
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        backend:
          serviceName: k3d-demo
          servicePort: http

Deploy our application:

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$ kubectl apply -f app.yml
deployment.extensions/k3s-demo created
service/k3d-demo created
ingress.extensions/k3d-demo created

Verify that the pods are running:

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$ kubectl get pods
NAME                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
k3s-demo-f76d866b9-dv5z9   1/1     Running   0          10s
k3s-demo-f76d866b9-qxltk   1/1     Running   0          10s

Make a http request:

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$ curl -H "Host: k3d-demo.example.org" http://localhost
Hostname: k3d-demo-f76d866b9-qxltk

Deleting your Cluster

To delete your cluster:

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$ k3d delete --name demo

Thank You

Thank you for reading. If you like my content, feel free to visit me at ruan.dev or follow me on twitter at @ruanbekker

ko-fi