Your submission was sent successfully! Close

You have successfully unsubscribed! Close

Thank you for signing up for our newsletter!
In these regular emails you will find the latest updates about Ubuntu and upcoming events where you can meet our team.Close

Kubernetes on Windows: how to set up

wgs1

on 19 June 2019

This article was last updated 3 years ago.


UPDATED in July 2020 with the latest instruction set.

Are you looking for a Kubernetes solution to run on your Windows machine? MicroK8s is a lightweight, CNCF-certified distribution of Kubernetes for Linux, Windows and macOS. The single-package installer includes all Kubernetes services, along with a collection of carefully selected add-ons.

MicroK8s has a low resource footprint and can be used as a single-node Kubernetes or a multi-node cluster. This enables teams to test microservices on a small scale, develop and train machine learning models, build CI-CD pipelines or embed upgradeable Kubernetes in IoT and edge appliances.

While MicroK8s automates the typical functions of Kubernetes, such as scheduling, scaling and debugging, it also abstracts some of its complexity by pre-packaging add-ons such as DNS, the Kubernetes dashboard, and Istio. Additionally, MicroK8s follows the upstream Kubernetes release cadence, making new versions available within days of the official release.

Kubernetes on Windows setup steps 

What follows here are the steps necessary to install and interact with MicroK8s on Windows, and subsequently access the Kubernetes dashboard.

Step 1: Download the installer for Windows

Download the .exe from GitHub

Step 2: Run the installer

Step 3: Open a command prompt

Press <Window Key> + R, then type ‘cmd’ and press Enter.

Step 4: Check MicroK8s status

microk8s status --wait-ready

Step 5: Enable the dashboard add-on

microk8s enable dashboard

Step 6: Access the Kubernetes dashboard

microk8s dashboard-proxy

Kubernetes on Windows summary

MicroK8s is easy to install and provides a nice way to do Kubernetes on Windows workstations. For larger-scale use cases, MicroK8s nodes can be clustered together. To read more about clustering and other advanced MicroK8s configuration, keep reading and exploring with the official MicroK8s documentation.

Useful reading

kubernetes logo

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes, or K8s for short, is an open source platform pioneered by Google, which started as a simple container orchestration tool but has grown into a platform for deploying, monitoring and managing apps and services across clouds.

Learn more about Kubernetes ›

Newsletter signup

Get the latest Ubuntu news and updates in your inbox.

By submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to Canonical's Privacy Policy.

Related posts

How should a great K8s distro feel? Try the new Canonical Kubernetes, now in beta

Try the new Canonical Kubernetes beta, our new distribution that combines ZeroOps for small clusters and intelligent automation for larger production...

Canonical Kubernetes 1.29 is now generally available

A new upstream Kubernetes release, 1.29, is generally available, with significant new features and bugfixes. Canonical closely follows upstream development,...

How to use Ubuntu in GKE on nodes and in containers

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) traces its roots back to Google’s development of Borg in 2004, a Google internal system managing clusters and applications. In...