How to install Canonical Kubernetes from a snap¶

Canonical Kubernetes is packaged as a snap, available from the snap store for all supported platforms.

Prerequisites¶

This guide assumes the following:

You are installing on Ubuntu 22.04 or later, or another OS which supports snap packages (see snapd support)
You have root or sudo access to the machine
You have an internet connection
The target machine has sufficient memory and disk space. To accommodate workloads, we recommend a system with at least 20G of disk space and 4G of memory.

Note

If you cannot meet these requirements, please see the Installing page for alternative options.

Note

The snap may conflict with other software such as Docker or containerd, which is why we recommend using a clean, isolated environment such as a VM or LXD container when trying out Canonical Kubernetes.

See the development env guide if you’d rather install the snap directly on your development machine.

Check available channels (optional)¶

It is a good idea to check the available channels before installing the snap. Run the command:

snap info k8s

…which will output a list of currently available channels. See the channels page for an explanation of the different types of channel.

Install the snap¶

The snap can be installed with the snap command:

sudo snap install k8s --classic --channel=1.32-classic/stable

Bootstrap the cluster¶

Installing the snap sets up all the parts required to run Kubernetes. The next step is to bootstrap the cluster to activate the services:

sudo k8s bootstrap

This command will output a message confirming local cluster services have been started.

Note

Additional configuration is possible by passing a YAML file. The various options are described in the bootstrap reference documentation.

Confirm the cluster is ready¶

It is recommended to ensure that the cluster initialises properly and is running with no issues. Run the command:

sudo k8s status --wait-ready

This command will wait until the cluster indicates it is ready and then display the current status. The command will time-out if the cluster does not reach a ready state.