How to Deploy Kubernetes on Bare Metal (Ubuntu)

This guide walks you through how I successfully deployed Kubernetes on bare metal using Ubuntu 22.04. We'll use kubeadm for cluster setup and containerd as the container runtime.

Perfect for labs, self-hosting, and dev environments where cloud isn't required.

Reference Git Repo: github.com/malcolmso/kube-install

Bare metal Kubernetes architecture

Prerequisites

Step1: Prepare the Nodes

Install containerd, disable swap, and install Kubernetes components:

# Install containerd
sudo apt install -y containerd
sudo mkdir -p /etc/containerd
containerd config default | sudo tee /etc/containerd/config.toml
sudo sed -i 's/SystemdCgroup = false/SystemdCgroup = true/' /etc/containerd/config.toml
sudo systemctl restart containerd

# Disable swap
sudo swapoff -a
sudo sed -i '/[[:space:]]swap[[:space:]]/ s/^/#/' /etc/fstab

# Install Kubernetes packages
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gpg socat docker.io

curl -fsSL https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.30/deb/Release.key | \
  sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/kubernetes-apt-keyring.gpg

echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/kubernetes-apt-keyring.gpg] \
  https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.30/deb/ /' | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y kubelet kubeadm

# (Optional) Install kubectl
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

Step2: Initialize the Control Plane

Run these commands on the master node:

# Enable IP forwarding
echo 1 | sudo tee /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
sudo sed -i 's/^#*net.ipv4.ip_forward=.*/net.ipv4.ip_forward=1/' /etc/sysctl.conf
sudo sysctl -p

# Pull required images and initialize cluster
sudo kubeadm config images pull
sudo kubeadm init

Note: Save the kubeadm join command shown at the end — you’ll need it for the worker nodes.

# Configure kubectl for your user
mkdir -p $HOME/.kube
sudo cp /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf $HOME/.kube/config
sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) $HOME/.kube/config

Step3: Install Pod Network (Calico)

Install Calico to enable pod-to-pod networking across nodes:

kubectl apply -f https://docs.projectcalico.org/manifests/calico.yaml
kubectl get nodes

Step4: Join Worker Nodes

On each worker node, enable networking and join the cluster using the token from Step 2:

# Enable IP forwarding
echo 1 | sudo tee /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
sudo sed -i 's/^#*net.ipv4.ip_forward=.*/net.ipv4.ip_forward=1/' /etc/sysctl.conf
sudo sysctl -p

# Join the cluster
sudo kubeadm join <control-plane-ip>:6443 --token <token> \
  --discovery-token-ca-cert-hash sha256:<hash>

Wrapping Up