Local Kubernetes on Mac Apple Silicon without Docker

Audience consideration for this tutorial: Someone who wants to test the code on local Kubernetes cluster and has Apple Mac devices with Apple Silicon.

Prerequisite:

Apple Mac machine 💻 / 🖥️
Parallels Desktop (non-pro version will also work)
Some free storage on your SSD

Steps 🛠️:

Create a Linux VM
Install prerequisites in the Linux VM
Install Kubernetes (Let’s call it k8s henceforth) and related applications for the k8s deployment.
Cluster creation

Step 1:

Download the rocky linux (a clone of RHEL). Here is the download link of rocky 9 for arm64 architecture (i.e. for Apple Silicon).
Create a linux VM by following this guide: Install Linux virtual machine on a Mac with Apple M-Series chip .
While installing, please select OS type as Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS Linux. Like this:
Proceed with further process of the OS installation.

Step 2:

Start the vm and then install prerequisites with below commands

1
sudo dnf install openssh-server
2
ip address # note down the ip address

PS: Please use the host IP address noted from above command to ssh the vm. It will be easy to just copy and paste commands from below section.

Step 3:

Install required libraries 👇 , GitHub link 🔗 for commands : k8s-kind-podman-installation-command.sh

1
sudo dnf check-update -y
2
sudo dnf update -y
3
sudo dnf update --security  -y
4
sudo dnf groupinstall 'Development Tools' -y
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sudo dnf install nano
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dnf install go -y
7

8
# this will install podman, we are using podman instead of docker
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dnf install podman -y
10

11
#this will install kubernetes
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curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/arm64/kubectl"
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curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/arm64/kubectl.sha256"
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echo "$(cat kubectl.sha256)  kubectl" | sha256sum --check
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sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl
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kubectl version --client
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dnf install bash-completion -y
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source /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
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echo 'source <(kubectl completion bash)' >>~/.bashrc
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source ~/.bashrc
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22
#this will install kind, this is better alternative to minikube
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[ $(uname -m) = aarch64 ] && curl -Lo ./kind https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/dl/v0.22.0/kind-linux-arm64
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chmod +x ./kind
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sudo mv ./kind /usr/local/bin/kind
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kind # to check the installation
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#install related applications
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curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3
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chmod 700 get_helm.sh
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./get_helm.sh
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helm repo add kubernetes-dashboard https://kubernetes.github.io/dashboard/
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#install kompose to convert docker-compose.yml to k8s manifest yml files
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curl -L https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose/releases/download/v1.26.0/kompose-linux-arm64 -o kompose
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chmod +x kompose
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sudo mv ./kompose /usr/local/bin/kompose

Step 4:

Create cluster through kind

1
kind create cluster # default cluster is name is kind
2
kubectl cluster-info # check k8s cluster info
3
#or
4
kubectl cluster-info --context kind-kind
5
podman ps # check podman status

Now you can use this cluster as any other normal testing k8s cluster. 😀😀