Multi-zone mode is perfect when running one deployment of Kuma that spans across multiple Kubernetes clusters, clouds and VM environments under the same Kuma deployment.
This mode also supports hybrid Kubernetes + VMs deployments.
Note: By default this will run Kuma with a memorybackend, but you can use a persistent storage like PostgreSQL by updating the conf/kuma-cp.conf file.
2.1 Authentication (optional)
Running administrative tasks (like generating a dataplane token) requires authentication by token or a connection via localhost.
2.1.1 Localhost
For kuma-cp to recognize requests issued to docker published port it needs to run the container in the host network.
To do this, add --network="host" parameter to the docker run command from point 2.
2.1.2 Authenticating via token
You can also configure kumactl to access kuma-dp from the container.
Get the kuma-cp container id:
Note: we are running kumactl from the Docker container on the same network as the host, but most likely you want to download a compatible version of Kuma for the machine where you will be executing the commands.
You can run the following script to automatically detect the operating system and download Kuma:
<a href=”https://packages.konghq.com/public/kuma-legacy/raw/names/kuma-darwin-amd64/versions/{“edition”=>”kuma”, “version”=>”2.9.1”, “release”=>”2.9.x”, “latest”=>true, “releaseDate”=>”2024-10-22”, “endOfLifeDate”=>”2025-10-22”, “branch”=>”release-2.9”}/kuma-{“edition”=>”kuma”, “version”=>”2.9.1”, “release”=>”2.9.x”, “latest”=>true, “releaseDate”=>”2024-10-22”, “endOfLifeDate”=>”2025-10-22”, “branch”=>”release-2.9”}-darwin-amd64.tar.gz”>macOS</a> or run brew install kumactl
and extract the archive with:
tar xvzf kuma-*.tar.gz
You will then find the kumactl executable in the kuma-{"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"}/bin folder.
You will notice that Kuma automatically creates a Mesh entity with name default.
4. Quickstart
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Kuma on Docker 🚀.