Kubernetes
To install and run Kuma execute the following steps:
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.
Download Kumactl
To run Kuma on Kubernetes, you need to download the Kuma cli (kumactl
) on your machine.
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 omit the VERSION
variable to install the latest version.
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:
- <a href=”https://packages.konghq.com/public/kuma-legacy/raw/names/kuma-centos-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”}-centos-amd64.tar.gz”>CentOS</a>
- <a href=”https://packages.konghq.com/public/kuma-legacy/raw/names/kuma-rhel-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”}-rhel-amd64.tar.gz”>RedHat</a>
- <a href=”https://packages.konghq.com/public/kuma-legacy/raw/names/kuma-debian-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”}-debian-amd64.tar.gz”>Debian</a>
- <a href=”https://packages.konghq.com/public/kuma-legacy/raw/names/kuma-ubuntu-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”}-ubuntu-amd64.tar.gz”>Ubuntu</a>
- <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-{"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"}.tar.gz
Once downloaded, you will find the contents of Kuma 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"}
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-{"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
We suggest adding the kumactl
executable to your PATH
(by executing: export PATH=$(pwd):$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/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/kumactl /usr/local/bin/kumactl
Run Kuma
Finally, we can install and run Kuma:
kumactl install control-plane | kubectl apply -f -
This example will run Kuma in standalone
mode for a “flat” deployment, but there are more advanced deployment modes like “multi-zone”.
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
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
.
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.