Lab 00: Environment Setup

Objectives

  • ✅ Verify Docker installation
  • ✅ Set up Minikube cluster (or kind for multi-region)
  • ✅ Install and verify kubectl
  • ✅ Configure Helm and Flux CLI
  • ✅ Test basic cluster access

Prerequisites

  • Docker Desktop or Docker Engine installed
  • ~15 minutes
  • Reference: Setup Guide

Steps

Step 1: Verify Docker

docker --version
docker run hello-world

Expected output: 

Docker version 24.x.x
...
Hello from Docker!

Step 2: Start Minikube Cluster

# Start single cluster
minikube start --cpus 4 --memory 6144 --driver docker

# Verify it's running
minikube status

Step 3: Configure kubectl

# Check cluster info
kubectl cluster-info

# Get nodes
kubectl get nodes

# Expected: 1 control plane node (minikube)

Step 4: Verify Helm

helm version

# Add Bitnami repo (used in labs)
helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
helm repo update

Step 5: Verify Flux CLI

flux version

# Check if Flux can bootstrap (don't actually run yet)
flux check --pre

Validation

All commands should return version information and success status:

cat << 'EOF' > /tmp/test-setup.sh
#!/bin/bash
set -e

echo "Testing environment setup..."

# Docker
docker --version && echo "✓ Docker" || (echo "✗ Docker"; exit 1)

# kubectl
kubectl cluster-info && echo "✓ kubectl" || (echo "✗ kubectl"; exit 1)

# Helm
helm version && echo "✓ Helm" || (echo "✗ Helm"; exit 1)

# Flux
flux version && echo "✓ Flux" || (echo "✗ Flux"; exit 1)

echo "✓ All checks passed!"
EOF

chmod +x /tmp/test-setup.sh
/tmp/test-setup.sh

Challenge (Optional)

Create additional namespaces for future labs:

kubectl create namespace production
kubectl create namespace staging
kubectl create namespace monitoring

kubectl get namespaces

Cleanup

For now, keep cluster running. To reset later:

minikube delete

Next: Lab 01: Docker Basics