How we made Kubernetes insanely easy to install

Editor's note: Today’s post is by

Over at 

There are three stages in setting up a Kubernetes cluster, and we decided to focus on the second two (to begin with):

  1. Provisioning : getting some machines
  2. Bootstrapping : installing Kubernetes on them and configuring certificates
  3. Add-ons : installing necessary cluster add-ons like DNS and monitoring services, a pod network, etc We realized early on that there's enormous variety in the way that users want to provision their machines.

They use lots of different cloud providers, private clouds, bare metal, or even Raspberry Pi's, and almost always have their own preferred tools for automating provisioning machines: Terraform or CloudFormation, Chef, Puppet or Ansible, or even PXE booting bare metal. So we made an important decision: kubeadm would not provision machines. Instead, the only assumption it makes is that the user has some computers running Linux.

Another important constraint was we didn't want to just build another tool that "configures Kubernetes from the outside, by poking all the bits into place". There are many external projects out there for doing this, but we wanted to aim higher. We chose to actually improve the Kubernetes core itself to make it easier to install. Luckily, a lot of the groundwork for making this happen had already been started.

We realized that if we made Kubernetes insanely easy to install manually, it should be obvious to users how to automate that process using any tooling.

So, enter kubeadm. It has no infrastructure dependencies, and satisfies the requirements above. It's easy to use and should be easy to automate. It's still in alpha , but it works like this:

  • You install Docker and the official Kubernetes packages for you distribution.
  • Select a master host, run kubeadm init.
  • This sets up the control plane and outputs a kubeadm join [...] command which includes a secure token.
  • On each host selected to be a worker node, run the kubeadm join [...] command from above.
  • Install a pod network. Presto! You have a working Kubernetes cluster! Try kubeadm today. 

For a video walkthrough, check this out:

Follow the kubeadm getting started guide to try it yourself, and please give us @kubernetes/sig-cluster-lifecycle!

Finally, I want to give a huge shout-out to so many people in the SIG-cluster-lifecycle, without whom this wouldn't have been possible. I'll mention just a few here:

This truly has been an excellent cross-company and cross-timezone achievement, with a lovely bunch of people. There's lots more work to do in SIG-cluster-lifecycle, so if you’re interested in these challenges join our SIG. Looking forward to collaborating with you all!

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