Getting Started Using K3s

This guide walks you through installation of Cilium on K3s, a highly available, certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances.

Cilium is presently supported on amd64 and arm64 architectures.

Install a Master Node

The first step is to install a K3s master node making sure to disable support for the default CNI plugin:

  1. curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | INSTALL_K3S_EXEC='--flannel-backend=none' sh -

Install Agent Nodes (Optional)

K3s can run in standalone mode or as a cluster making it a great choice for local testing with multi-node data paths. Agent nodes are joined to the master node using a node-token which can be found on the master node at /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token.

Install K3s on agent nodes and join them to the master node making sure to replace the variables with values from your environment:

  1. curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_URL='https://${MASTER_IP}:6443' K3S_TOKEN=${NODE_TOKEN} sh -

Should you encounter any issues during the installation, please refer to the Troubleshooting section and / or seek help on the Slack channel.

Please consult the Kubernetes Requirements for information on how you need to configure your Kubernetes cluster to operate with Cilium.

Mount the eBPF Filesystem

On each node, run the following to mount the eBPF Filesystem:

  1. sudo mount bpffs -t bpf /sys/fs/bpf

Install Cilium

Install the latest version of the Cilium CLI. The Cilium CLI can be used to install Cilium, inspect the state of a Cilium installation, and enable/disable various features (e.g. clustermesh, Hubble).

Linux

macOS

Other

  1. curl -L --remote-name-all https://github.com/cilium/cilium-cli/releases/latest/download/cilium-linux-amd64.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}
  2. sha256sum --check cilium-linux-amd64.tar.gz.sha256sum
  3. sudo tar xzvfC cilium-linux-amd64.tar.gz /usr/local/bin
  4. rm cilium-linux-amd64.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}
  1. curl -L --remote-name-all https://github.com/cilium/cilium-cli/releases/latest/download/cilium-darwin-amd64.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}
  2. shasum -a 256 -c cilium-darwin-amd64.tar.gz.sha256sum
  3. sudo tar xzvfC cilium-darwin-amd64.tar.gz /usr/local/bin
  4. rm cilium-darwin-amd64.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}

See the full page of releases.

Install Cilium by running:

  1. cilium install

Validate the Installation

To validate that Cilium has been properly installed, you can run

  1. $ cilium status --wait
  2.    /¯¯\
  3. /¯¯\__/¯¯\    Cilium:         OK
  4. \__/¯¯\__/    Operator:       OK
  5. /¯¯\__/¯¯\    Hubble:         disabled
  6. \__/¯¯\__/    ClusterMesh:    disabled
  7.    \__/
  9. DaemonSet         cilium             Desired: 2, Ready: 2/2, Available: 2/2
  10. Deployment        cilium-operator    Desired: 2, Ready: 2/2, Available: 2/2
  11. Containers:       cilium-operator    Running: 2
  12.                   cilium             Running: 2
  13. Image versions    cilium             quay.io/cilium/cilium:v1.9.5: 2
  14.                   cilium-operator    quay.io/cilium/operator-generic:v1.9.5: 2

Run the following command to validate that your cluster has proper network connectivity:

  1. $ cilium connectivity test
  2. ℹ️  Monitor aggregation detected, will skip some flow validation steps
  3. ✨ [k8s-cluster] Creating namespace for connectivity check...
  4. (...)
  5. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  6. 📋 Test Report
  7. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  8. ✅ 69/69 tests successful (0 warnings)

Congratulations! You have a fully functional Kubernetes cluster with Cilium. 🎉

Next Steps