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Local Deployment

1. Requirements

Before starting the deployment, ensure you have the following tools installed and configured:

Tool Description Install Link
Docker Desktop Containerization platform for local development. Install Docker
Minikube Run a local Kubernetes cluster. Install Minikube
Skaffold Automate the build and deployment cycle. Install Skaffold
kubectl Interact with the Kubernetes cluster. Install kubectl
Helm Manage and deploy Kubernetes packages. Install Helm
Docker Desktop Setup on Windows

If you're using Docker on Windows, follow these steps:

  1. Open Docker Desktop.
  2. Go to Settings > Resources > WSL Integration.
  3. Enable “Integration with my default WSL distro”.
  4. Check Ubuntu under "Enable integration with additional distros:"
  5. Click Apply and Restart to apply your changes.

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2. Local Deployment

The scripts install_deps.sh and startup.sh in /deploy_scripts are designed for deployment in a CI/CD pipeline on a linux environment like CloudLab. These can be referenced here.

Step 1: Start Minikube

Open a new WSL terminal in the project root, and start the Kubernetes cluster using Minikube with Docker as the driver:

minikube start --driver=docker

Step 2: Enable the NGINX Ingress Addon

Enable the ingress addon to manage external traffic:

minikube addons enable ingress

This command installs the NGINX ingress controller that will handle routing HTTP requests into the Kubernetes cluster.

Step 3: Patch the Ingress Controller

Patch the ingress controller’s service to change its type to LoadBalancer so that it can be accessed externally:

kubectl patch svc ingress-nginx-controller 
    -n ingress-nginx 
    -p '{"spec": {"type": "LoadBalancer"}}'

Note

By default, the NGINX Ingress controller is exposed as a ClusterIP service, which is only reachable from within the cluster. Patching it to LoadBalancer changes the service type to expose a network-accessible IP address.

Step 4: Start the Minikube Tunnel

Run the tunnel to expose LoadBalancer services on your host network:

minikube tunnel

Warning

Keep this terminal open because the tunnel is active only while the terminal is running. You should create a new terminal for the next steps or run minikube tunnel in a standalone terminal.

Step 5: Deploy with Skaffold (Development Profile)

For local development, use the dev profile to set the hostname to localhost:

skaffold run -p dev