At the same time, QEMU/KVM is a Linux-native virtualization solution, which may offer benefits compared to Virtualbox. For example, it's much easier to use KVM on a GNU/Linux server, so you can run a single-node Minikube cluster not only on a Linux workstation or laptop with GUI, but also on a remote headless server.

Unfortunately, Virtualbox and KVM can't be used simultaneously, so if you are already running KVM workloads on a machine and want to run Minikube there as well, using the KVM minikube driver is the preferred way to go.

Disclaimer

• Any Linux you like (in this tutorial we'll use Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and all the instructions below are applicable to it. If you prefer using a different Linux distribution, please check out the relevant documentation)
• libvirt and QEMU-KVM installed and properly configured
• The Kubernetes CLI (kubectl) for operating the Kubernetes cluster

QEMU/KVM and libvirt installation

NOTE: skip if already installed

$ sudo kvm-ok
INFO: /dev/kvm exists
KVM acceleration can be used

Now let's install KVM and libvirt and add our current user to the libvirt group to grant sufficient permissions:

sudo apt install libvirt-clients libvirt-daemon-system qemu-kvm \
    && sudo usermod -a -G libvirt $(whoami) \
    && newgrp libvirt

After installing libvirt, you may verify the host validity to run the virtual machines with virt-host-validate tool, which is a part of libvirt.

sudo virt-host-validate

kubectl (Kubernetes CLI) installation

NOTE: skip if already installed

Minikube KVM driver installation

A VM driver is an essential requirement for local deployment of Minikube. As we've chosen to use KVM as the Minikube driver in this tutorial, let's install the KVM driver with the following command:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/docker-machine-driver-kvm2 \
    && sudo install docker-machine-driver-kvm2 /usr/local/bin/ && rm docker-machine-driver-kvm2

Minikube installation

Now let's install Minikube itself:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64 \
    && sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube && rm minikube-linux-amd64

Verify the Minikube installation

Before we proceed, we need to verify that Minikube is correctly installed. The simplest way to do this is to check Minikube’s status.

minikube version

To use the KVM2 driver:

Now let's run the local Kubernetes cluster with Minikube and KVM:

minikube start --vm-driver kvm2

Set KVM2 as a default VM driver for Minikube

If KVM is used as the single driver for Minikube on our machine, it's more convenient to set it as a default driver and run Minikube with fewer command-line arguments. The following command sets the KVM driver as the default:

minikube config set vm-driver kvm2

So now let's run Minikube as usual:

minikube start

Verify the Kubernetes installation

Let's check if the Kubernetes cluster is up and running:

kubectl get nodes

Now let's run a simple sample app (nginx in our case):

kubectl create deployment nginx --image=nginx

Let’s also check that the Kubernetes pods are correctly provisioned:

kubectl get pods

Screencast

Next steps

At this point, a Kubernetes cluster with Minikube and KVM is adequately set up and configured on your local machine.

To proceed, you may check out the Kubernetes tutorials on the project website:

It’s also worth checking out the "Introduction to Kubernetes" course by The Linux Foundation/Cloud Native Computing Foundation, available for free on EDX: