Quickstart for Calico on K3s

2 MINUTE READ

Big picture

This quickstart gets you a single-node K3s cluster with Calico in approximately 5 minutes. You can use this cluster for testing and development.

Value

Use this quickstart to quickly and easily try features. To deploy a cluster suitable for production, refer to Multi-node install.

Before you begin

  • Make sure you have a linux host that meets the following requirements
    • x86-64 processor
    • 1CPU
    • 1GB Ram
    • 10GB free disk space
    • Ubuntu 16.04 (amd64), Ubuntu 18.04 (amd64), Ubuntu 20.04 (amd64)

Note: K3s supports ARM processors too, this quickstart was tested against x86-64 processor environment. For more detail please visit this link.

How to

Create a single-node K3s cluster

  • Initialize the master using the following command.
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE="644" INSTALL_K3S_EXEC="--flannel-backend=none --cluster-cidr=192.168.0.0/16 --disable=traefik" sh -

Note: If 192.168.0.0/16 is already in use within your network you must select a different pod network CIDR by replacing 192.168.0.0/16 in the above command.

Note: K3s installer generates kubeconfig file in etc directory with limited permissions, using K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE environment you are assigning necessary permissions to the file and make it accessible for other users.

Install Calico

Install the Calico operator and custom resource definitions.

   kubectl create -f https://docs.projectcalico.org/manifests/tigera-operator.yaml

Install Calico by creating the necessary custom resource. For more information on configuration options available in this manifest, see the installation reference.

   kubectl create -f https://docs.projectcalico.org/manifests/custom-resources.yaml

Note: Before creating this manifest, read its contents and make sure its settings are correct for your environment. For example, you may need to change the default IP pool CIDR to match your pod network CIDR.

Install Calico by using the following command.

   kubectl apply -f https://docs.projectcalico.org/manifests/calico.yaml

Note: You can also view the YAML in a new tab.

You should see the following output.

    configmap/calico-config created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/bgpconfigurations.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/bgppeers.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/blockaffinities.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/clusterinformations.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/felixconfigurations.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/globalnetworkpolicies.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/globalnetworksets.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/hostendpoints.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/ipamblocks.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/ipamconfigs.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/ipamhandles.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/ippools.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/kubecontrollersconfigurations.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/networkpolicies.crd.projectcalico.org created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/networksets.crd.projectcalico.org created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/calico-kube-controllers created
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/calico-kube-controllers created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/calico-node created
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/calico-node created
    daemonset.apps/calico-node created
    serviceaccount/calico-node created
    deployment.apps/calico-kube-controllers created
    serviceaccount/calico-kube-controllers created

Final checks

  1. Confirm that all of the pods are running using the following command.
watch kubectl get pods --all-namespaces

Wait until each pod shows the STATUS of Running.

NAMESPACE         NAME                                      READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
tigera-operator   tigera-operator-c9cf5b94d-gj9qp           1/1     Running   0          107s
calico-system     calico-typha-7dcd87597-npqsf              1/1     Running   0          88s
calico-system     calico-node-rdwwz                         1/1     Running   0          88s
kube-system       local-path-provisioner-6d59f47c7-4q8l2    1/1     Running   0          2m14s
kube-system       metrics-server-7566d596c8-xf66d           1/1     Running   0          2m14s
kube-system       coredns-8655855d6-wfdbm                   1/1     Running   0          2m14s
calico-system     calico-kube-controllers-89df8c6f8-7hxc5   1/1     Running   0          87s

NAMESPACE     NAME                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
kube-system   calico-node-9hn9z                          1/1     Running   0          23m
kube-system   local-path-provisioner-6d59f47c7-drznc     1/1     Running   0          38m
kube-system   calico-kube-controllers-789f6df884-928lt   1/1     Running   0          23m
kube-system   metrics-server-7566d596c8-qxlfz            1/1     Running   0          38m
kube-system   coredns-8655855d6-blzl5                    1/1     Running   0          38m

  1. Press CTRL+C to exit watch.

  2. Confirm that you now have a node in your cluster with the following command.

kubectl get nodes -o wide

It should return something like the following.

NAME         STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION        INTERNAL-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   OS-IMAGE             KERNEL-VERSION       CONTAINER-RUNTIME
k3s-master   Ready    master   40m   v1.18.2+k3s1   172.16.2.128   <none>        Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS   4.15.0-101-generic   containerd://1.3.3-k3s2

Congratulations! You now have a single-node K3s cluster equipped with Calico.

Next steps