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Initially, I tried doing this with a 2010 Mac Mini (which claims to support VMX), but couldn't get Minikube running on it... For the past two weeks though, I h

by spalas 7y ago

Initially, I tried doing this with a 2010 Mac Mini (which claims to support VMX), but couldn't get Minikube running on it... For the past two weeks though, I haven't had any issues with this setup on the Macbook Air!

atmosx 7y ago
You could try k3s in the mini. k3s uses a less resource hungry setup, parity is not there yes as many resource definitions won't work out of the box.
- spalas 7y ago
  Interesting, maybe I'll give that a try! (would be nice since I have 16GB of RAM on the Mini vs 4GB on the MBA and it is better suited to leaving on all the time) When I tried with minikube, the VirtualBox VM would boot successfully, but there was an issue with the networking b/w the VM and MacOS
josteink 7y ago
> which claims to support VMX I though Kubernetes was all about containers, not VMs? Why not just boot proper Linux on that thing?
- kernelsanderz 7y ago
  I run Linux (latest Kali Linux) on a similar MacBook Air and it work great for any of the light container tasks I've thrown at it (Docker, firecracker-vm, etc)
- jrockway 7y ago
  Your Kubernetes node itself is Linux, so requires virtualization if your host machine is not Linux. Docker for Mac also works this way; when you run a container, it's running on a Linux VM that Docker sets up, not on your Mac directly. Even on Linux, minikube uses a separate VM. It's just cleaner than having the kubelet running on your workstation directly. (microk8s takes a different approach and runs on your machine directly. The last time I interacted with it, it destroyed my coworker's workstation and we had to reinstall the machine completely. k8s is pretty invasive and really wants an entire machine at its disposal. VMs are just perfect for that.)
  - josteink 7y ago
    > Your Kubernetes node itself is Linux, so requires virtualization if your host machine is not Linux. Thus my question: If the aim is to use the machine for a Kubernetes "cluster", why not boot proper Linux on it, so Kubernetes can run at full speed, without any VM overhead?
    - MiroF 7y ago
      Agreed
    - jrockway 7y ago
      With processor support for virtualization, the overhead is minimal. I personally use a Windows machine at home (for games, sigh) and run VMs for a Linux development machine and a few k8s nodes for testing. The performance inside the VMs is excellent. I think right now if you want to have a single-node testing cluster, you will be very happy with minikube and the VM it creates. If you want multiple nodes, you will be very happy with VMs; you can create, destroy, and inject errors right from the command-line without having to walk over to physical machines and manipulate them.

by spalas 7y ago

atmosx 7y ago

You could try k3s in the mini. k3s uses a less resource hungry setup, parity is not there yes as many resource definitions won't work out of the box.

spalas 7y ago
Interesting, maybe I'll give that a try! (would be nice since I have 16GB of RAM on the Mini vs 4GB on the MBA and it is better suited to leaving on all the time) When I tried with minikube, the VirtualBox VM would boot successfully, but there was an issue with the networking b/w the VM and MacOS

josteink 7y ago

> which claims to support VMX I though Kubernetes was all about containers, not VMs? Why not just boot proper Linux on that thing?

kernelsanderz 7y ago
I run Linux (latest Kali Linux) on a similar MacBook Air and it work great for any of the light container tasks I've thrown at it (Docker, firecracker-vm, etc)
jrockway 7y ago
Your Kubernetes node itself is Linux, so requires virtualization if your host machine is not Linux. Docker for Mac also works this way; when you run a container, it's running on a Linux VM that Docker sets up, not on your Mac directly. Even on Linux, minikube uses a separate VM. It's just cleaner than having the kubelet running on your workstation directly. (microk8s takes a different approach and runs on your machine directly. The last time I interacted with it, it destroyed my coworker's workstation and we had to reinstall the machine completely. k8s is pretty invasive and really wants an entire machine at its disposal. VMs are just perfect for that.)
- josteink 7y ago
  > Your Kubernetes node itself is Linux, so requires virtualization if your host machine is not Linux. Thus my question: If the aim is to use the machine for a Kubernetes "cluster", why not boot proper Linux on it, so Kubernetes can run at full speed, without any VM overhead?
  - MiroF 7y ago
    Agreed
  - jrockway 7y ago
    With processor support for virtualization, the overhead is minimal. I personally use a Windows machine at home (for games, sigh) and run VMs for a Linux development machine and a few k8s nodes for testing. The performance inside the VMs is excellent. I think right now if you want to have a single-node testing cluster, you will be very happy with minikube and the VM it creates. If you want multiple nodes, you will be very happy with VMs; you can create, destroy, and inject errors right from the command-line without having to walk over to physical machines and manipulate them.