Deploying Kubernetes on Bare-Metal: A Comprehensive Guide

Kubernetes is the de-facto standard for container orchestration, powering production workloads for companies of all sizes. While many choose managed services like GKE, EKS, or AKS, deploying Kubernetes on bare-metal servers gives you complete control over your infrastructure, improved performance, and potentially lower costs.

This guide walks you through deploying Kubernetes on bare-metal servers using kubeadm, and covers best practices, networking, storage, and more.

Table of Contents

  1. Prerequisites
  2. Choosing Your Operating System
  3. Provisioning Your Machines
  4. Installing Kubernetes with kubeadm
  5. Networking Setup
  6. Storage Options
  7. Monitoring and Logging
  8. Security Best Practices
  9. Useful Resources

Prerequisites

  • At least 2 bare-metal servers (1 master, 1+ workers)
  • Ubuntu 22.04 or CentOS 8
  • SSH access with sudo privileges
  • Static IPs or DHCP reservations
  • Domain names or /etc/hosts configured
  • Container runtime (containerd recommended)

Choosing Your Operating System

Popular choices:

  • Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – well-supported and user-friendly
  • CentOS Stream / Rocky Linux – Red Hat compatible
  • Flatcar Linux – Container-focused OS

We'll use Ubuntu 22.04 for this guide.

Provisioning Your Machines

Make sure each node has:

  • A unique hostname
  • Static IP or DHCP reservation
  • NTP (time sync) enabled
  • Swap disabled (sudo swapoff -a and remove from /etc/fstab)

Example /etc/hosts:

192.168.1.10 master-node
192.168.1.11 worker-node-1
192.168.1.12 worker-node-2

Installing Kubernetes with kubeadm

1. Install container runtime (containerd):

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y containerd
sudo mkdir -p /etc/containerd
containerd config default | sudo tee /etc/containerd/config.toml
sudo systemctl restart containerd

2. Install Kubernetes tools:

curl -s https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://apt.kubernetes.io/ kubernetes-xenial main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y kubelet kubeadm kubectl
sudo apt-mark hold kubelet kubeadm kubectl

3. Initialize the master node:

sudo kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr=10.244.0.0/16

4. Set up kubeconfig:

mkdir -p $HOME/.kube
sudo cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf $HOME/.kube/config
sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) $HOME/.kube/config

5. Install a Pod Network (e.g., Flannel):

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coreos/flannel/master/Documentation/kube-flannel.yml

6. Join Worker Nodes:

Run the kubeadm join ... command provided after kubeadm init on each worker node.

Networking Setup

Choose a CNI plugin:

  • Flannel – simple, works out of the box
  • Calico – powerful, includes network policies
  • Cilium – based on eBPF, very performant

For production, consider Calico or Cilium for their security and performance benefits.

Storage Options

Persistent storage in bare-metal setups can be tricky. Consider:

  • NFS – shared file system
  • Rook + Ceph – distributed block/file storage
  • OpenEBS – local and distributed storage

Example: Install NFS provisioner

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner/master/deploy/kubernetes/deployment.yaml

Monitoring and Logging

Monitoring:

Logging:

  • Loki + Grafana
  • Fluentd + Elasticsearch + Kibana (EFK stack)

Security Best Practices

  • Use role-based access control (RBAC)
  • Regularly patch nodes and Kubernetes versions
  • Isolate workloads with namespaces and network policies
  • Enable audit logging

Useful Resources

Conclusion

Deploying Kubernetes on bare-metal requires more effort than managed solutions, but gives you unmatched flexibility, performance, and insight into your infrastructure. Whether for home labs, cost-effective clusters, or compliance needs, a bare-metal Kubernetes setup is a powerful choice.

Let us know how your deployment goes, or ask if you get stuck!

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