The past few days I’ve been trying out a few options to run Docker containers and a Kubernetes clusters on my new MacBook Pro M2.
Unfortunately you can’t just run brew install docker and expect it to work. Additionally, Docker desktop requires that you purchase a license if you use it for work purposes.
Minikube works fine as well, but the networking driver for qemu is not fully supported yet, and I haven’t tried any of the other alternatives because I found something better.
Rancher Desktop provides everything that you need. It sets up a local VM where it will run a Kubernetes cluster using k3s. It will configure the containerd container engine for you which you can interact with using nerdctl.
To install:
brew install rancher
#after installing rancher, start it up and wait for it to boot the VM.
alias docker=nerdctl
docker run hello-world
And you’re good to go. Rancher will add the rancher-desktop to your kube context.
To test your Kubernetes cluster:
k get pods
k get nodes
# test running a pod
k run nginx --image=nginx
k expose pod nginx --port=80 --type=NodePort
# inspect your services and look for 80:31066/TCP under PORT(S)
k get svc
curl localhost:31066
Or visit localhost:31066 in your browser. Replace 31066 with the port you found listed under your services.