In order to perform all practical tasks together with me, you have to install some programs on your
computer.
And now let me talk about required software.
And first, we have to create an actual Kubernetes cluster where we will create different deployments.
Of course, you could create cluster using services from one of the cloud providers like Amazon Web
Services or Google Cloud.
But you have to pay for such service.
If you want free solution, you could create cluster locally on your computer.
And for that there was such tool as mini cube and such tool will essentially create just single node
cluster and this node will be both worker node and master node.
But for test deployments and as a playground, it works pretty nice and all of that is free and will
be running on your local computer.
In order to run mini cubes successfully, you have to utilize virtual machine or container manager and
there are following virtual machine or container managers which are supported VirtualBox, VMware,
Docker, Hyper-V or Parallels.
There are also other options available, but you have to utilize one of such options in order to actually
create the virtual node, which will run all ports in your Kubernetes cluster.
I suggest you to go ahead with Hyper-V.
If your Windows user and if you are a macOS user, you could go ahead with VirtualBox.
It is free and open source, or you could utilize VMware or Parallels.
By the way, there is also an option to run mini cube as a container inside of the Docker.
Of course, if you have Docker already installed on your computer, you could utilize it in order to
create Kubernetes cluster using mini cube and essentially it will create a separate Docker container.
And inside of that container all ports will be created.
But I personally don't recommend to you to go ahead with Docker option because there are some limitations.
For example, I was not able to change a container runtime inside of the Docker container to cry or
container db and therefore I recommend to you to go ahead with other options, which I mentioned here,
by the way.
Hyper-V is available on Windows computers out of the box and you could utilize it as virtual machine
manager for running mini cube node.
To summarize, using mini cube, you will create a single node, Kubernetes cluster.
But as I mentioned before, you have to use specific tool in order to manage this cluster.
And this tool is called cube steel, by the way.
Cube steel is included in mini cube.
But if you want to use such included version, you have to enter mini cube cube style commands.
It is not convenient.
Therefore, I recommend to you to install cube steel separately and using separate installation.
You will be able, of course, to manage other Kubernetes clusters, which are located, for example,
at Amazon Web Services.
So jobs deal is also one of the programs which you have to install on your computer.
Certainly, I'll explain to you how to install mini cube and cube steel.
Other than that, we will also do some coding in this practical course.
And for that you have to use one of the code editors and I recommend to you to install Visual Studio
code.
It is open source and free for use and if you have not yet installed it, please go ahead and install
it.
Also, it has many different extensions and one of them is Kubernetes extension.
And using such extension you could very fast create, for instance, YAML configuration files for your
deployments and services in Kubernetes.
That's all what you need for this course.
Mini Cube, Cube Steel and Visual Studio code.
Now let's get started with practical part, and I hope you'll enjoy this course.
And we will start with the installation of the mini cube and cube steel.