Install and Use MicroK8s on Ubuntu

MicroK8s is one of the lightest Kubernetes deployments available, with a very small footprint. This makes it ideal for deployment on edge devices or lightweight machines such as a Raspberry Pi or virtual machine. It can be used in a production environment at a very small scale, but is probably mostly known for its use in development and testing. It is very simple to install and launch a quick Kubernetes cluster with MicroK8s, do your needed testing, and then remove the entire package.

In this tutorial, we will see how to get started with Kubernetes by installing and using MicroK8s on Ubuntu Linux. Since MicroK8s can be installed via Snap package manager, downloading and setting it up is a piece of cake. You will also learn how to interact with your MicroK8s cluster and then remove the software when finished.

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to download and install MicroK8s on Ubuntu Linux
How to interact with your MicroK8s cluster

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category	Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System	Any Linux distro
Software	Kubernetes, MicroK8s
Other	Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the `sudo` command.
Conventions	# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of `sudo` command $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Install and Use MicroK8s on Ubuntu step by step instructions

The first thing to do is open a command line on your Ubuntu system and execute the following snap command to install MicroK8s:
```
$ sudo snap install microk8s --classic
```
Then, execute the following commands to configure Ubuntu’s ufw firewall to allow communication between the Kubernetes pods and traffic to and from the internet to pods.
```
$ sudo ufw allow in on cni0
$ sudo ufw allow out on cni0
$ sudo ufw default allow routed
```

Next, add your current user to the MicroK8s user group so you have access to all of the necessary commands:

$ sudo usermod -a -G microk8s $USER
$ sudo mkdir ~/.kube && sudo chown -R $USER ~/.kube
$ sudo newgrp microk8s

The MicroK8s deployment only has the essential elements enabled out of the box. You can see a full list with the following command:
```
$ microk8s status
```
You can enable any number of needed services with the following commands. Enable all of the services that you will need:
```
$ microk8s enable dns
$ microk8s enable dashboard
$ microk8s enable storage
$ microk8s enable ingress
$ microk8s enable gpu
$ microk8s enable istio
$ microk8s enable registry
```
To disable any of these services later, just issue the same command but replace enable with disable:
```
$ microk8s disable dns 
```
You can see the status of your services with the following command. They are ready to go once they switch to the ‘Running’ status:
```
$ microk8s kubectl get all --all-namespaces
```
Checking the status of services in MicroK8s on Ubuntu Linux
As we can see in the screenshot above, our Cluster IP Kubernetes dashboard is 10.152.183.38 but yours might be different, so be sure to check. We can now navigate to this address in our browser to access the web based dashboard.
Accessing the MicroK8s web based dashboard in Firefox

To log in to the web based dashboard, generate a token with the following commands, and then paste it into login prompt in Firefox.

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

You can now get started with deploying your containerized application, or follow along with the three commands below to deploy, and expose a microbot service as an example and proof of concept:

$ microk8s kubectl create deployment microbot --image=dontrebootme/microbot:v1
$ microk8s kubectl scale deployment microbot --replicas=2
$ microk8s kubectl expose deployment microbot --type=NodePort --port=80 --name=microbot-service

You will see your new deployment in the output when executing:
```
$ microk8s kubectl get all --all-namespaces
```
To see all of the other MicroK8s commands available, you can use the -h option and view a full list:
```
$ microk8s -h
```
If, after your testing, you need to get rid of MicroK8s, you can execute:
```
$ microk8s stop
$ sudo snap remove microk8s
```

Closing Thoughts

In this tutorial, we saw how to install and use MicroK8s to create a Kubernetes cluster on an Ubuntu Linux system. MicroK8s makes for a great Kubernetes environment for developing or testing, and is even production ready in case you need to create a barebones Kubernetes cluster. It can run on just about any kind of hardware, and leaves a very small footprint for when you are done using it.

Install and Use MicroK8s on Ubuntu step by step instructions

Closing Thoughts

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