This blog will show how one can set up a Kubernetes cluster on a Windows workstation – no cloud providers needed. Keep in mind, that the cluster we are provisioning in this tutorial is for testing and learning purposes only.

One can work through this tutorial to become more familiar with the fundamentals of manually deploying a vanilla k8s cluster into Hyper-V. Or, if you’re like me and want to run a K8s cluster on your seriously underutilized gaming computer this tutorial may be of interest to you too.

This guide is broken down into three sections, host, virtual machines, and kubernetes. By the end, you will have a k8s cluster with a master node and two worker nodes.

Requirements:

• Windows 10 Pro or Windows Server
• Hyper-V enabled
• CentOS7

Network Settings:

Management Network:
192.168.1.0 /24
DNS: 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8

Host File Config:
192.168.0.2 master
192.168.0.3 worker-01
192.168.0.4 worker-02

Hyper V Virtual Switch Config:

Create virtual switch “NATSwitch”.

New-VMSwitch -SwitchName "NATSwitch" -SwitchType Internal

Assign chosen IP range to the virtual switch.

New-NetIPAddress -IPAddress 192.168.0.1 -PrefixLength 24 -InterfaceAlias "vEthernet (NATSwitch)"

Create a NAT network.

New-NetNat -Name "NATNetwork" -InternalIPInterfaceAddressPrefix 192.168.0.0/24

You will have a new Hyper-V switch called NATSwitch. This will enable us to connect to our virtual machines and the Kubernetes cluster from our host machine.

Troubleshooting

Multiple NAT networks are not supported.

This guide assumes that there are no other NATs on the host. However, applications or services will require the use of a NAT and may create one as part of the setup. Since Windows (WinNAT) only supports one internal NAT subnet prefix, trying to create multiple NATs will place the system into an unknown state.

VMs –

master (k8s master node)-

Host Name: master
Operating System: CentOS7.2009
Dynamic Memory (in MB): Assigned: 16000
Min: 8192 Max: 1048576
CPU: 4 cores
IP address: 192.168.0.2/24
DNS: 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8

worker-01 (k8s worker node)-

Host Name: worker-01
Operating System: CentOS7.2009
Dynamic Memory (in MB): Assigned: 6000 Min: 512 Max: 8192
CPU: 4 cores
IP address: 192.168.0.3/24
DNS: 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8

worker-02 (k8s worker node)-

Host Name: worker-02
Operating System: CentOS7.2009
Dynamic Memory (in MB): Assigned: 6000 Min: 512 Max: 8192
CPU: 4 cores
IP address: 192.168.0.4/24
DNS: 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8

OS Configuration (Required on all VMs):

Host File Config:

sudo vi /etc/hosts

192.168.0.2 master
192.168.0.3 worker-01
192.168.0.4 worker-02

sudo systemctl stop firewalld

sudo systemctl disable firewalld

sudo systemctl disable firewalld

sudo systemctl mask --now firewalld

Update IPtables Settings.

cat <<EOF > /etc/sysctl.d/k8s.conf
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 1
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables = 1
EOF
sysctl --system

Disable SELinux

sudo setenforce 0

sudo sed -i ‘s/^SELINUX=enforcing$/SELINUX=permissive/’ /etc/selinux/config

Disable SWAP.

sudo sed -i '/swap/d' /etc/fstab

sudo swapoff -a

Docker:

Update Docker Package Database

sudo yum check-update

Install the Dependencies

sudo yum install -y yum-utils device-mapper-persistent-data lvm2

Add the Docker Repository to CentOS

sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo

Install Docker On CentOS Using Yum

sudo yum install docker

Manage Docker Service

sudo systemctl start docker

sudo systemctl enable docker

sudo systemctl status docker

Kubernetes:

Configure Kubernetes Repository

cat <<EOF > /etc/yum.repos.d/kubernetes.repo[kubernetes]name=Kubernetesbaseurl=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/repos/kubernetes-el7-x86_6enabled=1gpgcheck=1repo_gpgcheck=1gpgkey=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/yum-key.gpg https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/rpm-package-key.gpgEOF

Install kubelet, kubeadm, and kubectl

sudo yum install -y kubelet kubeadm kubectl

systemctl enable kubelet

systemctl start kubelet

Create Cluster with kubeadm

sudo kubeadm init

Manage Cluster as Regular User

mkdir -p $HOME/.kube

sudo cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf $HOME/.kube/config

sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) $HOME/.kube/config

Set Up Pod Network – Install Calico Using Helm

helm repo add projectcalico https://projectcalico.docs.tigera.io/charts

kubectl create namespace tigera-operator

helm install calico projectcalico/tigera-operator --version v3.23.3 --namespace tigera-operator

Check your currently running pods, they should look like mine below

Take a checkpoint of master, worker-01, and worker-02 with Hyper-V. This is a good stopping point.

My plans for this project are to create a network and infrastructure diagram of the cluster, allow external traffic into the cluster using metallb and nginx, integrate CI/CD for securing, deploying, and configuring resources into the cluster, and deploy the Prometheus-Grafana stack.

I really need some kind of checklist or kanban for this…Nah that would be too much like work and this is supposed to be fun!

Thanks for reading this far.

-Rudy

References:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/user-guide/setup-nat-network
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/user-guide/setup-nat-network#multiple-applications-using-the-same-nat
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/quick-start/enable-hyper-v
https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/tools/kubeadm/install-kubeadm/
https://projectcalico.docs.tigera.io/getting-started/kubernetes/helm
https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/centos/