3 easy steps to a Windows Kubernetes cluster, from scratch, built from source...

• Install Vagrant & VirtualBox (the base tools for this project)
• vagrant plugin install vagrant-reload vagrant-vbguest winrm winrm-elevated, vagrant-reload needed to easily reboot windows VMs during setup of containers features.
• make all, this will create the entire cluster for you. To compile k/k/ from local source, see instructions later in this doc.
• If the above failed, run vagrant provision winw1, just in case you have a flake during windows installation.
• vagrant ssh controlplane and run kubectl get nodes to see your running dual-os linux+windows k8s cluster.

This is a fully batteries-included development environment for Windows on Kubernetes, including:

• Vagrant file for launching a two-node cluster
• the latest Containerd
• Support for two CNIs: antrea, or calico on containerd: configure your CNI option in variables.yml
  • calico 3.19 on containerd runs containers out of the box
  • antrea 0.13.2 runs but requires running with a patch for antrea-io/antrea#2344 which was recently made available
• NetworkPolicy support for Windows and Linux provided by Antrea and Calico
• Windows binaries for kube-proxy.exe and kubelet.exe that are fully built from source (K8s main branch)
• kubeadm installation that can put the bleeding-edge Linux control plane in place, so you can test new features like privileged containers

All the above Quick Start steps apply except you have to run the Makefile targets in WSL while using vagrant.exe on the host. To do this pass the mount path to the executable on the host with the VAGRANT environment variable. To get the path for your vagrant.exe on the host use Get-Command vagrant in PowerShell like the following example.

~ > $(get-command vagrant).Source.Replace("\","/").Replace("C:/", "/mnt/c/")
/mnt/c/HashiCorp/Vagrant/bin/vagrant.exe

Use that string in WSL by exporting an Environment variable and then use all the make calls freely.

export VAGRANT=/mnt/c/HashiCorp/Vagrant/bin/vagrant.exe
make all
# ...
make clean

1. Install essential tools for build and vagrant/virtualbox packages.

Example:

Adding hashicorp repo for most recent vagrant bits:

curl -fsSL https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-add-repository \
	"deb [arch=amd64] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main"
sudo apt-get update

Installing packages:

sudo apt install build-essential vagrant virtualbox virtualbox-ext-pack -y
sudo vagrant plugin install vagrant-reload vagrant-vbguest winrm winrm-elevated vagrant-ssh

2. Create /etc/vbox/networks.conf to set the network bits:

Example:

sudo mkdir /etc/vbox
sudo vi /etc/vbox

* 10.0.0.0/8 192.168.0.0/16
* 2001::/64

3. Clone the repo and build

git clone https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/sig-windows-dev-tools.git
cd sig-windows-dev-tools
touch tools/sync/shared/kubejoin.ps1
make all

4. ssh to the virtual machines

• Control Plane node (Linux):

vagrant ssh controlplane
kubectl get pods -A

• Windows node:

vagrant ssh winw1

Our goal is to make Windows ridiculously easy to contribute to, play with, and learn about for anyone interested in using or contributing to the ongoing Kubernetes-on-Windows story. Windows is rapidly becoming an increasingly viable alternative to Linux thanks to the recent introduction of Windows HostProcess containers and Windows support for NetworkPolicies + Containerd integration.

• Vagrant
• Vagrant vagrant-vbguest, reload, winrm and winrm-elevated plugins
• some Vagrant provider (we only have VirtualBox automated here, but these recipes have been used with others, like HyperV and Fusion).

Ok let's get started...

For the happy path, just:

0. Start Docker so that you can build K8s from source as needed.
1. Install Vagrant, and then vagrant-reload

vagrant plugin install vagrant-reload vagrant-vbguest winrm winrm-elevated 

2. Modify CPU/memory in the variables.yml file. We recommend four cores 8G+ for your Windows node if you can spare it, and two cores 8G for your Linux node as well.

There are two use cases for these Windows K8s dev environments: Quick testing, and testing K8s from source.

To test from source, run vagrant destroy --force ; make all. This will

• destroy your existing dev environment (destroying the existent one, and removing binaries folder)
• clone down K8s from GitHub. If you have the k/k repo locally, you can make path=path_to_k/k all
• compile the K8s proxy and kubelet (for linux and windows)
• inject them into the Linux and Windows vagrant environment at the /usr/bin and C:/k/bin/ location
• start up the Linux and Windows VMs

AND THAT'S IT! Your machines should come up in a few minutes...

NOTE: Do not run the middle Makefile targets, they depend of the sequence to give the full cluster experience.

Do not log into the VMs until the provisioning is done. That is especially true for Windows because it will prevent the reboots.

If you still have an old instance of these VMs running for the same dir:

vagrant destroy -f && vagrant up

after everything is done (can take 10 min+), ssh' into the Linux VM:

vagrant ssh controlplane

and get an overview of the nodes:

kubectl get nodes

The Windows node might stay 'NotReady' for a while, because it takes some time to download the Flannel image.

vagrant@controlplane:~$ kubectl get nodes
NAME     STATUS     ROLES                  AGE    VERSION
controlplane    Ready      control-plane,controlplane   8m4s   v1.20.4
winw1           NotReady   <none>                       64s    v1.20.4

...

NAME     STATUS   ROLES                  AGE     VERSION
controlplane    Ready    control-plane,controlplane     16m     v1.20.4
winw1           Ready    <none>                         9m11s   v1.20.4

You'll obviously want to run commands on the Windows box. The easiest way is to SSH into the Windows machine and use powershell from there:

vagrant ssh winw1
C:\ > powershell

Optionally, you can do this by noting the IP address during vagrant provision and running any RDP client (vagrant/vagrant for username/password, works for SSH). To run a command on the Windows boxes without actually using the UI, you can use winrm, which is integrated into Vagrant. For example, you can run:

vagrant winrm winw1 --shell=powershell --command="ls"

IF you want to debug on the windows node, you can also run crictl:

.\crictl config --set runtime-endpoint=npipe:////./pipe/containerd-containerd

• This guide is based on this very nice Vagrantfile
• this very good guide on how to install Kubernetes on Ubuntu Focal (20.04).
• The Windows part is informed by this guide on how to install Docker on Win Server 2019, this guide on adding Windows nodes, and this guide on how to install Kubernetes on Win Server 2019.
• We've also borrowed ideas from cluster api, kubeadm, and the antrea project too bootstrap how we manage CNI and containerd support.

Working on Windows Kubernetes is a great way to learn about Kubernetes internals and how Kubernetes works in a multi-OS environment.

So, even if you aren't a Windows user, we encourage Kubernetes users of all types to try to get involved and contribute!

We are a new project and we need help with...

• contributing / testing recipes on different Vagrant providers
• docs of existing workflows
• CSI support and testing
• privileged container support
• recipes with active directory
• any other ideas!

If nothing else, filing an issue with your bugs or experiences will be helpful long-term. If interested in pairing with us to do your first contribution, just reach out in #sig-windows (https://slack.k8s.io/). We understand that developing on Kubernetes with Windows is new to many folks, and we're here to help you get started.