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Deploying a KinD Cluster with External Access

··308 words·2 mins
Articles Kind Kubernetes
Sergio Giménez Antón
Author
Sergio Giménez Antón
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Recently, I needed to deploy a KinD (Kubernetes in Docker) cluster that would be accessible remotely. I had done this before, but never documented the process—so here’s a simple, step-by-step guide for future reference.

I’m running clabernetes , but that’s completely irrelevant for this guide.

1. Create a KinD Cluster Config
#

First install docker, follow the official docs

Next, install kind following the official docs

For linux, it’s just

[ $(uname -m) = x86_64 ] && curl -Lo ./kind https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/dl/v0.29.0/kind-linux-amd64
chmod +x ./kind
sudo mv ./kind /usr/local/bin/kind

Then, create a configuration file for your KinD cluster. This file will define the cluster’s networking settings and node roles.

Save the following content as kind-config.yaml:

kind: Cluster
apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
networking:
  apiServerAddress: "0.0.0.0"
nodes:
  - role: control-plane
    kubeadmConfigPatches:
      - |
        kind: ClusterConfiguration
        apiServer:
          certSANs:
          - "172.27.13.254" # <-- REPLACE with your host IP
          - "localhost"
          - "127.0.0.1"        
    extraPortMappings:
      - containerPort: 6443
        hostPort: 6443
        listenAddress: "0.0.0.0"
        protocol: TCP
  - role: worker
  - role: worker
containerdConfigPatches:
  - |-
    [plugins."io.containerd.grpc.v1.cri".containerd]
      discard_unpacked_layers = false

2. Create the Cluster
#

Run:

kind create cluster --name c9s --config kind-config.yaml

Once the cluster is up, run docker ps on your host. You should see the c9s-control-plane container, and its PORTS section should include 0.0.0.0:6443->6443/tcp. You might also see a 127.0.0.1:RANDOM_PORT->6443/tcp—this is KinD’s default internal mapping, which you can ignore.

3. Export the Kubeconfig
#

kind get kubeconfig --name c9s > c9s-external-kubeconfig.yaml

Now, edit c9s-external-kubeconfig.yaml. Find the server: line (it will likely point to https://0.0.0.0:6443). Change it to use your host IP and port 6443.

4. Test Your Setup
#

To quickly test:

cp c9s-external-kubeconfig.yaml ~/.kube/config
kubectl get nodes

You should see output similar to:

NAME                STATUS   ROLES           AGE     VERSION
c9s-control-plane   Ready    control-plane   6m3s    v1.33.1
c9s-worker          Ready    <none>          5m48s   v1.33.1
c9s-worker2         Ready    <none>          5m48s   v1.33.1

That’s it! You now have a KinD cluster accessible from outside your host.