Kubernetes Tutorial | Setup Kubernetes in Windows & Run Spring boot application on k8s cluster

6 min readDec 10, 2021

Prerequisite

Windows 8 or 10 OS
Min 8 GB RAM
Docker Desktop

Minikube setup steps in windows OS :

Minikube runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster on your machine so that you can try out Kubernetes for your daily development work.

Step 1 :

install kubectl: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl-windows/

kubectl is a command line tool, using kubectl we can connect to k8s cluster from our computer .

Step 2 :

install minikube : https://v1-18.docs.kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-minikube/

after download minikube-windows-amd64 exe file rename it to minikube.exe

Step 3:

Once you download both exe file , just move these two file to separate directory/folder like below

Step 4:

Next set this folder path as environment variable in your windows

Step 5 :

After set environment variable , open command prompt and run command

minikube version

it should display current installed minikube version

We are good with minikube setup in windows . now you can play with k8s

Step 6 :

To create a Kubernetes cluster first we need start minikube server in our system . There is multiple driver using any of them you can start your minikube

minikube start --driver=<driver name>

Hyper-v

Note: Hyper-V can run on three versions of Windows 10: Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Professional, and Windows 10 Education.

2. VirtualBox

If you have enough memory in your system like 16 GB RAM and good processor then VirtualBox is right choice for you .

Download VirtualBox : https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

3. Docker

In this example i will use Docker as already it installed in my machine .

run below command to start minikube with docker driver

minikube start --driver=docker

You will get below results , if your minikube starts without any error

Step 7 :

After successfully started minikube , you can verify minikube status

minikube status

Step 8:

As we know minikube will provide you single node cluster to work with k8s locally so to verify cluster info and node status we can run below commands

kubectl cluster-info

kubectl get node

Now we have Kubernetes cluster ready with us to start our local development work

Deploy Spring boot application to Kubernetes cluster

Step 1:

To allow Kubernetes to read your docker repository you need to run below command , so that both will be in sync

minikube docker-env

List down all docker images

docker images

Step 2 :

Create a spring boot project then add Dockerfile and next build a docker image

GitHub source code link : https://github.com/Java-Techie-jt/springboot-k8s-example

Build docker image

view docker image in k8s

Step 3 :

Create Deployment Object , as we know Deployments are Kubernetes objects that are used for managing pods. we can describe deployment object details using YML file but for this example let’s play with command .

kubectl create deployment spring-boot-k8s --image=springboot-k8s-app:1.0 --port=8080

With above command we are telling to k8s , create a deployment with name spring-boot-k8s and read the docker image springboot-k8s-app:1.0 then next create a pod and run my image inside containers

Verify deployment status

kubectl get deployments

Describe deployment object

kubectl describe deployment spring-boot-k8s

Now to ensure that Kubernetes successfully pull my docker image and run it inside a pods we can execute below command

verify pod created

kubectl get pods

Validate docker image running inside pod

kubectl logs spring-boot-k8s-58dc4b544f-rpxjq

We are good now , our application is running inside k8s pods . now to expose this application to outside world we need to create service object .To create a Service object we need to exposes the deployment with specific service type

Step 4 :

Use below command to create service obsject

kubectl expose deployment spring-boot-k8s --type=NodePort

Once service created you can verify that

kubectl get service or kubectl get svc

As we know all traffic will come to service and then service will redirect your request to corresponding pods based on available . since we have only one pod we can directly get the service url to access it .

Step 5 :

Start tunnel or get the proxy url of service to access it .

minikube service spring-boot-k8s --url

Step 6 :

Access the url

Step 7 :
You can visualize health of your pods, service and deployment using Kubernetes dashboard

minikube dashboard

This will enable the dashboard add-on, and open the proxy in the default web browser.

You can access the above url to watch your k8s dashboard

Deployment completed ……….

Clean up local state

Step 8 :

Delete Service

kubectl delete service spring-boot-k8s

Step 9 :

Delete Deployment

kubectl delete deployment spring-boot-k8s

Step 10 :

Stop minikube

minikube stop

Stops a local Kubernetes cluster. This command stops the underlying VM or container, but keeps user data intact. The cluster can be started again with the “start” command.