How to Install, Configure, and Deploy NGINX on a Kubernetes Cluster

Updated , by Kiran Singh

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This guide has been deprecated and is no longer being maintained.

Please refer to the updated version of this guide.

Kubernetes on Linode

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an open-source container management system that is based on Google Borg. It can be configured to provide highly available, horizontally autoscaling, automated deployments. This guide shows you how to manually set up a Kubernetes cluster on a Linode and manage the lifecycle of an NGINX service.

You can now create a Kubernetes cluster with one command using the Linode CLI. To provision Kubernetes on Linodes, this tool uses the Linode Kubernetes Terraform module, the Linode Cloud Controller Manager (CCM), and the Container Storage Interface (CSI) Driver for Linode Block Storage. See the Kubernetes Tools page for installation steps. For an in-depth dive into the Linode Kubernetes Terraform module, see its related Community Site post.

Before You Begin

You will need:

  • Two or more Linodes with Private IPs
  • Each Linode should have a 64-bit distribution of either:
    • Ubuntu 16.04+
    • Debian 9
    • CentOS 7
    • RHEL 7
    • Fedora 26
  • At least 2GB RAM per Linode
  • Root or sudo privileges to install and configure Kubernetes. Any user can interact with the cluster once it’s configured.

Prepare the Host Linode for Kubernetes

The steps in this guide create a two-node cluster. Evaluate your own resource requirements and launch an appropriately-sized cluster for your needs.

  1. Create two Linodes with at least 2GB memory within the same data center.

  2. For each node, go into the Networking tab of the Linode Cloud Manager and add a private IP. It is possible to build a Kubernetes cluster using public IPs between data centers, but performance and security may suffer.

  3. Configure a firewall with UFW or iptables to ensure only the two nodes can communicate with each other.

    When configuring your firewall, a good place to start is to create rules for the ports Kubernetes requires to function. This includes any inbound traffic on Master nodes and their required ports. If you have changed any custom ports, you should ensure those ports are also open. Master Nodes will have a public IP address or See the chart below for more details.

    On Worker nodes, you should allow inbound kubelet traffic. For NodePort traffic you should allow a large range from the world or if you are using the Linode NodeBalancers service exclusively for ingress, See the chart below for more details.

    The table below provides a list of the required ports for Master nodes and Worker nodes. You should also include port 22.

    Master nodes

    ProtocolDirectionPort RangePurposeUsed By
    TCPInbound6443*Kubernetes API serverAll
    TCPInbound2379-2380etcd server client APIkube-apiserver, etcd
    TCPInbound10250kubelet APISelf, Control plane

    Worker nodes

    ProtocolDirectionPort RangePurposeUsed By
    TCPInbound10250kubelet APISelf, Control plane
    TCPInbound30000-32767NodePort Services**All
    By design, kube-proxy will always place its iptables chains first. It inserts 2 rules, KUBE-EXTERNAL-SERVICES and KUBE-FIREWALL at the top of the INPUT chain. See the Kubernetes discussion forum for more details.
  4. You should consider using the Linode NodeBalancer service with the Linode Cloud Controller Manager (CCM).

    • When using Linode NodeBalancers ensure you add iptables rules to allow the NodeBalancer traffic:
  5. To obtain persistent storage capabilities, you can use the Container Storage Interface (CSI) Driver for Linode Block Storage.

Disable Swap Memory

Linodes come with swap memory enabled by default. kubelets do not support swap memory and will not work if swap is active or even present in your /etc/fstab file.

The /etc/fstab should look something like this:

File: /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
# use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with uuid= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. see fstab(5).
# &lt;file system&gt; &lt;mount point&gt;   &lt;type&gt;  &lt;options&gt;       &lt;dump&gt;  &lt;pass&gt;
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
/dev/sda         /               ext4    noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/sdb         none            swap    sw 0    0
  1. Delete the line describing the swap partition. In this example, Line 10 with /dev/sdb.

  2. Disable swap memory usage:

    swapoff -a

Set Hostnames for Kubernetes Nodes

To make the commands in this guide easier to understand, set up your hostname and hosts files on each of your machines.

  1. Choose a node to designate as your Kubernetes master node and SSH into it.

  2. Edit /etc/hostname, and add:

    File: /etc/hostname
  3. Add the following lines to /etc/hosts:

    File: /etc/hosts
    <kube-master-private-ip>    kube-master
    <kube-worker-private-ip>    kube-worker-1

    If you have more than two nodes, add their private IPs to /etc/hosts as well.

    To make it easier to understand output and debug issues later, consider naming each hostname according to its role (kube-worker-1, kube-worker-2, etc.).

  4. Perform Steps 2 and 3 on each worker node, changing the values accordingly.

  5. For the changes to take effect, restart your Linodes.

Confirm Hostnames

Once your nodes have rebooted, log into each to confirm your changes.

Check that:

  • $ hostname in the terminal outputs the expected hostname.
  • You can ping all of the nodes in your cluster by their hostnames.
  • Swap is correctly disabled on all nodes using cat /proc/swaps.

If you are unable to ping any of your hosts by their hostnames or private IPs:

  1. SSH into the host that isn’t responding.

  2. Enter ifconfig. You should see an entry for eth0:1 that lists your private IP. If eth0:1 isn’t listed, it’s possible that you deployed your Linode image before adding a private IP to the underlying host. Recreate the image and return to the beginning of the guide.

Install Docker and Kubernetes on Linode


apt install ebtables ethtool


yum install ebtables ethtool

Install Docker

Install kubeadm, kubectl, and kubelet


curl -s | sudo apt-key add -
echo 'deb kubernetes-xenial main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y kubelet kubeadm kubectl


cat <<eof > /etc/yum.repos.d/kubernetes.repo
setenforce 0
yum install -y kubelet kubeadm kubectl
systemctl enable kubelet && systemctl start kubelet

Kubernetes Master and Slave

Configure the Kubernetes Master Node

  1. On the master node initialize your cluster using its private IP:

    kubeadm init  --pod-network-cidr= --apiserver-advertise-address=<private IP>

    If you encounter a warning stating that swap is enabled, return to the Disable Swap Memory section.

    If successful, your output will resemble:

      mkdir -p $HOME/.kube
    You should now deploy a Pod network to the cluster.
    as root:
      kubeadm join --token 921e92.d4582205da623812 <private IP>:6443 --discovery-token-ca-cert-hash sha256:bd85666b6a97072709b210ddf677245b4d79dab88d61b4a521fc00b0fbcc710c
  2. On the master node, configure the kubectl tool:

    mkdir -p $HOME/.kube
  3. Check on the status of the nodes with kubectl get nodes. Output will resemble:

    [email protected]:~# kubectl get nodes
    name          status     roles     age       version
    kube-master   NotReady   master    1m        v1.8.1

    The master node is listed as NotReady because the cluster does not have a Container Networking Interface ( CNI). CNI is a spec for a of container based network interface. In this guide, we will be using Calico. Alternatively, you can use Flannel or another CNI for similar results.

    The --pod-network-cidr argument used in the Configure the Kubernetes Master Node section defines the network range for the CNI.

  4. While still on the master node run the following command to deploy the CNI to your cluster:

    kubectl apply -f
  5. To ensure Calico was set up correctly, use kubectl get pods --all-namespaces to view the Pods created in the kube-system namespace:

    [email protected]:~# kubectl get pods --all-namespaces
    NAMESPACE     NAME                                       READY     STATUS             RESTARTS   AGE
    kube-system   calico-etcd-nmx26                          1/1       Running            0          48s
    kube-system   calico-kube-controllers-6ff88bf6d4-p25cw   1/1       Running            0          47s
    kube-system   calico-node-bldzb                          1/2       CrashLoopBackOff   2          48s
    kube-system   calico-node-k5c9m                          2/2       Running            0          48s
    kube-system   etcd-master                                1/1       Running            0          3m
    kube-system   kube-apiserver-master                      1/1       Running            0          3m
    kube-system   kube-controller-manager-master             1/1       Running            0          3m
    kube-system   kube-dns-545bc4bfd4-g8xtm                  3/3       Running            0          4m
    kube-system   kube-proxy-sw562                           1/1       Running            0          4m
    kube-system   kube-proxy-x6psn                           1/1       Running            0          1m
    kube-system   kube-scheduler-master                      1/1       Running            0          3m

    This command uses the -n flag. The -n flag is a global kubectl flag that selects a non-default namespace. We can see our existing name spaces by running kubectl get namespaces:

    [email protected]:~# kubectl get namespaces
    NAME          STATUS    AGE
    default       Active    4h
    kube-public   Active    4h
    kube-system   Active    4h
  6. Run kubectl get nodes again to see that the master node is now running properly:

    [email protected]:~# kubectl get nodes
    name          status    roles     age       version
    kube-master   Ready     master    12m       v1.8.1

Add Nodes to the Kubernetes Cluster

  1. Run kubeadm join with the kube-master hostname to add the first worker:

     kubeadm join --token <some-token> kube-master:6443 --discovery-token-ca-cert-hash sha256:<some-sha256-hash>
  2. On the master node, use kubectl to see that the slave node is now ready:

    [email protected]:~# kubectl get nodes
    name            status    roles     age       version
    kube-master     ready     master    37m       v1.8.1
    kube-worker-1   ready     <none>    2m        v1.8.1

Deploy NGINX on the Kubernetes Cluster

A deployment is a logical reference to a Pod or Pods and their configurations.

  1. From your master node kubectl create an nginx deployment:

    kubectl create deployment nginx --image=nginx
  2. This creates a deployment called nginx. kubectl get deployments lists all available deployments:

    kubectl get deployments
  3. Use kubectl describe deployment nginx to view more information:

    Name:                   nginx
    Namespace:              default
    CreationTimestamp:      Sun, 15 Oct 2017 06:10:50 +0000
    Labels:                 app=nginx
    Selector:               app=nginx
    StrategyType:           RollingUpdate
    MinReadySeconds:        0
    RollingUpdateStrategy:  1 max unavailable, 1 max surge
    Pod Template:
      Labels:  app=nginx
        Image:        nginx
        Port:         <none>
        Environment:  <none>
        Mounts:       <none>
      Volumes:        <none>
      Type           Status  Reason
      Available      True    MinimumReplicasAvailable
    OldReplicaSets:  <none>
    NewReplicaSet:   nginx-68fcbc9696 (1/1 replicas created)
      Type    Reason             Age   From                   Message
      Normal  ScalingReplicaSet  1m    deployment-controller  Scaled up replica set nginx-68fcbc9696 to 1

    The describe command allows you to interrogate different Kubernetes resources such as Pods, deployments, and services at a deeper level. The output above indicates that there is a deployment called nginx within the default namespace. This deployment has a single replicate, and is running the docker image nginx. The ports, mounts, volumes and environmental variable are all unset.

  4. Make the NGINX container accessible via the internet:

    kubectl create service nodeport nginx --tcp=80:80

    This creates a public facing service on the host for the NGINX deployment. Because this is a nodeport deployment, Kubernetes will assign this service a port on the host machine in the 32000+ range.

    Try to get the current services:

    [email protected]:~# kubectl get svc
    kubernetes   ClusterIP     <none>        443/TCP        5h
    nginx        NodePort   <none>        80:32555/TCP   52s
  5. Verify that the NGINX deployment is successful by using curl on the slave node:

    [email protected]:~# curl kube-worker-1:32555

    The output will show the unrendered “Welcome to nginx!” page HTML.

  6. To remove the deployment, use kubectl delete deployment:

    [email protected]:~# kubectl delete deployment nginx
    deployment "nginx" deleted
    [email protected]:~# kubectl get deployments
    No resources found.

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