How to Setup Minikube on MAC M1/M2

This blog contains the guide to setting up a working Minikube cluster on MAC M1/M2 arm64 systems using the Qemu emulator as the backend driver.

Qemu emulator is the best option to run a Kubernetes Cluster using minikube on MAC arm64-based systems without any issues. All other setups like Docker, Podman, and Virtualbox run into some sort of issue.

Setup Minikube on MAC M1/M2

Step 1: Install Qemu

Install the Qemu emulator using the following command.

brew install qemu

Step 2: Setup Qemu socket_vvmnet

For minikube service URLs to work, you need to start the socket_vmnet service

brew install socket_vmnet
brew tap homebrew/services
HOMEBREW=$(which brew) && sudo ${HOMEBREW} services start socket_vmnet

Step 3: Install minikube

brew install minikube

Step 4: Start Minikube with the Qemu driver and socket_vmnet

minikube start --driver qemu --network socket_vmnet

On successful execution, you should see the below output.

Validate Minikube Setup

Note: Ensure you have kubectl installed on your workstation.

To validate the setup let’s deploy a sample nginx application with a NodePort service. So that we can validate pod deployment as well as network access using the NodePort service.

Execute the following kubernetes manifest to deploy nginx deployment and a Nodeport service

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: web-service
spec:
  ports:
  - name: http
    port: 80
  selector:
    app: web
  type: NodePort
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: web-deployment
spec:
  replicas: 2
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: web
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: web
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: nginx:1.14.2
        name: nginx
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
EOF

Validate the deployment and service

kubectl get all

You should see an output as shown below.

To validate the networking, get the service URL using the following command. It will give you the node IP with NodePort in URL format.

minikube service web-service --url

Access the URL and you should be able to view the Nginx home page as shown below

Minikube Qemu Issues Issues

If you don’t have socket_vmnet running with Qemu and if you try to access Minikube service URLs, you will get the following error.

To rectify this, install the socket_vmnet using the commands given in step 2 under the setup guide.

❌  Exiting due to MK_UNIMPLEMENTED: minikube service is not currently implemented with the builtin network on QEMU, try starting minikube with '--network=socket_vmnet'

Conclusion

If you are new to Minikube, check out my Minikube tutorial where I have added all the required steps to get you started with a development Kubernetes cluster.

If you are learning Kubernetes, check out the Kubernetes learning path and Kubernetes tutorials for beginners.