kind is a tool for running local Kubernetes clusters using Docker container “nodes”. kind was primarily designed for testing Kubernetes itself, but may be used for local development or CI.
Install kind
In order to run kind docker needs to be installed on your maschine. Also see my docker tutorial for this purpose: https://simonscholz.dev/tutorials/docker
On Ubuntu the installation of kind is as easy as:
[ $(uname -m) = x86_64 ] && curl -Lo ./kind https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/dl/v0.20.0/kind-linux-amd64
chmod +x ./kind
sudo mv ./kind /usr/local/bin/kind
Install kubectl (optional)
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl
kubectl version
Also see https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl-linux/
Creating a local kind cluster
# Default cluster context name is `kind`.
kind create cluster
Using the --name param you can create a cluster with a dedicated name:
kind create cluster --name your-cluster-name
In order to see the created clusters you can run kind get clusters.
Since kind uses docker or podman under the hood, running docker ps should result into something similar to this:
Deleting a local kind cluster
kind delete cluster
Using the --name param you can delete a cluster with a dedicated name:
kind delete cluster --name your-cluster-name
Run kind get clusters to see whether the cluster has been deleted properly.
Deploy an image to the kind registry
Kind ships with its own container image registry so that you can directly push your container images locally to the kind registry. This makes it easy for you to deploy your custom local images to your kind cluster.
So building your local docker image and then populating it for your local kind cluster would look like this:
# Building the docker image (-t is used to tag the image)
docker build -t my-awesome-app:1.0.0 .
# Load the docker image into your kind cluster
kind load docker-image my-awesome-app:1.0.0 --name your-cluster-name
# List the loaded image
docker exec -it your-cluster-name-control-plane crictl images
Running kubectl get nodes will show you the name of the node, which is your-cluster-name-control-plane in the example above.
If you haven't specified a cluster name this defaults to kind-control-plane.