Kubernetes Node Administration and Dependencies Deployment: From Zero to Hero With nodeadm

Over the past two years, deploying a conformant Kubernetes cluster has become even easier, thanks to the efforts of the Cluster Lifecycle Special Interest Group (SIG) and its kubeadm tool. But if you've used kubeadm on a freshly provisioned machine, you know there is a considerable set of tasks you have to complete prior to running kubeadm:

  1. Install your choice of container runtime
  2. Configure container runtime storage
  3. Install the Container Network Interface (CNI) binaries
  4. Install kubelet dependencies
  5. Configure control groups driver for kubelet
  6. Configure kernel parameters
  7. Call kubeadm (the hero)

To take you from zero to hero (see what I did there?), the team at Platform9 has built nodeadm, an unassuming but jovial sidekick to kubeadm. Like kubeadm, it's open-source and focused on making it easy to manage the Kubernetes lifecycle. You can use it in concert with tools like etcdadm and cctl as part of our Klusterkit, together with your own automation software, or interactively.