Installation

You will need a few tools to get Kubernetes running on your workstation:

• kubectl is the Kubernetes command-line interface. Throughout this book, you will be using it to interact with Kubernetes.

Try out these different ways and choose your favorite:

    kube-kuttle
    kube-control
    kube-cee-tee-ell
    kube-cuddle

• minikube is a command that manages Kubernetes on your local machine. It handles all the hard stuff, so you can get started with Kubernetes straight away.
• docker, the minikube virtual machine, has the Docker daemon running internally, but you might need the Docker command line installed on your workstation if you want to interact with it directly.

It is best to use Minikube in conjunction with a virtual machine, as platforms like macOS and Windows don't natively support Linux containers, and even on Linux it helps to keep your environment clean and isolated. There are various virtualization tools you can use with minikube, depending on your operating system:

• VirtualBox: It is simple to use and can be installed on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
• VMware Fusion: It is a commercial tool available on macOS.
• KVM: It is a well-known Linux virtualization tool.
• xhyve: It is an open source project that utilizes the native hypervisor framework in macOS. It performs very well but can be a little harder to install and use.
• Hyper-V: It is the native virtualization tool for Windows. Remember, you might need to manually enable it on your machine and set up its networking.

In this book, we are going to cover the default option, VirtualBox, but if you are using Minikube regularly, you might want to explore some of the other options, as they can be more performant and reliable if set up correctly.

You can find some documentation about the different drivers available at https://git.k8s.io/minikube/docs/drivers.md.