Local Kubernetes setup

👋 This guide is mostly intented for Windows users. However, Linux and macOS users can easily skip or execute the equivalent steps to get the same result.

This repository contains the instructions and code to setup a local Kubernetes cluster. At the end, you'll get:

A local Kubernetes cluster with TLS support for your services on local domains (such as myapi.example.local)
Command-line tools and completion for your terminal
A configured nginx ingress controller with compression, web application firewall and extra security settings enabled
A self-signed root certificate authority trusted by your OS, the cluster and your browsers
Upgradeable Helm charts to easily customize this setup

Table of contents

🔧 Required setup
✨ Recommended additional setup
🔥 Getting started
☁ Install nginx ingress controller
🔑 Install cert-manager to manage TLS certificates
🚀 Deploy an ASP.NET Core example service
- Install a trusted self-signed TLS certificate for your ingress
- Deploy the service
🧷 Install Kubernetes dashboard

🔧 Required setup

Install WSL 2, Docker Desktop and Kubernetes

Installing WSL 2 and an Ubuntu Linux distribution is only required on Windows.

Install Docker Desktop:

Then, go to Docker Desktop settings > Kubernetes and check the Enable Kubernetes.

Install PowerShell Core 7

PowerShell Core 7 is cross-platform and only required on your OS and WSL 2 for one particular steps of this guide, which is coping the mkcert root certificate authority into the chart directory.

You may look at the content the script and do the equivalent on your own, without installing PowerShell Core.

Install Kubectl and Helm

https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/

https://helm.sh/docs/intro/install/

On Windows, installing using Chocolatey is preferred.

Install mkcert

mkcert (38k+⭐) is a simple tool for making locally-trusted development certificates. It will be used here to allow Kubernetes to issue self-signed certificates that are trusted by your browser and Windows / WSL 2, using a root certificate authority (CA). Execute mkcert -install once installed.

Reuse mkcert CA on WSL 2

Execute mkcert -CAROOT on both Windows and WSL 2 to print the directory of the root certificate authority files
Copy the files from Windows to WSL 2
Execute once again mkcert -install on WSL 2

From Ubuntu, you can access Windows C:\ drive using this mount /mnt/c/

From Windows, you can access Ubuntu files using this mount \\wsl$\Ubuntu\

Switch your kubectl context to docker-desktop

This step changes the cluster targeted by commands such as kubectl, helm, k9s, etc. by modifying your kubeconfig file. This file is located:

On Windows: %userprofile%\.kube\config
On Linux and macOS: ~/.kube/config

Run this command to target your local cluster:

kubectl config use-context docker-desktop

On Windows, you can also right click on Docker Desktop tray icon, then on Kubernetes and you should have access to a dropdown.

If you also installed kubectl and on your WSL 2 distribution, then both Windows and WSL 2 will use different kubeconfig files. You can force WSL 2 to use Windows' kubeconfig file by editing your ~/.bashrc and ~/.zshrc (if applicable) and adding the following line at the end (insert your Windows username): export KUBECONFIG=/mnt/c/Users/<WINDOWS-USERNAME>/.kube/config.

✨ Recommended additional setup

These steps will mostly enhance your tooling and development experience.

Install Windows Terminal or Oh My Zsh

Windows: https://aka.ms/terminal
Linux and macOS: https://ohmyz.sh and https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k

Install PowerShell intellisense completion

https://github.com/PowerShell/PSReadLine

After installing the module as an administrator, open a normal terminal and edit your profile (notepad $PROFILE) to enable smart auto-complete by adding these lines:

Import-Module PSReadLine

Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionSource History
Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionViewStyle ListView
Set-PSReadlineOption -BellStyle None

Install Powershell completion for Kubectl and Helm

Edit your profile (notepad $PROFILE) and add the following lines:

kubectl completion powershell | Out-String | Invoke-Expression
helm completion powershell | Out-String | Invoke-Expression

Follow these and these steps for Linux and macOS.

Install k9s dashboard

https://k9scli.io/topics/install/

"K9s is a terminal based UI to interact with your Kubernetes clusters. The aim of this project is to make it easier to navigate, observe and manage your deployed applications in the wild. K9s continually watches Kubernetes for changes and offers subsequent commands to interact with your observed resources."

Configure your WSL 2 memory and CPU settings

Modify the maximum CPU and memory used by WSL 2 by following these steps.

🔥 Getting started

Clone this git repository
Open a terminal into the cloned repository
Then, copy mkcert's root certificate authority (CA) into the mkcert-local-setup chart directory:

pwsh ./mkcert-local-setup/mkcert/Copy-Certificates.ps1

☁ Install nginx ingress controller

Nginx ingress controller is used to route the incoming traffic of your browser/tools to the services inside the cluster. By default it uses the ports 80 and 433 so make sure you don't already have something using these ports, or edit the values.yaml file.

First, have a look at .\nginx-ingress-setup\Chart.yaml and .\nginx-ingress-setup\values.yaml. You'll see that we install nginx-ingress as a chart dependency, which pins a specific version and makes it easy to upgrade. The values.yaml enables:

Brotli and gzip compression
Modsecurity web application firewall
HSTS and secure headers

Now, run this command anytime you want to install or update the nginx ingress controller:

helm upgrade --install --wait --debug --dependency-update --namespace nginx-ingress --create-namespace nginx-ingress ./nginx-ingress-setup

🔑 Install cert-manager to manage TLS certificates

Cert-manager is used to automatically issue certificates for the hostnames used by your services using mkcert's root certificate authority.

First, have a look at .\cert-manager-setup\Chart.yaml and .\cert-manager-setup\values.yaml. It's installed as a chart dependency too.

helm upgrade --install --wait --debug --dependency-update --namespace cert-manager --create-namespace cert-manager ./cert-manager-setup

🚀 Deploy an ASP.NET Core example service

We'll deploy the service in a dedicated Kubernetes namespace. It's a way to group Kubernetes objects in logical units. In this example, we will create and use a namespace named demo.

We'll also deploy the service to the domain aspnetcore.example.local. Two things:

Make sure to add this custom local domain to your hosts files (instructions for Windows)
*.example.local TLS support is pre-configured in the file .\mkcert-local-setup\values.yaml, so if you want to use another local domain please update this file too

Install a trusted self-signed TLS certificate for your ingress

Issue a TLS certificate for *.example.local in the demo namespace by installing a release of this chart:

helm upgrade --install --wait --dependency-update --namespace demo --create-namespace demo-mkcert ./mkcert-local-setup

This will issue a TLS certificate stored in a secret named <helm-release-name>-tls-secret. In this case the release name was demo-mkcert, so created TLS secret is named demo-mkcert-tls-secret. This secret name is very important because it will be referenced by your ingress.

Deploy the service

The chart aspnetcore-service exposes the Microsoft ASP.NET Core sample Docker application. The .\aspnetcore-service\values.yaml ingress values are already configured to support the domain aspnetcore.example.local and the TLS secret created in the previous step:

ingress:
  className: nginx
  hostname: aspnetcore.example.local # <-- Local domain covered by the TLS certificate
  # [...]
  tls:
    enabled: true # <-- Don't want HTTPS? Set this to false
    secretName: demo-mkcert-tls-secret # <-- Secret created in the previous step

Now, deploy the ASP.NET Core app to the demo namespace, next to the TLS secret:

helm upgrade --install --wait --debug --dependency-update --namespace demo --create-namespace demo-aspnetcore ./aspnetcore-service

The service should now be accessible at https://aspnetcore.example.local/

🧷 Install Kubernetes dashboard

Kubernetes dashboard is similar to k9s. It's a web-based UI to manage your cluster.

We'll deploy it in a new namespace kubernetes-dashboard
It will be accessible at the URL https://kubernetes-dashboard.example.local, so modify your hosts file accordingly

Same as for the ASP.NET Core app, we first need a TLS certificate:

helm upgrade --install --wait --dependency-update --namespace kubernetes-dashboard --create-namespace kubernetes-dashboard-mkcert ./mkcert-local-setup

The kubernetes-dashboard-setup chart uses the kubernetes-dashboard subchart and is already configured for our custom domain and TLS certificate secret name.

helm upgrade --install --wait --debug --dependency-update --namespace kubernetes-dashboard --create-namespace kubernetes-dashboard ./kubernetes-dashboard-setup

The service should now be accessible at https://kubernetes-dashboard.example.local. Press the "Skip" button to sign-in, anonymous access should be enabled.

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