This guide is not for people looking for a fully automated command to bring up a Kubernetes cluster.
If that's you then check out [Google Kubernetes Engine](https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine), or the [Getting Started Guides](http://kubernetes.io/docs/getting-started-guides/).
Kubernetes The Hard Way is optimized for learning, which means taking the long route to ensure you understand each task required to bootstrap a Kubernetes cluster. Note that the cluster when built will not be accessible from your laptop browser - that isn't what this is about. If you want a more useable cluster, try [one of these](https://github.com/kodekloudhub/certified-kubernetes-administrator-course/tree/master/kubeadm-clusters).
While the original one uses GCP as the platform to deploy kubernetes, we use a hypervisor to deploy a cluster on a local machine. If you prefer the cloud version, refer to the original one [here](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way)
The results of this tutorial should *not* be viewed as production ready, and may receive limited support from the community, but don't let that stop you from learning!<br/>Note that we are only building 2 controlplane nodes here instead of the recommended 3 that `etcd` requires to maintain quorum. This is to save on resources, and simply to show how to load balance across more than one controlplane node.
Please note that with this particular challenge, it is all about the minute detail. If you miss _one tiny step_ anywhere along the way, it's going to break!
Note also that in developing this lab, it has been tested *many many* times! Once you have the VMs up and you start to build the cluster, if at any point something isn't working it is 99.9999% likely to be because you missed something, not a bug in the lab!
Always run the `cert_verify.sh` script at the places it suggests, and always ensure you are on the correct node when you do stuff. If `cert_verify.sh` shows anything in red, then you have made an error in a previous step. For the controlplane node checks, run the check on `controlplane01` and on `controlplane02`
The target audience for this tutorial is someone planning to support a production Kubernetes cluster and wants to understand how everything fits together.
Kubernetes The Hard Way guides you through bootstrapping a highly available Kubernetes cluster with end-to-end encryption between components and RBAC authentication.
* Two control plane nodes (`controlplane01` and `controlplane02`) running the control plane components as operating system services. This is not a kubeadm cluster as you are used to if you have been doing the CKA course. The control planes are *not* themselves nodes, therefore will not show with `kubectl get nodes`.
* Two worker nodes (`node01` and `node02`)
* One loadbalancer VM running [HAProxy](https://www.haproxy.org/) to balance requests between the two API servers and provide the endpoint for your KUBECONFIG.
## Getting Started
* If you are using Windows or Intel Mac, start [here](./VirtualBox/docs/01-prerequisites.md) to deploy VirtualBox and Vagrant.
* If you are using Apple Silicon Mac (M1/M2/M3), start [here](./apple-silicon/docs/01-prerequisites.md) to deploy Multipass.
