In Workstation Pro, vctl utility supports KIND. It enables KIND to use vctl container instead of Docker container as nodes to run local Kubernetes clusters.

Prerequisites

By default, vctl assigns 2 GB memory for every CRX VM that hosts the vctl container node. Ensure that your physical machine has 2 GB free memory when running single-node cluster, 4 GB free memory when running two-node cluster. The more nodes configured in your cluster, the more free memory is needed.

Procedure

  1. Open a Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell window.
  2. Run the vctl system start command to start the vctl container runtime.
  3. Run vctl kind command.
    This command performs the following four tasks:
    1. Creates a bin folder in the <Home_Folder_of_Your_Account>\.vctl folder.
    2. Downloads kubectl.exe, kind.exe and crx.vmdk files, and saves them to the bin folder.
    3. Creates a docker shortcut that points to C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\bin\vctl.exe by default.

    4. Opens a Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell window and creates a vctl-based KIND context by adding <Home_Folder_of_Your_Account>/.vctl/bin to the PATH environment variable and makes it the first searchable path.

      So in this window, the three executables under <Home_Folder_of_Your_Account>\.vctl\bin folder will take precedence over other existing versions of kubectl/kind/docker.exe executables that were installed before.

  4. The vctl-based KIND context will be lost if you close the window.

    Next time you want to interact with the Kubernetes clusters, run the vctl kind command.

    This time only Step 3.d will be repeated.

    Note:
    • vctl does not support kind build and kind export logs kind subcommands.
    • By default, vctl assigns 2 GB memory and 2 CPU cores for the CRX VM that hosts the node container, you can use the --k8s-cpus and --k8s-mem options of vctl system config command to customize the configurations.