Preparation

This page introduces some preparations before installation. For example, it is required to install the kubeadm toolbox to get started. For information on how to create a cluster with kubeadm, see the Step-By-Step Install page.

Before you start

You should prepare or perform the following actions:

• A compatible Linux host. The Kubernetes project provides generic instructions for Linux distributions based on Debian and Red Hat, and those distributions without a package manager.
• 2 GB or more of RAM per host (any less will leave little room for your apps.)
• 2 CPUs or more per host.
• Good network connectivity between all nodes in the cluster (either public or on-premise network.)
• The hostname, MAC address, and product_uuid shall be unique for every node. See here for more details.
• Open the required ports on the host. See Check required ports for more details.
• Disable the swap partition. You MUST disable the swap partition to keep the kubelet working properly.

Verify the MAC address and product_uuid

Verify the MAC address and product_uuid are unique for every node. Perform the following actions:

• Get the MAC address of the network interfaces using the command ip link or ifconfig -a
• Check the product_uuid using the command sudo cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_uuid

It is very likely that hardware devices have unique addresses although some virtual machines may use identical addresses. Kubernetes uses these addresses to uniquely identify the nodes in the cluster. If these addresses are not unique to each node, the installation process may fail due to some issues.

Check network adapters

If you have more than one network adapter and your Kubernetes components are not reachable via the default route, it is recommended to add IP route(s) so the Kubernetes cluster can set up proper connections via the appropriate adapter.

Enable iptables discover the bridged traffic

Make sure that the br_netfilter module is loaded. This can be done by running lsmod | grep br_netfilter. To load it explicitly, you can run the command sudo modprobe br_netfilter.

To enable the iptables on your Linux node to correctly discover the bridged traffic, you should ensure net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables is set to 1 in your sysctl config file, for example:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/k8s.conf
br_netfilter
EOF

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/k8s.conf
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 1
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables = 1
EOF
sudo sysctl --system

For more details see the Network Plugin Requirements page.

Check required ports

This section lists all ports that you may use on your nodes.

Control-plane node(s)

Worker node(s)

Above is the default port range for NodePort Services.

Any port numbers marked with * are overridable, so you will need to ensure any custom ports you provide are also open.

Although etcd ports are included in control-plane nodes, you can also host your own etcd cluster externally or on custom ports.

The pod network plugin you use (see below) may also require certain ports to be open. Since this differs with each pod network plugin, see the documentation for the plugins about what port(s) they need.

Set a host name

Set a hostname for your host by using the following command:

hostnamectl set-hostname your-new-host-name
echo "127.0.0.1 $(hostname)" >> /etc/hosts
echo "::1       $(hostname)" >> /etc/hosts

Disable Swap

Run the following command to disable the partition swap:

swapoff -a

If you want to disable swap permanently, edit the /etc/fstab file to comment out the swap mount.

Disable Selinux

Run the following command to disable the selinux:

setenforce 0

If you want to disable selinux permanently, edit /etc/sysconfig/selinux and replace SELINUX=enforcing with SELINUX=disabled.

Install Runtime

To run containers in Pods, Kubernetes uses a Container Runtime Interface (CRI).

• Linux Node
• Other OS

• Docker
• Containerd

yum install docker

apt-get install docker.io

VERSION=1.5.4
wget -c https://github.com/containerd/containerd/releases/download/v${VERSION}/containerd-${VERSION}-linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar xvf containerd-${VERSION}-linux-amd64.tar.gz -C /usr/local/
mkdir /etc/containerd/ && containerd config default > /etc/containerd/config.toml
wget -c -O /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service https://raw.githubusercontent.com/containerd/containerd/main/containerd.service
systemctl start containerd && systemctl enable containerd

See container runtimes for more information.