Installing Minikube on Windows Server Hyper-V

In this article, we will show you how to install and run Minikube in Hyper-V on Windows Server 2019. Minikube is a simple environment for creating a single-node Kubernetes cluster. It is great for getting to know with Kubernetes environment, experimenting, and educating your employees.

Features of Minikube:

Cross-platform. Major operating systems are supported (Linux, macOS, and Windows);
You can deploy Minicube in a virtual machine, container, or bare-metal hardware;
Docker support;
Available drivers for all popular hypervisors (VMware, VirtualBox, Docker, KVM, Hyper-V);
The latest versions of Kubernetes are supported;
Available Docker API for fast image deployment;
It is possible to use add-ons;
Built-in support for Kubernetes Dashboard.

To run Minikube, your computer or VM must meet the following requirements:

At least 2 Gb of RAM
At least 2 CPUs supporting Intel VT or AMD-V, and SLAT
At least 20 GB of disk space
Internet connection
Docker container or virtual machine on any of the supported hypervisor (VirtualBox, VMWare or Hyper-V)

In our example, we will be using Hyper-V on Windows Server 2019 to run Minikube. Create a new external virtual switch connected to a NIC with internet access:

Get-NetAdapter
New-VMSwitch -name ExternalSwitch -NetAdapterName "Ethernet 2" -AllowManagementOS $true

If you do not create an external virtual switch, then the first time you start Minikube, it will give an error:

! StartHost failed, but will try again: creating host: create: precreate: no External vswitch nor Default Switch found. A valid vswitch must be available for this command to run.

To install Minikube, you need to use a package manager. For Windows 10, winget (Windows Package Manager) can be used. In our case, for Windows Server 2019, we will have to use the Chocolatey. Open a PowerShell console, download and run the installation of the Chocolatey package manager:

iwr https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1 -outfile C:\install.ps1
c:\install.ps1

After installing Chocolatey, you can install the minikube package:

choco install minikube

Install additional Hyper-V features:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V -All

Try starting the minikube cluster:

minikube start

In my case, it turned out that the current version of Minikube doesn’t work with Hyper-V. So I had to downgrade the minikube version with the command

choco install minikube --version 1.6.2 --allow-downgrade

Then delete the current cluster and re-create it:

minikube delete
minikube start

Make sure the minikube virtual machine is running:

Get-Vm

Check that the k8s environment is running:

kubectl get po –A

Start your web dashboard:

minikube dashboard

Open the specified link in a browser and check that you can connect to the Kubernetes dashboard.

To display information about the Kubernetes cluster:

kubectl cluster-info

List of running nodes in the cluster:

kubectl get nodes

To run the hello-minikube Docker image, run:

kubectl run hello-minikube --image=k8s.gcr.io/echoserver:1.4 --port=8080
kubectl expose deployment hello-minikube --type=NodePort --port=8080
kubectl get services hello-minikube

To stop the cluster, run:

minikube stop