How to install Canonical Kubernetes with Multipass (Ubuntu/macOS/Windows)

Multipass provides an easy way to run Ubuntu in a virtual machine, regardless of your underlying operating system. It is the recommended way to run Canonical Kubernetes on Windows and macOS systems, and is equally useful for running multiple instances of the k8s snap on Ubuntu too.

Install Multipass

Choose your OS for the install procedure

Multipass is shipped as a snap for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions which support the snap package system.

sudo snap install multipass

Create an instance

The k8s snap will require a certain amount of resources, so the default settings for a Multipass VM aren’t going to be suitable. Exactly what resources will be required depends on your use case. We recommend at least 4G of memory and 20G of disk space for each instance.

Open a terminal (or Shell on Windows) and enter the following command:

multipass launch 24.04 --name k8s-node --memory 4G --disk 20G --cpus 2

This command specifies:

  • 24.04: The Ubuntu image used as the base for the instance

  • --name: The name by which you will refer to the instance

  • --memory: The memory to allocate

  • --disk: The disk space to allocate

  • --cpus: The number of CPU cores to reserve for this instance

For more details of creating instances with Multipass, please see the Multipass documentation about instance creation.

Access the created instance

To access the image you just created, run:

multipass shell k8s-node

This will immediately open a shell on the instance, so further commands you enter will be executed on the Ubuntu instance you created.

You can now use this terminal to install the k8s snap, following the standard install instructions, or following along with the Getting started tutorial if you are new to Canonical Kubernetes.

To end the shell session on the instance, enter:

exit

…and you will be returned to the original terminal session.

Stop/remove the instance

The instance you created will keep running in the background until it is either stopped or the host computer is shut down. You can stop the running instance at any time by running:

multipass stop k8s-node

And it can be permanently removed with:

multipass delete k8s-node --purge