[Nov 2025] Local Kubernetes Using Kind and cloud-provider-kind
My GitHub Repo for this Article¶
Table of Contents¶
· My GitHub Repo for this Article
· Table of Contents
· Background
· Prerequisites
∘ Docker
∘ Kind
· Creating a Cluster with a Config File
∘ Config
∘ Check to see the Nodes are Running
· Updating the Cluster
· Setting up and Running cloud-provider-kind
∘ Install
∘ Run
· Deploying ingress-nginx as our Load Balancer
∘ Creating a values file
∘ Deploying the Chart
∘ Confirm Installation
· Configure /etc/hosts
· Deploy a Sample App
· Cleaning Up
· TLDR
Background¶
kind is a tool for running local Kubernetes clusters using Docker container “nodes”. kind was primarily designed for testing Kubernetes itself, but may be used for local development or CI.
Kind is part of the Kubernetes Special Interest Groups (SIGS)
Special Interest Groups in Kubernetes provide places for the community to focus development and discussion on a particular part of the project.
You can find the Kind source code here:
and the documentation here:
Prerequisites¶
For this article, I will be using homebrew (brew) on macOS, but you can use your package manager of your choice.
Docker¶
Have docker installed and have a docker engine running.
For this article, I will be using Rancher Desktop.
You can install with Rancher Desktop with brew like this:
$ brew install --cask rancher
Make sure your docker engine is running.
You can check if it is with the following command:
$ docker info > /dev/null 2>&1
Kind¶
You can install with the following command:
$ brew install kind
$ which kind
/opt/homebrew/bin/kind
$ kind --version
kind version 0.30.0
Creating a Cluster with a Config File¶
You can create clusters without config files, but I always recommend getting in the habit of using them for repeatable behavior.
There are two kinds of node types, control-plane and worker.
A single control-plane node is always required.
Config¶
Make sure to check the newest version, you can find the images here.
I will create a file named kind-config.yaml and place the following contents in it:
---
kind: Cluster
apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
name: slke-1
nodes:
- role: control-plane
image: kindest/node:v1.34.0
- role: worker
image: kindest/node:v1.34.0
I will naming my cluster slke-1 (standardloop kubernetes engine 1).
Here we are creating two nodes, one for the control-plane and one worker.
$ kind create cluster --config=./kind-config.yaml
You can use a tool such as kubectx to ensure your context is set.
$ kubectx
kind-slke-1
Notice how the name is prefixed with kind-.
Check to see the Nodes are Running¶
Using docker ps:
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
4b59fab194e5 kindest/node:v1.34.0 "/usr/local/bin/entr…" 2 minutes ago Up 2 minutes 127.0.0.1:57499->6443/tcp slke-1-control-plane
bdf56ba1fc15 kindest/node:v1.34.0 "/usr/local/bin/entr…" 2 minutes ago Up 2 minutes slke-1-worker
Using kubectl get nodes:
$ kubectl get nodes
NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION
slke-1-control-plane Ready control-plane 15m v1.34.0
slke-1-worker Ready <none> 15m v1.34.0
If it is bothering you that ROLES is empty for the worker node, you can run:
$ kubectl label nodes slke-1-worker node-role.kubernetes.io/worker=""
node/slke-1-worker labeled
$ kubectl get nodes
NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION
slke-1-control-plane Ready control-plane 16m v1.34.0
slke-1-worker Ready worker 16m v1.34.0
Updating the Cluster¶
You cannot update a cluster after creation, so you will need to delete it and then recreate it if you are changing any config.
Setting up and Running cloud-provider-kind¶
cloud-provider-kind allows you to use a Kubernetes Service type LoadBalancer.
The reason it is called cloud-provider-kind is because when you use a Kubernetes Service type LoadBalancer in a cloud environment, such as Google Kubernetes Engine, the Cloud Provider will setup some infrastructure behind the scenes to allow routing.
Previously, you had to configure MetalLB (which was a more involved setup and had issues on macOS), or use Extra Port Mappings (which was a simple solution, but it felt more hacky and different from what would be used in a production environment).
Install¶
$ brew install cloud-provider-kind
$ which cloud-provider-kind
/opt/homebrew/bin/cloud-provider-kind
Run¶
I recommend opening a separate terminal session for running this command to easily view the logs.
According to the README of the repository, you will need to run with sudo.
$ sudo cloud-provider-kind
You can also view the docker container running that is part of cloud-provider-kind:
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
a411bd911a94 envoyproxy/envoy:v1.33.2 "/docker-entrypoint.…" 4 seconds ago Up 3 seconds 0.0.0.0:32774->80/tcp, [::]:32774->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32775->443/tcp, [::]:32775->443/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32776->10000/tcp, [::]:32776->10000/tcp kindccm-f53170ec34f3
...
Deploying ingress-nginx as our Load Balancer¶
Creating a values file¶
I will create a file called ingress-nginx.values.yaml with the following contents:
controller:
service:
type: "LoadBalancer"
You can pass values as command line arguments, but I prefer values files as it helps with upgrading the release if needed.
Deploying the Chart¶
Make sure to use the latest chart version, for me it was 4.13.3.
$ helm repo add ingress-nginx https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx
$ helm repo update
$ helm upgrade --install ingress-nginx ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx \
--create-namespace \
-n ingress-nginx \
--values ingress-nginx.values.yaml \
--version 4.13.3 \
--wait
Confirm Installation¶
We will check the namespace, the pods, and see if the LoadBalancer service was assigned an EXTERNAL-IP by cloud-provider-kind
$ kubectl get ns
NAME STATUS AGE
default Active 21m
ingress-nginx Active 2m12s
kube-node-lease Active 21m
kube-public Active 21m
kube-system Active 21m
local-path-storage Active 21m
$ kubectl get pods -n ingress-nginx
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
ingress-nginx-controller-6f6c964579-csllp 1/1 Running 0 2m27s
$ kubectl get svc -n ingress-nginx
kubectl get svc -n ingress-nginx
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
ingress-nginx-controller LoadBalancer 10.96.241.10 172.18.0.4 80:32725/TCP,443:30829/TCP 2m51s
ingress-nginx-controller-admission ClusterIP 10.96.249.13 <none> 443/TCP 2m51s
If your EXTERNAL-IP for the ingress-nginx-controller svc is showing
Here is an easy one-liner to print the IP Address:
$ kubectl get svc/ingress-nginx-controller -n ingress-nginx -o=jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}'
172.18.0.4
Note: this IP address is not public on the internet. There is no networking in place for anyone outside your network to access this.
Now we can use curl to hit the LoadBalancer via IP Address:
$ curl http://172.18.0.4
<html>
<head><title>404 Not Found</title></head>
<body>
<center><h1>404 Not Found</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx</center>
</body>
</html>
Awesome!
Configure /etc/hosts¶
Using the IP address we got from:
$ kubectl get svc/ingress-nginx-controller -n ingress-nginx -o=jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}'
We can update /etc/hosts to have a nice looking URL:
$ sudo vim /etc/hosts
...
172.18.0.4 kind.local
Now you can go to http://kind.local
Deploy a Sample App¶
I will be using the hashicorp http-echo server has my example app.
Make sure to use the most up to date image, you can view the images here.
I will create a file called app.yaml and add the following manifests in it:
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: app
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: http-echo-deployment
namespace: app
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
app: http-echo
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: http-echo
spec:
containers:
- name: http-echo
image: hashicorp/http-echo:1.0.0
args: ["-text", "Hello from Kubernetes!", "-listen", ":8080"]
ports:
- containerPort: 8080
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: http-echo-service
namespace: app
spec:
selector:
app: http-echo
ports:
- protocol: TCP
port: 80
targetPort: 8080
type: ClusterIP
---
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: http-echo-service-ingress
namespace: app
spec:
ingressClassName: nginx
rules:
- host: kind.local
http:
paths:
- path: /
pathType: ImplementationSpecific
backend:
service:
name: http-echo-service
port:
number: 80
Apply the contents:
$ kubectl apply -f app.yaml
namespace/app created
deployment.apps/http-echo-deployment created
service/http-echo-service created
ingress.networking.k8s.io/http-echo-service-ingress created
Go to http://kind.local and see the message!
The message from http://kind.local
Cleaning Up¶
Stop your cloud-provider-kind by Ctrl+C’ing the terminal or by manually finding and stopping process:
$ sudo pkill cloud-provider-kind
and then delete the cluster (deleting the cluster will also remove all the kubernetes resources we deployed):
$ kind delete cluster --name slke-1
Also don’t forgot to remove your /etc/hosts entry!
If you really want to uninstall the kubernetes resources you can do the following:
$ kubectl delete -f app.yaml
$ helm uninstall ingress-nginx -n ingress-nginx
TLDR¶
Use my provided Taskfile.yml and run it all yourself easily:
---
version: '3'
vars:
INGRESS_NGINX_NS: "ingress-nginx"
INGRESS_NGINX_VERSION: 4.13.3
CLUSTER_NAME: slke-1
DEPENDENCIES:
- docker
- kind
- helm
- cloud-provider-kind
- kubectl
check-docker-running: &check-docker-running |
docker info > /dev/null 2>&1
check-cluster-running: &check-cluster-running |
kind get clusters | grep {{.CLUSTER_NAME}}
check-cloud-provider-kind-running: &check-cloud-provider-kind-running |
pgrep sudo cloud-provider-kind
tasks:
default:
aliases: [all, make]
deps:
- check-dependencies
- create-cluster
- run-cloud-provider-kind
- deploy-ingress
- deploy-app
- update-etc-hosts
- open-app
check-dependencies:
silent: true
cmds:
- |
{{range .DEPENDENCIES}}
if ! command -v {{.}} > /dev/null; then
echo "{{.}} not found"
fi
{{end}}
if ! helm plugin list | grep -q diff > /dev/null; then
echo "helm diff plugin is missing"
fi
create-cluster:
run: once
preconditions:
- *check-docker-running
cmds:
- kind create cluster --config=./kind-config.yaml
status:
- *check-cluster-running
run-cloud-provider-kind:
run: once
deps:
- create-cluster
interactive: true
cmds:
- sudo -v
- bash -c 'nohup sudo cloud-provider-kind >/dev/null 2>&1 &'
status:
- *check-cloud-provider-kind-running
deploy-ingress:
run: once
deps:
- run-cloud-provider-kind
cmds:
- |
helm repo add ingress-nginx https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx
helm repo update
helm upgrade --install ingress-nginx ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx \
--create-namespace \
-n {{.INGRESS_NGINX_NS}} \
--values ingress-nginx.values.yaml \
--version {{.INGRESS_NGINX_VERSION}} \
--wait
status:
- |
helm diff upgrade ingress-nginx ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx \
-n {{.INGRESS_NGINX_NS}} \
--values ingress-nginx.values.yaml \
--version {{.INGRESS_NGINX_VERSION}} \
clean-ingress:
cmds:
- helm uninstall ingress-nginx -n {{.INGRESS_NGINX_NS}}
deploy-app:
run: once
deps:
- deploy-ingress
cmds:
- kubectl apply -f app.yaml
status:
- kubectl diff -f app.yaml
clean-app:
cmds:
- kubectl delete -f app.yaml
update-etc-hosts:
run: once
prompt: Do you want to update /etc/hosts ?
deps:
- deploy-app
cmds:
- echo {{.LOAD_BALANCER_IP}}
- sudo -v
- echo "{{.LOAD_BALANCER_IP}} kind.local" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts
status:
- cat /etc/hosts | grep {{.LOAD_BALANCER_IP}}
vars:
LOAD_BALANCER_IP:
sh: kubectl get svc/ingress-nginx-controller -n {{.INGRESS_NGINX_NS}} -o=jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}' # yamllint disable-line rule:line-length
open-app:
deps:
- deploy-app
cmds:
- open http://kind.local
clean-cloud-provider-kind:
interactive: true
cmds:
- *check-cloud-provider-kind-running
- sudo -v
- sudo pkill cloud-provider-kind
clean-cluster:
cmds:
- kind delete cluster --name {{.CLUSTER_NAME}}
clean:
aliases: [delete]
ignore_error: true
cmds:
- task: clean-app
- task: clean-ingress
- task: clean-cluster
- task: clean-cloud-provider-kind
- echo "make sure to reset your etc/hosts!"
$ task
Thanks for reading! I will be making more articles in the future so please following my account! If you have any tools or topics you want me to look into, please add a comment below.
If you are interested in using the Gateway API take a look at this article:## [Nov 2025] Using K8s Gateway API with Kind and cloud-provider-kind
Let’s utilize the Kubernetes Gateway API with Kind and cloud-provider-kind
medium.com
Hi, I'm Josh! I'm a Site Reliability Engineer. I love learning and contributing.
More from Josh¶
Recommended from Medium¶
[
See more recommendations
](https://medium.com/?source=post_page---read_next_recirc--dda75e19c926---------------------------------------)