I was looking for a way to easily run a kubernetes cluster on Windows and came across Rancher Desktop.
This repo is a way for me to write down how I did it and hopefully help other people who may be interested in doing something similar.
This is not really needed, but it makes working with kubernetes and the terminal a lot easier.
Go to: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal
and install following their instructions.
In order for Rancher Desktop to work, it spins up a WSL machine. To install WSL on windows, go to: Install WSL
TLDR: Open Powershell Terminal as Admin and type:
wsl --installGo to Rancher Desktop and get their latest version. (At the time of this writing it is version 0.6.0)
Rancher Desktop for Linux is coming soon!
Rancher Desktop will install utilities to make working with kubernetes much easier and set everything up for you.
Once the install process finishes, Run Rancher Desktop and open a terminal.
To get a list of your current wsl machines, type:
wsl -lIn the following screenshot I have Ubuntu and rancher-desktop running.
Note: Version 0.6.0 has
rancher-desktop-datato enable auto updates, it has also moved away from using KIM to do the builds and now usesnerdctl
the rancher-desktop wsl machine uses K3s to enable running and building of containers. You don't have to worry about the details since everything is setup for you by Rancher Desktop.
Rancher Desktop installs and configures kubectl for you, which allows you to interact with the cluster.
To see what is running type:
kubectl get all -AYou will get a list of currently running pods, services and deployments similar to:
PS C:\> kubectl get all -A
NAMESPACE NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
kube-system pod/metrics-server-86cbb8457f-cj9zz 1/1 Running 0 5m18s
kube-system pod/local-path-provisioner-5ff76fc89d-hxzt7 1/1 Running 0 5m18s
kube-system pod/coredns-7448499f4d-dp5qw 1/1 Running 0 5m18s
kube-system pod/helm-install-traefik-crd-dfxfr 0/1 Completed 0 5m18s
kube-system pod/helm-install-traefik-98rhr 0/1 Completed 1 5m18s
kube-system pod/svclb-traefik-4hwwk 2/2 Running 0 4m53s
kube-system pod/traefik-97b44b794-xlxn5 1/1 Running 0 4m53s
kube-image pod/builder-7hbrt 2/2 Running 0 4m3s
NAMESPACE NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGEdefault service/kubernetes ClusterIP 10.43.0.1 <none> 443/TCP 5m33s
kube-system service/kube-dns ClusterIP 10.43.0.10 <none> 53/UDP,53/TCP,9153/TCP 5m28s
kube-system service/metrics-server ClusterIP 10.43.242.5 <none> 443/TCP 5m27s
kube-system service/traefik LoadBalancer 10.43.89.63 172.29.237.52 80:31027/TCP,443:31005/TCP 4m53s
kube-image service/builder NodePort 10.43.50.172 <none> 1234:30696/TCP,1233:30536/TCP 4m3s
NAMESPACE NAME DESIRED CURRENT READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE NODE SELECTOR AGE
kube-system daemonset.apps/svclb-traefik 1 1 1 1 1 <none> 4m53s
kube-image daemonset.apps/builder 1 1 1 1 1 node-role.kubernetes.io/builder=true 4m3s
NAMESPACE NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
kube-system deployment.apps/metrics-server 1/1 1 1 5m28s
kube-system deployment.apps/local-path-provisioner 1/1 1 1 5m28s
kube-system deployment.apps/coredns 1/1 1 1 5m28s
kube-system deployment.apps/traefik 1/1 1 1 4m53s
NAMESPACE NAME DESIRED CURRENT READY AGE
kube-system replicaset.apps/metrics-server-86cbb8457f 1 1 1 5m18s
kube-system replicaset.apps/local-path-provisioner-5ff76fc89d 1 1 1 5m18s
kube-system replicaset.apps/coredns-7448499f4d 1 1 1 5m18s
kube-system replicaset.apps/traefik-97b44b794 1 1 1 4m53s
NAMESPACE NAME COMPLETIONS DURATION AGE
kube-system job.batch/helm-install-traefik-crd 1/1 23s 5m26s
kube-system job.batch/helm-install-traefik 1/1 25s 5m26sThe interesting things to note here are the builder and traefik services. We can use traefik to get into the cluster and nerdctl leverages the builder service to build containers using buildkit. Don't worry too much about the details of traefik, nerdctl and buildkit; it's just nice to know that they are doing their magic behind the scenes.
Rancher Desktop now uses nerdctl to build containers, it is automatically configured for you when you install Rancher Desktop.
I provided a sample Dockerfile in the sample\container folder that you can use.
cd to the sample\container folder and type:
nerdctl -n k8s.io build -t dvdemo:latest .Note: We add the
-n k8s.ioflag to get our image into the right namespace and make it available to the K8s cluster
you should get some output similar to:
nerdctl -n k8s.io build -t dvdemo:latest .
[+] Building 4.1s (7/7) FINISHED
=> [internal] load build definition from Dockerfile 0.0s
=> => transferring dockerfile: 98B 0.0s
=> [internal] load .dockerignore 0.0s
=> => transferring context: 2B 0.0s
=> [internal] load metadata for docker.io/library/nginx:alpine 1.9s
=> [internal] load build context 0.1s
=> => transferring context: 3.45kB 0.0s
=> [1/2] FROM docker.io/library/nginx:alpine@sha256:686aac2769fd6e7bab67663fd38750c135b72d993d0bb0a942ab02ef647f 1.1s
=> => resolve docker.io/library/nginx:alpine@sha256:686aac2769fd6e7bab67663fd38750c135b72d993d0bb0a942ab02ef647f 0.1s
--- REMOVED TO REDUCE TEXT ---
=> [2/2] COPY index.html /usr/share/nginx/html/ 0.1s
=> exporting to oci image format 0.6s
=> => exporting layers 0.2s
=> => exporting manifest sha256:dcb5094f802838df8652b635a5d8b6075058d21ce0f145aa341e18a6cdd9ada0 0.0s
=> => exporting config sha256:6077cfd0223249cbc205dcbe44eb691942890240e41d397976e4fb8f3812680d 0.0s
=> => sending tarball 0.3s
unpacking docker.io/library/dvdemo:latest (sha256:dcb5094f802838df8652b635a5d8b6075058d21ce0f145aa341e18a6cdd9ada0)...done
unpacking overlayfs@sha256:dcb5094f802838df8652b635a5d8b6075058d21ce0f145aa341e18a6cdd9ada0 (sha256:dcb5094f802838df8652b635a5d8b6075058d21ce0f145aa341e18a6cdd9ada0)...doneYou should now be able to see the newly created image in the cluster.
Go to the Rancher Desktop UI and click on "Images" on the left side.
It should look something similar to this:
Note: I had to use the drop down to switch to the
k8s.ioImage Namespace
Creating a deployment, service and ingress is beyond the scope of this demo. I followed the article "Replacing Docker Desktop with WSL2 and/or Rancher Desktop on Windows" by Jason Umiker.
I included a sample deployment in the sample/deployment folder.
I had to modify Jason's sample to include imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent on line 18 to make it work with locally built container images.
- name: rancherDesktopDemo
image: dvdemo:latest
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresentto create the deployment, in a terminal cd to the sample deployment folder and type:
kubectl apply -f .\rancherDesktopDemo.yamlthe terminal should show something similar to:
deployment.apps/rancher-desktop-demo created
service/rancher-desktop-demo created
ingress.networking.k8s.io/rancher-desktop-demo createdPart of the previous command creates an ingress into your cluster, to see it type:
kubectl get ingressIt will respond with something similar to:
NAME CLASS HOSTS ADDRESS PORTS AGE
rancher-desktop-demo <none> * 172.30.30.65 80 2m55sNote the IP address, in this case 172.30.30.65
Open a web browser and navigate to http://172.30.30.65, it should respond with something similar to:
If you want to be able to access the cluster locally, Rancher Desktop also enables port forwarding. Click on "Port Forwarding", then "Forward" under your chosen Name (in this case rancher-desktop-demo"). In the screenshot it is forwarding to local port 61842
After enabling the port forward you should be able to navigate to http://localhost:61842/ and see the same page that loaded for http://172.30.30.65.
That's it! You now have a container running in your kubernetes cluster that is accessible on the cluster IP and on a local port forward. Let me know if you have any questions. I can be reached at @IAmDanielV or @iamdanielv.bsky.social.
If you want a web based view of your Kubernetes cluster, you can install Portainer. It's a very powerful UI that gives you a lot of control over the cluster and lets you deploy things without having to mess around with command lines.
To learn more about Portainer go to Portainer.io
This was really easy to deploy, I followed the instructions from Portainer's Documentation
Basically, you use Helm (installed for you by Rancher Desktop).
Step 1: Add the Helm Repo
helm repo add portainer https://portainer.github.io/k8s/
helm repo updateStep 2: Choose a way of accessing portainer. I chose the "Expose via NodePort" method, but there are also instructions for doing it with ingress and Load Balancer. You can explore and choose the one that fits your use case best.
helm install --create-namespace -n portainer portainer portainer/portainerHelm should respond with something similar to:
helm install --create-namespace -n portainer portainer portainer/portainer
NAME: portainer
NAMESPACE: portainer
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
NOTES:
Get the application URL by running these commands:
export NODE_PORT=$(kubectl get --namespace portainer -o jsonpath="{.spec.ports[1].nodePort}" services portainer)
export NODE_IP=$(kubectl get nodes --namespace portainer -o jsonpath="{.items[0].status.addresses[0].address}")
echo https://$NODE_IP:$NODE_PORTthe export command will not work on Windows, so I just ran the commands manually
# get port
kubectl get --namespace portainer -o jsonpath="{.spec.ports[1].nodePort}" services portainer
# get node IP
kubectl get nodes --namespace portainer -o jsonpath="{.items[0].status.addresses[0].address}"in my case it returned 30779 for port and an IP.
That's it! Your portainer instance should be available at https://IP:30779 or https://localhost:30779/
Portainer has a lot of features and is beyond the scope of this demo, but you can learn more at Portainer.io
The kubernetes engine will keep the specified containers running. If you want to stop and free up some memory once you are done you can change to the sample/deployment folder and run:
kubectl delete -f .\rancherDesktopDemo.yamlkubectl should respond with something similar to:
deployment.apps "rancher-desktop-demo" deleted
service "rancher-desktop-demo" deleted
ingress.networking.k8s.io "rancher-desktop-demo" deletedPods, services, and ingress should be cleaned up automatically.