Setting up your Master Node

There are a number of "distributions" of Kubernetes that exist (minikube, microk8s, k3s etc) and they all have their use cases. A distribution is basically a set of smart defaults and configuration settings. You COULD build everything from scratch (like in Kubernetes the Hard Way) but that's now why you're here. You want to just get started. I chose k3s and so far, I've been happy with that. Let's use that.

One your fresh linux machine, let's get going. It's super easy to get going:

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -s - --write-kubeconfig-mode 644

The above is slight variation on the default install you see on the k3s site, the --write-kubeconfig-mode 644 simply makes the configuration files with the correct permissions, so you can run kubectl commands right away. I have no idea why this is not part of the defaults.

When that finishes, type kubectl get nodes and you should see the node with Ready in the STATUS column. If you do, congrats! You have your first cluster up and running.

[email protected]:~ $ kubectl get nodes
NAME   STATUS   ROLES                  AGE   VERSION
cpi6   Ready    control-plane,master   51s   v1.21.3+k3s1

​❗ Concept: Roles - Here you can see that your new Node has two roles, control-plane and master.

Control Plane - From the Kubernetes doc:

The control plane's components make global decisions about the cluster (for example, scheduling), as well as detecting and responding to cluster events (for example, starting up a new pod when a deployment's replicas field is unsatisfied). -- Kubernetes doc​

Master - Runs the database of the current start of the cluster

Uninstalling (If you ever need to do this)

If you ever mess things up, it's actually really easy to undo everything. Just run:

/usr/local/bin/k3s-uninstall.sh

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