Installing MicroK8s on a Home Server

I decided to use MicroK8s as the K8s distribution to operate on my home server, so here's a memo on how to set it up.

Here's the environment I tried it on:

KUBERNETES_VERSION=1.28
IPADDR=$(ip a show eno1 | grep inet | grep -v inet6 | head -1 | awk '{print $2}' | cut -f1 -d/)

MicroK8s is installed via snap.

sudo apt-get install -y snapd
sudo snap install microk8s --classic --channel=${KUBERNETES_VERSION}/stable
sudo microk8s status --wait-ready

Add the user to the microk8s group.

sudo usermod -a -G microk8s $USER
sudo chown -R $USER ~/.kube
newgrp microk8s

Change the settings so that you can access the API Server from a terminal on the same network.

sudo sed -i.bak "s/#MOREIPS/IP.3 = ${IPADDR}\nDNS.6 = *.sslip.io\nDNS.7 = *.maki.lol\nDNS.8 = *.ik.am/g" /var/snap/microk8s/current/certs/csr.conf.template
echo "--advertise-address ${IPADDR}" | sudo tee -a /var/snap/microk8s/current/args/kube-apiserver
echo "--node-ip ${IPADDR}" | sudo tee -a /var/snap/microk8s/current/args/kubelet
sudo microk8s refresh-certs --cert ca.crt
sudo snap restart microk8s

Add the addon.

microk8s enable helm3
microk8s enable rbac
microk8s enable dns
microk8s enable metrics-server

Set up MetalLB. Here, the fourth octet of the same network can be used as an External IP from 210 to 219.

microk8s enable metallb:$(echo $IPADDR | awk -F '.' '{print $1 "." $2 "." $3}').$(echo $((N * 10 + 210)))-$(echo $IPADDR | awk -F '.' '{print $1 "." $2 "." $3}').$(echo $((N * 10 + 219)))

The following command generates a config file for kubectl. Copy this to your terminal and set its path as the KUBECONFIG environment variable.

microk8s config

Check that you can access the API Server.

$ kubectl cluster-info 
Kubernetes control plane is running at https://192.168.11.95:16443
CoreDNS is running at https://192.168.11.95:16443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy

To further debug and diagnose cluster problems, use 'kubectl cluster-info dump'.

The list of Pods at this point is as follows.

$ kubectl  get pod -A
NAMESPACE        NAME                                     READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
kube-system      calico-kube-controllers-77bd7c5b-phvll   1/1     Running   0          127m
kube-system      calico-node-47df7                        1/1     Running   0          127m
kube-system      coredns-864597b5fd-vzt5d                 1/1     Running   0          127m
kube-system      metrics-server-848968bdcd-l6drh          1/1     Running   0          116m
metallb-system   controller-5f7bb57799-pzbbk              1/1     Running   0          66m
metallb-system   speaker-lldsl                            1/1     Running   0          66m
kube-system      csi-nfs-node-4cmws                       3/3     Running   0          56m
kube-system      csi-nfs-controller-8445b65669-hgzw9      4/4     Running   0          56m

Set up the Storage Class. Here, I use my home NAS (Synology NAS) as an NSF Server and set up the NFS CSI Driver.

ℹ️ For Synology NAS NFS settings, please refer to https://benyoung.blog/persistent-storage-class-in-kubernetes-backed-by-synology-nfs/.

microk8s helm3 repo add csi-driver-nfs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-csi/csi-driver-nfs/master/charts
microk8s helm3 repo update
microk8s helm3 install csi-driver-nfs csi-driver-nfs/csi-driver-nfs \
    --namespace kube-system \
    --set kubeletDir=/var/snap/microk8s/common/var/lib/kubelet
    
NFS_SERVER_IP=...
NFS_SERVER_PATH=/volume1/nfs

cat <<EOF > sc.yaml
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: nfs-csi
  annotations:
    storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class: "true"  
provisioner: nfs.csi.k8s.io
parameters:
  server: ${NFS_SERVER_IP}
  share: ${NFS_SERVER_PATH}
reclaimPolicy: Delete
volumeBindingMode: Immediate
mountOptions:
- hard
- nfsvers=4.1
EOF

kubectl apply -f sc.yaml

$ kubectl get storageclass
NAME                PROVISIONER      RECLAIMPOLICY   VOLUMEBINDINGMODE   ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION   AGE
nfs-csi (default)   nfs.csi.k8s.io   Delete          Immediate           false                  33m

Create a PVC like the following.

kubectl apply -f- << EOF
---
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: test-dynamic-volume-claim
spec:
  accessModes:
  - ReadWriteMany
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Gi
---
EOF

I was able to create a PV with RWX.

$ kubectl get pvc
NAME                        STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
test-dynamic-volume-claim   Bound    pvc-914db69c-239a-4057-866e-d01b3ba93920   1Gi        RWX            nfs-csi        7s

You can also check the folder on the NAS side.

Once confirmed, delete the PVC.

kubectl delete pvc test-dynamic-volume-claim

If you don't have an NFS Server, you can use hostpath as the Storage Class with the following command.
microk8s enable hostpath-storage

IK.AM

Installing MicroK8s on a Home Server