NOTE: This project is deprecated in favor of kind. Try kind today, it's great!

A Kubernetes multi-node cluster for developer of Kubernetes and projects that extend Kubernetes. Based on kubeadm and DIND (Docker in Docker).

Supports both local workflows and workflows utilizing powerful remote machines/cloud instances for building Kubernetes, starting test clusters and running e2e tests.

If you're an application developer, you may be better off with Minikube because it's more mature and less dependent on the local environment, but if you're feeling adventurous you may give kubeadm-dind-cluster a try, too. In particular you can run kubeadm-dind-cluster in CI environment such as Travis without having issues with nested virtualization.

Docker 1.12+ is recommended. If you're not using one of the preconfigured scripts (see below) and not building from source, it's better to have kubectl executable in your path matching the version of k8s binaries you're using (i.e. for example better don't use kubectl 1.13.x with hyperkube 1.12.x). As an alternative, you can set DOWNLOAD_KUBECTL to a non-empty string in your config.sh so kubeadm-dind-cluster will download it for you.

kubeadm-dind-cluster supports k8s versions 1.12.x through 1.15.x.

As of now, running kubeadm-dind-cluster on Docker with btrfs storage driver is not supported.

The problems include inability to properly clean up DIND volumes due to a docker bug which is not really fixed and, more importantly, a kubelet problem. If you want to run kubeadm-dind-cluster on btrfs anyway, set RUN_ON_BTRFS_ANYWAY environment variable to a non-empty value.

By default kubeadm-dind-cluster uses dockerized builds, so no Go installation is necessary even if you're building Kubernetes from source. If you want you can overridde this behavior by setting KUBEADM_DIND_LOCAL to a non-empty value in config.sh.

When building Kubernetes from source on Mac OS X, it should be possible to build kubectl locally, i.e. make WHAT=cmd/kubectl must work.

NOTE: Docker on Mac OS X, at the time of this writing, does not support IPv6 and thus clusters cannot be formed using IPv6 addresses.

kubeadm-dind-cluster currently provides preconfigured scripts for Kubernetes versions 1.12 through 1.15 published as part of GitHub releases. Each preconfigured script is pinned to the corresponding image tag and SHA256 digest, so it will not be broken by changes in kubeadm-dind-cluster master branch.

The preconfigured scripts are convenient for use with projects that extend or use Kubernetes. For example, you can start Kubernetes 1.14 like this:

$ wget -O dind-cluster.sh https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kubeadm-dind-cluster/releases/download/v0.2.0/dind-cluster-v1.14.sh 
$ chmod +x dind-cluster.sh

$ # start the cluster
$ ./dind-cluster.sh up

$ # add kubectl directory to PATH
$ export PATH="$HOME/.kubeadm-dind-cluster:$PATH"

$ kubectl get nodes
NAME          STATUS    ROLES     AGE       VERSION
kube-master   Ready     master    4m        v1.14.0
kube-node-1   Ready     <none>    2m        v1.14.0
kube-node-2   Ready     <none>    2m        v1.14.0

$ # k8s dashboard available at http://localhost:<DOCKER_EXPOSED_PORT>/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kubernetes-dashboard:/proxy. See your console for the URL.

$ # restart the cluster, this should happen much quicker than initial startup
$ ./dind-cluster.sh up

$ # stop the cluster
$ ./dind-cluster.sh down

$ # remove DIND containers and volumes
$ ./dind-cluster.sh clean

Replace 1.14 with 1.13 or 1.12 to use older Kubernetes versions. Important note: you need to do ./dind-cluster.sh clean when you switch between Kubernetes versions (but no need to do this between rebuilds if you use BUILD_HYPERKUBE=y like described below).

$ git clone https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kubeadm-dind-cluster.git ~/dind

$ cd ~/work/kubernetes/src/k8s.io/kubernetes

$ export BUILD_KUBEADM=y
$ export BUILD_HYPERKUBE=y

$ # build binaries+images and start the cluster
$ ~/dind/dind-cluster.sh up

$ kubectl get nodes
NAME                      STATUS         AGE
kube-master   Ready,master   1m
kube-node-1   Ready          34s
kube-node-2   Ready          34s

$ # k8s dashboard available at http://localhost:8080/ui

$ # run conformance tests
$ ~/dind/dind-cluster.sh e2e

$ # restart the cluster rebuilding
$ ~/dind/dind-cluster.sh up

$ # run particular e2e test based on substring
$ ~/dind/dind-cluster.sh e2e "existing RC"

$ # shut down the cluster
$ ~/dind/dind-cluster.sh down

The first dind/dind-cluster.sh up invocation can be slow because it needs to build the base image and Kubernetes binaries. Subsequent invocations are much faster.

Kubeadm-dind-cluster uses several networks for operation, and allows the user to customize the networks used. Check your network assignments for your setup, and adjust things, if there are conflicts. This section will describe how to adjust settings.

NOTE: Docker will define networks for bridges, which kubeadm-dind-cluster tries to avoid by default, but based on your setup, you may need to choose different subnets. Typically, docker uses 172.17.0.0/16, 172.18.0.0/16,...

For the management network, the user can set MGMT_CIDRS to a string representing the CIDR to use for the network. This is used in conjunction with the CLUSTER_ID, when creating multple clusters. If single cluster, the cluster ID will be zero.

For IPv4, this must be a /24 and the third octet is reserved for the multi-cluster number (0 when in single-cluster mode). For example, use 10.192.0.0/24, for an IPv4 cluster that will have nodes 10.192.0.2, 10.192.0.3, etc. A cluster with ID "5" would have nodes 10.192.5.2, 10.192.5.3, etc.

For IPv6, the CIDR must have room for a hextet to be reserved for the multi-cluster number. For example, fd00:10:20::/64 would be for an IPv6 cluster with ID "10" (considered in hex) with nodes fd00:10:20:10::2, fd00:10:20:10::3, etc. If the cluster ID was "0" (single cluster mode), the nodes would be fd00:10:20:0::2, fd00:10:20:0::3, etc.

The defaults are 10.192.0.0/24 for IPv4, and fd00:20::/64 for IPv6.

For dual-stack mode, a comma separated list with IPv4 and IPv6 can be specified. Any omitted CIDR will use the default value above, based on the IP mode.

The service network CIDR, can be specified by SERVICE_CIDR. For IPv4, the default is 10.96.0.0/12. For IPv6, the default is fd00:30::/110.

For the pod network the POD_NETWORK_CIDR environment variable can be set to specify the pod sub-networks. One subnet will be created for each node in the cluster.

For IPv4, the value must be a /16, of which this will be split into multiple /24 subnets. The master node will set the third octet to 2, and the minion nodes will set the third octet to 3+. For example, with 10.244.0.0/16, pods on the master node will be 10.244.2.X, on minion kube-node-1 will be 10.244.3.Y, on minion kube-node-2 will be 10.244.4.Z, etc.

For IPv6, the CIDR will again be split into subnets, eigth bits smaller. For example, with fd00:10:20:30::/72, the master node would have a CIDR of fd00:10:20:30:2::/80 with pods fd00:10:20:30:2::X. If the POD_NETWORK_CIDR, instead was fd00:10:20:30::/64, the master node woudl have a CIDR of fd00:10:20:30:0200::/72, and pods would be fd00:10:20:30:0200::X.

The defaults are 10.244.0.0/16 for IPv4, and fd00:40::/72 for IPv6.

For dual-stack mode, a comma separated list with IPv4 and IPv6 CIDR can be specified. Any omitted CIDR will use the default value above, based on the IP mode.

Instead of using kube-proxy and static routes (with bridge CNI plugin), kube-router can be used. Kube-router uses the bridge plugin, but uses IPVS kernel module, instead of iptables. This results in better performance and scalability. Kube-router also uses iBGP, so that static routes are not required for pods to communicate across nodes.

To use kube-router, set the CNI_PLUGIN environment variable to "kube-router".

NOTE: Currently pinning kube-router to v0.2.0, because of issue seen with cleanup, when using newer (latest) kube-router.

NOTE: This has only been tested with Kubernetes 1.11, and currently fails when using Kuberentes 1.12+

To run Kubernetes in IPv6 only mode, set the environment variable IP_MODE to "ipv6". There are additional customizations that you can make for IPv6, to set the prefix used for DNS64, subnet prefix to use for DinD, and the service subnet CIDR (among other settings - see dind-cluster.sh):

export EMBBEDDED_CONFIG=y
export DNS64_PREFIX=fd00:77:64:ff9b::
export DIND_SUBNET=fd00:77::
export SERVICE_CIDR=fd00:77:30::/110
export NAT64_V4_SUBNET_PREFIX=172.20

NOTE: The DNS64 and NAT64 containers that are created on the host, persist beyond the down operation. This is to reduce startup time, if doing multiple down/up cycles. When clean is done, these containers are removed.

NOTE: In multi-cluster, there will be DNS and NAT64 containers for each cluster, with thier names including the cluster suffix (e.g. bind9-cluster-50).

NOTE: At this time, there is no isolation between clusters. Nodes on one cluster can ping nodes on another cluster (appears to be isolation iptables rules, instead of ip6tables rules).

NOTE: The IPv4 mapping subnet used by NAT64, can be overridden from the default of 172.18.0.0/16, by specifying the first two octets in NAT64_V4_SUBNET_PREFIX (you cannot change the size). This prefix must be within the 10.0.0.0/8 or 172.16.0.0/12 private network ranges. Be aware, that, in a multi-cluster setup, the cluster ID, which defaults to zero, will be added to the second octet of the prefix. You must ensure that the resulting prefix is still within the private network's range. For example, if CLUSTER_ID="10", the default NAT64_V4_SUBNET_PREFIX will be "172.28", forming a subnet 172.28.0.0/16.

NOTE: If you use kube-router for networking, IPv6 is not supported, as of July 2018.

You may edit config.sh to override default settings. See comments in the file for more info. In particular, you can specify CNI plugin to use via CNI_PLUGIN variable (bridge, ptp, flannel, calico, calico-kdd, weave, kube-router).

You can also edit the version appropriate kubeadm.conf.#.##.tmpl file in the image/ directory, to customize how KubeAdm works. This will require that you build a new image using build/build-local.sh and then setting this environment variable:

export DIND_IMAGE=mirantis/kubeadm-dind-cluster:local

Note: the DIND_IMAGE environment variable will work only with ./dind-cluster.sh script.
It will not work with preconfigured scripts.

Just keep in mind, there are some parameters in double curly-brackets that are used to substitue settings, based on other dind-cluster.sh config settings.

It's possible to build Kubernetes on a remote machine running Docker. kubeadm-dind-cluster can consume binaries directly from the build data container without copying them back to developer's machine. An example utilizing GCE instance is provided in gce-setup.sh. You may try running it using source (.) so that docker-machine shell environment is preserved, e.g.

. gce-setup.sh

The example is based on sample commands from build/README.md in Kubernetes source.

When using a remote machine, you need to use ssh port forwarding to forward KUBE_RSYNC_PORT and APISERVER_PORT.

If you do not explicitly set APISERVER_PORT, that port will be randomized. To help with that ./dind-cluster.sh will call a user-defined executable as soon as the port is allocated and the kubectl context is set up. For that to happen you need to set DIND_PORT_FORWARDER to a path to an executable, which will be called with the allocated port as a first argument. If you keep DIND_PORT_FORWARDER empty, that mechanism will not kick in.

In case of CI environment such as Travis CI or Circle CI, it's often desirable to get detailed cluster state for a failed job. Moreover, in case of e.g. Travis CI there's no way to store the artefacts without using an external service such as Amazon S3. Because of this, kubeadm-dind-cluster supports dumping cluster state as a text block that can be later split into individual files. For cases where there are limits on the log size (e.g. 4 Mb log limit in Travis CI) it's also possible to dump the lzma-compressed text block using base64 encoding.

The following commands can be used to work with cluster state dumps:

• ./dind-cluster.sh dump dumps the cluster state as a text block
• ./dind-cluster.sh dump64 dumps the cluster state as a base64 blob
• ./dind-cluster.sh split-dump splits the text block into individual files using @@@ filename @@@ markers which are generated by dump. The output is stored in cluster-dump/ subdirectory of the current directory.
• ./dind-cluster.sh split-dump64 splits the base64 blob into separate files. The blob has start and end markers so it can be extracted automatically from a build job log. The output is stored in cluster-dump/ subdirectory of the current directory.

All of the above commands work with 'fixed' scripts, too. kubeadm-dind-cluster's own Travis CI jobs dump base64 blobs in case of failure. Such blocks can be then extracted directly from the output of travis command line utility, e.g.

travis logs NNN.N | ./dind-cluster.sh split-dump64

The following information is currently stored in the dump:

• status and logs for the following systemd units on each DIND node, if the exist: kubelet.service, dindnet.service, criproxy.service and dockershim.service (the latter two are used by CRI Proxy)
• ps auxww, docker ps -a, ip a and ip r output for each DIND node
• the logs of all the containers of each pod in the cluster
• the output of kubectl get all --all-namespaces -o wide, kubectl describe all --all-namespaces and kubectl get nodes -o wide

dind-cluster.sh can be used to create and manage multiple dind clusters.

Normally, default names will be used for docker resources and the kubectl context. For example, kube-master (container name), kubeadm-dind-kube-master (volume name), dind (context name), etc. Likewise, the management, pod, and service IPs will use the defaults or user specified values (via environment variables). This would occur when CLUSTER_ID is not set, or set to "0".

For each additional cluster, the user can set a unique CLUSTER_ID to a string that represents a number from 1..254. The number will be used on all management network IP addresses.

For IPv4, the cluster ID will be used as the third octet of the management address (whether default or user specified). For example, with cluster ID "10", the default management network CIDR will be 10.192.10.0/24. For IPv6, the cluster ID will be placed as the hextet before the double colon, for the management CIDR. For example, a management ntwork CIDR of fd00:20::/64 will become fd00:20:2::/64, for a cluster ID of '2'.

NOTE: The cluster ID can be limited in some cases. For IPv6 mode, the cluster ID is also used in the NAT64 prefix, and that prifix must be within one of the RFC-1918 private network ranges. If the 172.16.0.0/12 private network is used, the cluster ID cannot be more than 15 (and less, if a higher base prefix is specified by the NAT64_V4_SUBNET_PREFIX, like the default 172.18, which would allow cluster IDs up to 13).

Note: If the MGMT_CIDR (or legacy DIND_SUBNET/DIND_SUBNET_SIZE) environment variables are set for the management network, they must be able to accommodate the cluster ID injection.

In addition to the management network, the resource names will have the suffix "-cluster-#", where # is the CLUSTER_ID. The context for kubectl will be "dind-cluster-#".

For legacy support (or if a user wants a custom cluster name), setting the DIND_LABEL will create a resource suffix "-{DIND_LABEL}-#", where # is the cluster ID. If no cluster ID is specified, as would be for backwards-compatibility, or it is zero, the resource names will just use the DIND_LABEL, and a pseudo-random number from 1..13 will be used for the cluster ID to be applied to the management network, and in case of IPv6, the NAT64 V4 mapping subnet prefix (hence the limitation).

Example usage:

$ # creates a 'default' cluster
$ ./dind-cluster up
$ # creates a cluster with an ID of 10
$ CLUSTER_ID="10" ./dind-cluster.sh up
$ # creates an additional cluster with the label 'foo' and random cluster ID assigned
$ DIND_LABEL="foo" ./dind-cluster.sh up

Example containers:

$ docker ps  --format '{{ .ID }} - {{ .Names }} -- {{ .Labels }}'

8178227e567c - kube-node-2 -- mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster=1,mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster_runtime=
6ea1822303bf - kube-node-1 -- mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster=1,mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster_runtime=
7bc6b28be0b4 - kube-master -- mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster=1,mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster_runtime=

ce3fa6eaecfe - kube-node-2-cluster-10 -- cluster-10=,mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster=1
12c18cf3edb7 - kube-node-1-cluster-10 -- cluster-10=,mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster=1
963a6e7c1e40 - kube-master-cluster-10 -- cluster-10=,mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster=1

b05926f06642 - kube-node-2-foo -- mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster=1,foo=
ddb961f1cc95 - kube-node-1-foo -- mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster=1,foo=
2efc46f9dafd - kube-master-foo -- foo=,mirantis.kubeadm_dind_cluster=1

Example kubectl access:

$ # to access the 'default' cluster
$ kubectl --context dind get all
$ # to access the additional clusters
$ kubectl --context dind-cluster-10 get all
$ kubectl --context dind-foo get all

By setting the IP_MODE environment variable to dual-stack, the cluster created will be in dual-stack mode. This means there will be an IPv4 and IPv6 address for pods (pod net) and nodes (mgmt net). The service network will still be single mode, based on the CIDR used (default is IPv6 mode with fd00:30::/110).

The MGMT_CIDRS and POD_NETWORK_CIDR environment variables can be used to customize the management and pod networks, respectively.

For this mode, static routes will be created on each node, for both IPv4 and IPv6, to allow pods to communicate across nodes.

Dual-stack mode for k-d-c is only available when using the bridge or PTP CNI plugins.

The initial version will not be using DNS64/NAT64, meaning that the cluster must have access to the outside via IPv6 (or use an external DNS64/NAT64). This implies that it will not work, out of the box, with GCE, which provides only IPv4 access to the outside world.

The functionality of the cluster in dual-stack mode, depends on the implementation of the dual-stack KEP. As of this commit, implementation of the KEP is only beginning, so some things will not work yet. Consider this commit as support for a WIP.

One known current limitation is that the service network must use the IPv4 family, as currently IPv4 is preferred, when both are available and logic doesn't force famliy to IPv6. As a result, endpoints are still IPv4, when service network is IPv6 (and doesn't work correctly).

hack/local-up-cluster.sh is widely used for k8s development. It has a couple of serious issues though. First of all, it only supports single node clusters, which means that it's hard to use it to work on e.g. scheduler-related issues and e2e tests that require several nodes can't be run. Another problem is that it has little resemblance to real clusters.

There's also k8s vagrant provider, but it's quite slow. Besides, cluster/ directory in k8s source is now considered deprecated.

Another widely suggested solution for development clusters is minikube, but currently it's not very well suited for development of Kubernetes itself. Besides, it's currently only supports single node, too, unless used with additional DIND layer like nkube.

kubernetes-dind-cluster is very nice & useful but uses a custom method of cluster setup (same as 2nd problem with local-up-cluster).

There's also sometimes a need to use a powerful remote machine or a cloud instance to build and test Kubernetes. Having Docker as the only requirement for such machine would be nice. Builds and unit tests are already covered by jbeda's work on dockerized builds, but being able to quickly start remote test clusters and run e2e tests is also important.

kubeadm-dind-cluster uses kubeadm to create a cluster consisting of docker containers instead of VMs. That's somewhat of a compromise but allows one to (re)start clusters quickly which is quite important when making changes to k8s source.

Moreover, some projects that extend Kubernetes such as Virtlet need a way to start kubernetes cluster quickly in CI environment without involving nested virtulization. Current kubeadm-dind-cluster version provides means to do this without the need to build Kubernetes locally.

At the moment, all non-serial [Conformance] e2e tests pass for clusters created by kubeadm-dind-cluster. [Serial]...[Conformance] tests currently have some issues. You may still try running them though:

$ dind/dind-cluster.sh e2e-serial

When restoring a cluster (either using restore or by doing down and then up), be sure to use the same IP mode. The DinD network that is created as part of the up operation, will persist after a down command and will not have the correct configuration, if the IP mode has changed.

There are currently two CI systems in place which automatically test PRs to kubeadm-dind-cluster:

• CircleCI
• TravisCI

All new tests should run on CircleCI, thus need to be configured in ./.circleci/config.yml.

There are some tests completely implemented in ./.circleci/config.yml. There are also other tests which are implemented in a script in ./test/ and then CircleCI just calls that script. This makes it easier to run a CircleCI test case also locally, by just calling the script:

$ DIND_ALLOW_AAAA_USE='true' TEST_K8S_VER='v1.10' ./test/test-ipv6-only.sh

CircleCI config can be re-generated using build/update-test-matrix.sh

There are some tests in ./test.sh, those will run on TravisCI. New tests should be added to CircleCI and not to ./test.sh / the TravisCI setup.

To run a specific test from ./test.sh use the following mechanism to discover and run a specific test:

# See all test cases:
$ grep 'function test-case-' ./test.sh
# run a specific test:
$ TEST_CASE=<test-name> ./test.sh

All of the IPv6 related tests currently run on CircleCI. Those tests run with the machine executor (and not as docker containers), so that we have IPv6 available for the test cases. Note, that while internal IPv6 is configured, external IPv6 is not available.

There are two slightly different kind of tests which run for all version starting from v1.12:

The cluster is setup with IPv6 support. The tests check if the IP resolution on nodes and pods works as expected. DNS64 is always used, and external IPv6 traffic goes throught NAT64. Both NAT64 and DNS64 are automatically deployed as docker containers, alongside the kube-master and kube-node-X containers running in the outer docker daemon.

These IPv6 tests do not depend on the host machine of the outer docker daemon actually having external IPv6 connectivity.

The tests cover, on pods, nodes and host:

• IP address lookups
• internal ping6s (pod to pod on different nodes)
• external ping6s (to IPv4-only and IPv6-enabled targets)

Those tests use the public AAAA records when available. Specifically for hosts which have a AAAA record, the IP address is used, traffic to those hosts does not get routed through NAT64. In that case the host running the outer docker daemon would need to have external IPv6 available to actually communicate with external IPv6 hosts. Therefore (because none of our CI systems can provide external IPv6) we skip the external ping tests and instead print a warning about external IPv6 not being available. If a host does not have a public AAAA record, the IPv4 address is used, embedded into a synthesized IPv6 address, and routed through NAT64.

In summary: The same test suites as above run, except for external ping tests which are intentionally disabled. Internal ping tests still run.

• kubeadm-dind-cluster was initially derived from kubernetes-dind-cluster, although as of now the code was completely rewritten. kubernetes-dind-cluster is somewhat faster but uses less standard way of k8s deployment. It also doesn't include support for consuming binaries from remote dockerized builds.
• kubeadm-ci-dind, kubeadm-ci-packager and kubeadm-ci-tester. These projects are similar to kubeadm-dind-cluster but are intended primarily for CI. They include packaging step which is too slow for the purpose of having convenient k8s "playground". kubeadm-dind-cluster uses Docker images from kubeadm-ci-dind.
• nkube starts Kubernetes-in-Kubernetes clusters.