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Calico Open Source 3.29 (latest) documentation

K3s multi-node install

Big picture​

This tutorial gets you a multi node K3s cluster with Calico in approximately 10 minutes.

Value​

K3s is a lightweight implementation of Kubernetes packaged as a single binary.

The geeky details of what you get:

PolicyIPAMCNIOverlayRoutingDatastore

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 18.04 (amd64), Ubuntu 20.04 (amd64)
note

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

How to​

Initializing control plane instance​

K3s installation script can be modified by environment variables. Here you are providing some extra arguments to disable flannel, disable k3s default network policy and change the pod ip CIDR.

note

Full list of arguments can be viewed at this link.

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | INSTALL_K3S_EXEC="--flannel-backend=none --disable-network-policy --cluster-cidr=192.168.0.0/16" sh -

caution

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.

Enable remote access to your K3s instance​

To set up remote access to your cluster first ensure you have installed kubectl on your system.

note

If you are not sure how to install kubectl in your OS visit this link.

K3s stores a kubeconfig file in your server at /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml, copy all the content of k3s.yaml from your server into ~/.kube/config on the system that you like to have remote access to the cluster.

Add extra nodes to K3s cluster​

To add additional nodes to your cluster you need two piece of information.

  • K3S_URL which is going to be your main node ip address.
  • K3S_TOKEN which is stored in /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token file in main Node (Step 1). Execute following command in your node instance and join it to the cluster.
note

Remember to change serverip and mytoken.

curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_URL=https://serverip:6443 K3S_TOKEN=mytoken sh -

Install Calico​

Install the Calico operator and custom resource definitions.

kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.29.1/manifests/tigera-operator.yaml
note

Due to the large size of the CRD bundle, kubectl apply might exceed request limits. Instead, use kubectl create or kubectl replace.

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://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.29.1/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.

Check the installation​

  1. Confirm that all of the pods are running using the following command.
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

  1. Confirm that you now have two nodes 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
    k3s-node1    Ready    <none>   30m   v1.18.2+k3s1   172.16.2.129   <none>        Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS   4.15.0-101-generic   containerd://1.3.3-k3s2

Congratulations! You now have a multi node K3s cluster equipped with Calico and Traefik.

Next steps​