Configuring Ultimate Development Environment for Kubernetes

There is a general perception that Kubernetes is meant only for professionals with advanced infrastructure management skills. While there is a bit of truth in it, there are multiple ways to configure Kubernetes without getting overwhelmed.

With each major release, Kubernetes is getting closer to the developer community. In its current form, it is extremely simple to turn your existing Mac or Windows machine into a powerful Kubernetes development environment. I am playing with Kubernetes on the new 12” Gold MacBook with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage powered by a 1.1GHz Intel Core M3 processor. By no means this is meant to be a developer workstation but, with Minikube, I am able to carry a full-blown Kubernetes environment with me.

This tutorial aims at enabling Docker developers to easily get started with Kubernetes. It will walk you through all the prerequisites, and the basic concepts to deploy your first microservices application powered by Kubernetes. Though this is based on Mac, it will work with Microsoft Windows 10 with just a few modifications.

What Do We Need?

First things first, let’s make an inventory of the tools that we need.

1. VirtualBox: This is the core foundation on which we will configure the environment. Download the latest version of VirtualBox.
2. Docker Toolbox: This is the essential component of our toolchain. We will extensively use Docker Machine for the configuration. Download the stable version of Docker Toolbox.
3. DVM: It can get frustrating to deal with disparate Docker versions running within the same environment. Like Node Version Manager and Ruby Version Manager, this nifty tool makes it super simple to switch between multiple versions of Docker CLI. We will explore this tool in the later part of the tutorial. Follow these instructions on GitHub to get DVM on your machine.
4. Minikube: All good things in life come in small packages, and Kubernetes is not an exception. Minikube is a tiny VM that comes bundled with a single node Kubernetes cluster. The best thing is that it can run on any machine that is capable of launching VirtualBox VMs. Get the latest binary from GitHub.
5. Kubectl: Kubectl is the command line tool to interact with the Kubernetes cluster. Follow the instructions to download and install it.
6. Docker for Windows or Mac [Optional]: Since we are dealing with Docker Machine for creating Swarm cluster, we don’t really need native installers for Windows and Mac. But if you prefer, you can also have it run side-by-side. Make sure that you are grabbing the latest installer.

Read the entire article at The New Stack.

Janakiram MSV is an analyst, advisor, and architect. Follow him on Twitter,  Facebook and LinkedIn.