Install Minikube

2 min readNov 12, 2020

Minikube is local Kubernetes, focusing on making it easy to learn and develop for Kubernetes.

All you need is Docker (or similarly compatible) container or a Virtual Machine environment, and Kubernetes is a single command away: minikube start

What you’ll need

2 CPUs or more
2GB of free memory
20GB of free disk space
Internet connection
Container or virtual machine manager, such as: Docker, Hyperkit, Hyper-V, KVM, Parallels, Podman, VirtualBox, or VMWare
For Linux users, we provide 3 easy download options:

Binary download

Linux

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64
 sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube

Debian package

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube_latest_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i minikube_latest_amd64.deb

RPM package

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-latest.x86_64.rpm
sudo rpm -ivh minikube-latest.x86_64.rpm

Windows 10

If the Chocolatey Package Manager is installed, use it to install minikube:

choco install minikube

Otherwise, download and run the Windows installer

Start your cluster

From a terminal with administrator access (but not logged in as root), run:

minikube start

If minikube fails to start, see the drivers page for help setting up a compatible container or virtual-machine manager.

3 Interact with your cluster

If you already have kubectl installed, you can now use it to access your shiny new cluster:

kubectl get po -A

Alternatively, minikube can download the appropriate version of kubectl, if you don’t mind the double-dashes in the command-line:

minikube kubectl -- get po -A

Initially, some services such as the storage-provisioner, may not yet be in a Running state. This is a normal condition during cluster bring-up, and will resolve itself momentarily. For additional insight into your cluster state, minikube bundles the Kubernetes Dashboard, allowing you to get easily acclimated to your new environment: