So I’ve decided to revisit my Kubernetes development cluster setup. The Mark 2 setup uses Docker Compose to launch the Kubernetes cluster in Docker.

To try it out, clone the GitHub repository:

git clone https://github.com/vyshane/docker-compose-kubernetes.git

The project also comes with:

• The Kubernetes DNS addon
• Kube UI

Starting Kubernetes on Linux

On Linux we’ll run Kubernetes using a local Docker Engine. You will also need Docker Compose as well as the kubectl tool. To launch the cluster:

./kube-up.sh

Starting Kubernetes on OS X

On OS X we’ll launch Kubernetes inside a boot2docker VM via Docker Machine. You will need to have Docker Machine (v0.5.0 or newer), Docker Compose, and the kubectl tool installed locally. First start your boot2docker VM:

docker-machine start <name>
eval "$(docker-machine env $(docker-machine active))"

Then, launch the Kubernetes cluster in boot2docker via Docker Machine:

./kube-up.sh

The script will set up port forwarding so that you can use kubectl locally without having to ssh into boot2docker.

Checking if Kubernetes Is Running

kubectl cluster-info
Kubernetes master is running at http://localhost:8080
KubeUI is running at http://localhost:8080/api/v1/proxy/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-ui

Accessing Kube UI

You can access Kube UI at http://localhost:8080/ui.

To destroy the cluster

./kube-down.sh

This will also remove any services, replication controllers and pods that are running in the cluster.