Quickstart for Calico on minikube

Big picture

This quickstart gets you a single-node minikube cluster with Calico in approximately 1 minute. You can use this cluster for testing and development.

Value

Use this quickstart to quickly and easily try Calico features.

Before you begin

• Install, but do not start, minikube. How to install minikube
• Install kubectl.How to install kubectl
• Install a minikube driver. For example Docker. A full List of available drivers can be found here.

How to

Create a single-node minikube cluster

Built-in Calico

Minikube offers a built-in Calico implementation, this is a quick way to checkout Calico features.

note

Enabling preinstalled Calico might be the quickest way for testing. However, if you like to checkout a more recent version or features of Calico you should consider using Manifest or Operator approach.

minikube start --cni=calico

Operator

1. Start your minikube cluster with one control plane node using the following command.

   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 following command.

   minikube start --cni=false --network-plugin=cni --extra-config=kubeadm.pod-network-cidr=192.168.0.0/16 --subnet=172.16.0.0/24

2. Install the Tigera 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.

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

   note

   Before creating this manifest, read its contents and make sure its settings are correct for your environment. For example, if you have replaced pod-network-cidr you must change it in this file as well.

   kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.29.1/manifests/custom-resources.yaml

Manifest

Start your minikube cluster with one control plane node using the following command:

minikube start --network-plugin=cni

Install Calico.

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.29.1/manifests/calico.yaml

Verify Calico installation

Verify Calico installation in your cluster using the following command:

watch kubectl get pods -l k8s-app=calico-node -A

You should see a result similar to the below. Note that the namespace might be different, depending on the method you followed.

NAMESPACE     NAME                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
kube-system   calico-node-mlqvs   1/1     Running   0          5m18s

Use ctrl+c to break out of watch.

Congratulations you now have a minikube cluster equipped with Calico

Add an additional worker node

note

This as an optional step, you can safely skip this step if you do not require an additional worker node.

minikube node add

Verify nodes using the following command:

kubectl get nodes

Clean up

Delete the cluster using the following command:

minikube delete

Next steps

Required

• Install and configure calicoctl

Recommended tutorials

• Secure a simple application using the Kubernetes NetworkPolicy API
• Control ingress and egress traffic using the Kubernetes NetworkPolicy API
• Run a tutorial that shows blocked and allowed connections in real time