Creating a local cluster

One of the strengths of Kubernetes as a deployment platform is that you can create a local cluster and, with relatively little effort, have a realistic environment that is very close to your production environment. The main benefit is that developers can test their microservices locally and collaborate with the rest of the services in the cluster. When your system is comprised of many microservices, the more significant tests are often integration tests and even configuration and infrastructure tests, as opposed to unit tests. Kubernetes makes that kind of testing much easier and requires much less brittle mocking.

In this section, you will install a local Kubernetes cluster and some additional projects, and then have some fun exploring it using the invaluable kubectl command-line tool.