Using Minikube to Create a Cluster [page]deterministic
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* Learn what a Kubernetes cluster is. * Learn what Minikube is. * Start a Kubernetes cluster on your computer.
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This tutorial assumes that you have already installed `minikube`. See [minikube start](https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/start/) for installation instructions.
> Note: Only execute instructions in step 1: Installation. The rest is covered in this tutorial.
You also need to install `kubectl`. See [Install tools](/docs/tasks/tools/#kubectl) for installation instructions.
The shell commands in this tutorial use POSIX shell syntax, which is supported by the default shells on most Linux and macOS systems (for example, bash, zsh, or sh). Windows users must use a POSIX-compatible shell such as [Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install) or [Git Bash](https://gitforwindows.org/) to run the commands as written. Commands that use `export`, `$()`, and similar constructs are not compatible with PowerShell or the Windows Command Prompt.
## Kubernetes Clusters
_Kubernetes is a production-grade, open-source platform that orchestrates the placement (scheduling) and execution of application containers within and across computer clusters._
**Kubernetes coordinates a highly available cluster of computers that are connected to work as a single unit.** The abstractions in Kubernetes allow you to deploy containerized applications to a cluster without tying them specifically to individual machines. To make use of this new model of deployment, applications need to be packaged in a way that decouples them from individual hosts: they need to be containerized. Containerized applications are more flexible and available than in past deployment models, where applications were installed directly onto specific machines as packages deeply integrated into the host. **Kubernetes automates the distribution and scheduling of application containers across a cluster in a more efficient way.** Kubernetes is an open-source platform and is production-ready.
A Kubernetes cluster consists of two types of resources:
* The Control Plane coordinates the cluster * Nodes are the workers that run applications
### Cluster Diagram
The Control Plane is responsible for managing the cluster. The Control Plane coordinates all activities in your cluster, such as scheduling applications, maintaining applications' desired state, scaling applications, and rolling out new updates.
_Control Planes manage the cluster and the nodes that are used to host the running applications._
**A node is a VM or a physical computer that serves as a worker machine in a Kubernetes cluster.** Each node has a Kubelet, which is an agent for managing the node and communicating with the Kubernetes control plane. The node should also have tools for handling container operations, such as [containerd](#gloss:containerd) or [cri-o](#gloss:cri-o). A Kubernetes cluster that handles production traffic should have a minimum of three nodes because if one node goes down, both an [etcd](/docs/concepts/architecture/#etcd) member and a control plane instance are lost, and redundancy is compromised. You can mitigate this risk by adding more control plane nodes.
When you deploy applications on Kubernetes, you tell the control plane to start the application containers. The control plane schedules the containers to run on the cluster's nodes. **Node-level components, such as the kubelet, communicate with the control plane using the [Kubernetes API](/docs/concepts/overview/kubernetes-api/)**, which the control plane exposes. End users can also use the Kubernetes API directly to interact with the cluster.
A Kubernetes cluster can be deployed on either physical or virtual machines. To get started with Kubernetes development, you can use Minikube. Minikube is a lightweight Kubernetes implementation that creates a VM on your local machine and dep …(trimmed)