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Kubernetes

To install and run Kuma on Kubernetes execute the following steps:

1. Download Kuma
2. Run Kuma
3. Use Kuma

Finally you can follow the Quickstart to take it from here and continue your Kuma journey.

Kuma also provides Helm charts that we can use instead of this distribution.

1. Download Kuma

To run Kuma on Kubernetes, you need to download a compatible version of Kuma for the machine from which you will be executing the commands.

Script
Direct Link

You can run the following script to automatically detect the operating system and download Kuma:

curl -L https://kuma.io/installer.sh | VERSION={"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"} sh -

You can also download the distribution manually. Download a distribution for the client host from where you will be executing the commands to access Kubernetes:

CentOS
RedHat
Debian
Ubuntu
macOS or run brew install kumactl

and extract the archive with:

tar xvzf kuma-*.tar.gz

2. Run Kuma

Once downloaded, you will find the contents of Kuma in the kuma-1.4.1 folder. In this folder, you will find - among other files - the bin directory that stores the executables for Kuma, including the CLI client kumactl.

Note: On Kubernetes - of all the Kuma binaries in the bin folder - we only need kumactl.

So we enter the bin folder by executing:

cd kuma-1.4.1/bin

Finally we can install and run Kuma in either standalone or multi-zone mode:

Standalone
Multi-Zone

Standalone mode is perfect when running Kuma in a single cluster across one environment:

./kumactl install control-plane | kubectl apply -f -

To learn more, read about the deployment modes available.

We suggest adding the kumactl executable to your PATH so that it’s always available in every working directory. Or - alternatively - you can also create link in /usr/local/bin/ by executing:

ln -s $PWD/kumactl /usr/local/bin/kumactl

It may take a while for Kubernetes to start the Kuma resources, you can check the status by executing:

kubectl get pod -n kuma-system

3. Use Kuma

Kuma (kuma-cp) will be installed in the newly created kuma-system namespace! Now that Kuma has been installed, you can access the control-plane via either the GUI, kubectl, the HTTP API, or the CLI:

Kuma ships with a read-only GUI that you can use to retrieve Kuma resources. By default the GUI listens on the API port and defaults to :5681/gui.

To access Kuma we need to first port-forward the API service with:

kubectl port-forward svc/kuma-control-plane -n kuma-system 5681:5681

And then navigate to 127.0.0.1:5681/gui to see the GUI.

You can use Kuma with kubectl to perform read and write operations on Kuma resources. For example:

kubectl get meshes
# NAME          AGE
# default       1m

or you can enable mTLS on the default Mesh with:

echo "apiVersion: kuma.io/v1alpha1
kind: Mesh
metadata:
  name: default
spec:
  mtls:
    enabledBackend: ca-1
    backends:
    - name: ca-1
      type: builtin" | kubectl apply -f -

Kuma ships with a read-only HTTP API that you can use to retrieve Kuma resources.

By default the HTTP API listens on port 5681. To access Kuma we need to first port-forward the API service with:

kubectl port-forward svc/kuma-control-plane -n kuma-system 5681:5681

And then you can navigate to 127.0.0.1:5681 to see the HTTP API.

You can use the kumactl CLI to perform read-only operations on Kuma resources. The kumactl binary is a client to the Kuma HTTP API, you will need to first port-forward the API service with:

kubectl port-forward svc/kuma-control-plane -n kuma-system 5681:5681

and then run kumactl, for example:

kumactl get meshes
# NAME          mTLS      METRICS      LOGGING   TRACING
# default       off       off          off       off

You can configure kumactl to point to any zone kuma-cp instance by running:

kumactl config control-planes add --name=XYZ --address=http://{address-to-kuma}:5681

You will notice that Kuma automatically creates a Mesh entity with name default.

4. Quickstart

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Kuma on Kubernetes 🚀.

In order to start using Kuma, it’s time to check out the quickstart guide for Kubernetes deployments.

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