Kubernetes on Equinix Metal

This guide can be used as a reference to deploy Kubernetes on Equinix Metal bare-metal servers in a single Metro. This repository is experimental meaning that it's based on untested ideas or techniques and not yet established or finalized or involves a radically new and innovative style! This means that support is best effort (at best!) and I strongly encourage you to NOT use this in production.

Component	Version
Kubernetes	v1.30.3
Cilium	v1.16.0
Calico	v3.28.1
CCM	v3.8.1
MetalLB	v0.14.8
Kube-VIP	v0.8.0
Rook-Ceph	v1.14.9
Autoscaler	v1.27.1

Kubernetes Network:

Network	Subnet
Pod subnet	172.16.0.0/12
Service subnet	192.168.0.0/16

This Terraform script will deploy a cluster of 4, 1 controller and 3 worker nodes. It will allow you to use the service type LoadBalancer and make Persistent Volume Claims.

Prerequisites

To use these Terraform files, you need to have the following Prerequisites:

• An Equinix Metal organization ID and API key
• unzip and jq packages installed on the local host that will be running the script. On Ubuntu you can install these with apt-get install -y unzip jq.

Install Terraform

Terraform is just a single binary. Visit their download page, choose your operating system, make the binary executable, and move it into your path.

Here is an example for MacOS:

curl -LO https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/1.1.6/terraform_1.1.6_darwin_amd64.zip
unzip terraform_1.1.6_darwin_amd64.zip
chmod +x terraform
sudo mv terraform /usr/local/bin/
rm -f terraform_1.1.6_darwin_amd64.zip

Here is an example for Linux:

curl -LO https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/1.1.6/terraform_1.1.6_linux_amd64.zip
unzip terraform_1.1.6_linux_amd64.zip
chmod +x terraform
sudo mv terraform /usr/local/bin/
rm -f terraform_1.1.6_linux_amd64.zip

Download this project

To download this project, run the following command:

git clone https://github.com/enkelprifti98/terraform-metal-kubernetes.git
cd terraform-metal-kubernetes

Initialize Terraform

Terraform uses modules to deploy infrastructure. In order to initialize the modules simply run:

terraform init

This should download several modules into a hidden directory .terraform.

Configure your variables

Make a copy of terraform.tfvars.sample as terraform.tfvars and set the auth_token as well as organization_id. You can also configure other options like the server type, amount of worker nodes, etc.

auth_token = "METAL_AUTH_TOKEN"
organization_id = "METAL_ORG_ID"
project_name = "k8s-bgp"
metro = "dc"
controller_plan = "c3.medium.x86"
worker_plan = "c3.medium.x86"
worker_count = 3

Note: There is also a terraform.tfvars.sample.custom file in this repo that you can use. It has more configuration options for the cluster.

Deploy the cluster

Run the Terraform script to deploy the cluster:

terraform apply

Once the script has completed, you will be given the controller and node addresses.

Testing

You can now use the kubernetes service type LoadBalancer and you will be assigned a Public External IP.

For example, we can deploy wordpress which makes use of service type LoadBalancer along with persistent volume claims.

Here we are using the deployment from the rook-ceph guide.

Run the following:

kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rook/rook/master/deploy/examples/mysql.yaml
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rook/rook/master/deploy/examples/wordpress.yaml

You can check the persistent volume claim requests:

kubectl get pvc

Then check the persistent volumes:

kubectl get pv

Lastly, check the wordpress service of type LoadBalancer:

kubectl get svc wordpress

Get the external IP address and check if it is reachable through your web browser, if the deployment was successful you should see the wordpress app.