Quickstart for Calico on K3s

Big picture

This quickstart gets you a single-node K3s cluster with Calico in approximately 5 minutes. You can use this cluster for testing and development.

Value

Use this quickstart to quickly and easily try Calico features. To deploy a cluster suitable for production, refer to Multi-node install.

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)

Quickstart for Calico on K3s - 图1note

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

How to

Create a single-node K3s cluster

  • Initialize the control plane using the following command:
  1. curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE="644" INSTALL_K3S_EXEC="--flannel-backend=none --cluster-cidr=192.168.0.0/16 --disable-network-policy --disable=traefik" sh -

Quickstart for Calico on K3s - 图2note

  • 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.

  • K3s installer generates kubeconfig file in etc directory with limited permissions, using K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE environment you are assigning necessary permissions to the file and make it accessible for other users.

Install Calico

  • Operator
  • Manifest
  1. Install the Calico operator and custom resource definitions.
  1. kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.28.2/manifests/tigera-operator.yaml

Quickstart for Calico on K3s - 图3note

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

  1. Install Calico by creating the necessary custom resource. For more information on configuration options available in this manifest, see the installation reference.
  1. kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.28.2/manifests/custom-resources.yaml

Quickstart for Calico on K3s - 图4note

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.

Install Calico by using the following command.

  1. kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.28.2/manifests/calico.yaml

Quickstart for Calico on K3s - 图5note

You can also view the YAML in a new tab.

You should see the following output.

  1.  configmap/calico-config created
  2.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/bgpconfigurations.crd.projectcalico.org created
  3.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/bgppeers.crd.projectcalico.org created
  4.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/blockaffinities.crd.projectcalico.org created
  5.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/clusterinformations.crd.projectcalico.org created
  6.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/felixconfigurations.crd.projectcalico.org created
  7.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/globalnetworkpolicies.crd.projectcalico.org created
  8.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/globalnetworksets.crd.projectcalico.org created
  9.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/hostendpoints.crd.projectcalico.org created
  10.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/ipamblocks.crd.projectcalico.org created
  11.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/ipamconfigs.crd.projectcalico.org created
  12.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/ipamhandles.crd.projectcalico.org created
  13.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/ippools.crd.projectcalico.org created
  14.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/kubecontrollersconfigurations.crd.projectcalico.org created
  15.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/networkpolicies.crd.projectcalico.org created
  16.  customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/networksets.crd.projectcalico.org created
  17.  clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/calico-kube-controllers created
  18.  clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/calico-kube-controllers created
  19.  clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/calico-node created
  20.  clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/calico-node created
  21.  daemonset.apps/calico-node created
  22.  serviceaccount/calico-node created
  23.  deployment.apps/calico-kube-controllers created
  24.  serviceaccount/calico-kube-controllers created

Final checks

  1. Confirm that all of the pods are running using the following command.
  1. watch kubectl get pods --all-namespaces
  1. Wait until each pod shows the STATUS of Running.
  • Operator
  • Manifest
  1. NAMESPACE         NAME                                      READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  2. tigera-operator   tigera-operator-c9cf5b94d-gj9qp           1/1     Running   0          107s
  3. calico-system     calico-typha-7dcd87597-npqsf              1/1     Running   0          88s
  4. calico-system     calico-node-rdwwz                         1/1     Running   0          88s
  5. kube-system       local-path-provisioner-6d59f47c7-4q8l2    1/1     Running   0          2m14s
  6. kube-system       metrics-server-7566d596c8-xf66d           1/1     Running   0          2m14s
  7. kube-system       coredns-8655855d6-wfdbm                   1/1     Running   0          2m14s
  8. calico-system     calico-kube-controllers-89df8c6f8-7hxc5   1/1     Running   0          87s
  1. NAMESPACE     NAME                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  2. kube-system   calico-node-9hn9z                          1/1     Running   0          23m
  3. kube-system   local-path-provisioner-6d59f47c7-drznc     1/1     Running   0          38m
  4. kube-system   calico-kube-controllers-789f6df884-928lt   1/1     Running   0          23m
  5. kube-system   metrics-server-7566d596c8-qxlfz            1/1     Running   0          38m
  6. kube-system   coredns-8655855d6-blzl5                    1/1     Running   0          38m

  1. Press CTRL+C to exit watch.

  2. Confirm that you now have a node in your cluster with the following command.

  1. kubectl get nodes -o wide

It should return something like the following.

  1. NAME         STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION        INTERNAL-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   OS-IMAGE             KERNEL-VERSION       CONTAINER-RUNTIME
  2. 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

Congratulations! You now have a single-node K3s cluster equipped with Calico.

Next steps