How to Install Minikube on Windows 11 or 10 using CMD or PowerShell

If you’re a developer or IT professional interested in Kubernetes and container orchestration, Minikube is an invaluable tool for your Windows environment. Minikube can be used on Linux, macOS, or Windows easily and it allows you to run a single-node Kubernetes cluster on your local machine, making it effortless to experiment, develop, and test applications without the need for a full-scale Kubernetes setup. In this guide, we see the steps of installing Minikube on Windows using the command prompt or Powershell.

Requirements

Nothing special we required to perform this tutorial; here are the common things that you will need:

• A Windows 10 or 11 PC
• Access to Powershell or Command Pompt/Terminal with administrative privileges 
• Minikube relies on virtualization, hence either VirtualBox, Hyper-V, Docker or any other supported virtualization platform.

Step 1: Install Virtualization Platform

As said in the Requirments section we need some virtualization platform to work with Minikube on Windows, so if you have already Hyper-V, Docker, or VirtualBox installed then you can skip this step. However, those who are beginners can start with VirtualBox or Hyper-V.

Minikube requires a hypervisor to create and manage virtual machines for your Kubernetes cluster. You can choose between Hyper-V and VirtualBox. Here’s how to install them:

For Installing Hyper-V

• Open PowerShell as an Administrator.
• Run the following command to enable Hyper-V:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V -All

• Once done restart your system.

Those who want to use VirtualBox:

• Download the VirtualBox installer from the official website and run it.
• After that follow the on-screen instructions to install VirtualBox.

Similarly, those who want to use Docker as a Minikube driver can Download its setup and install it.

Step 2: Install Minikube on Windows 11 or 10

Now, go to your Windows search box and open PowerShell or Command prompt but with Administrative access. For that, when the icon for any of them appears in the search area of your Windows, click it to select “Run as Administrator“.

After opening the Powershell or Command prompt, check whether the default Windows package manager “WINGET” is available or not. Although on all the latest versions of Windows, it will already be there, still just to confirm, run:

winget -v

You will see the version of the package manager that also confirms its availability. If it is not there then you can install it manually from GitHub.

As we have the package manager, let’s quickly execute a command that will download and install MiniKube on your Windows 10/11 system. The best thing you don’t need to look here or there for any kind of setup.

winget install Kubernetes.minikube

Wait for a few seconds, depending on your internet connection, the Minikube will be installed.

Step 3: Verify Minikube Installation

First, close your existing PowerShell or CMD session, for that simply close the app, and after that start it from the start menu with admin rights like we did in Step 2 of this tutorial. It is required so that Powershell can recognize the path of the installed Minikube command tool.

Now, to check the Minikube installation run:

minikube status

You will get something like below, which means it is available to start.

Profile "minikube" not found. Run "minikube profile list" to view all profiles.
To start a cluster, run: "minikube start"

Step 4: Setting kubectl CLI on Windows

To manage cluster resources, deploy applications, and inspect logs of Kubernetes clusters, we can use its command-line tool called kubectl. If you want that, then here is the command to install it as well.

winget install Kubernetes.kubectl

Note: Again restart your PowerShell or CMD and run again as Admin to use Kubectl command line.

To check the version you can use:

Step 5: Start Minikube

Now, we will start the Minikube to download the required ISO files for creating an environment. However, the key thing that you need to look at here is what driver you want to use with Minkube.

If you run:

minikube start

Then it will automatically select the preferable driver available on your system. This means if Hyper-V is available then it selects that otherwise VirtualBox or any else.

But if you want it to manually run with some specific virtualization platform then mention it in the above-given command.

For example: To start it with Docker:

minikube start --vm-driver docker

You can change Docker with other drivers if you want. Check out the official documentation to know more about it.

Well, once the installation is completed, we can check it using the given commands for more information.

• For status :

minikube status

• For accessing the Minikube command line via ssh:

minikube ssh

• To know what the Minikube Add-ons are currently active or enabled, use:

minikube addons list

• To check Cluster info

kubectl cluster-info

• To see what are the nodes currently active:

kubectl get nodes

• For the default configuration view of the cluster

kubectl config view

• To stop and delete the Minikube cluster:

minikube stop
minikube delete

Step 6: Run Minikube Dashboard on Windows 10 or 11

Minikube comes with an add-on called Dashboard which automatically gets enabled by running the given command in this step. Hence we can start it to access the web-based Kubernetes user interface for deploying container applications & managing the cluster, get an overview of resources, and more…

minikube dashboard

On your local system where you have installed this Kubernetes implementation, the browser will open to automatically give you the Dashboard web interface.

Step 7. Access Kubernetes Dashboard remotely (optional)

If you are using Minikube on your local Windows server with only a command-line interface and want to access the MiniKube Dashboard remotely on some other computer available in the same network of your Server; then instead of using the previous step command, you can use the kubectl proxy to open local 8001 for accessing the Web interface of Kubernetes using the given syntax.

kubectl proxy --address='0.0.0.0' --disable-filter=true

Note: To restrict the web interface access to some particular IP address, replace 0.0.0.0 in the above command with that. Otherwise, any system in the network will be able to access the Dashboard.

Once you have executed the above command, open any browser that can access the IP-address of the Server running Minikube and point it to:

http://server-ip-address:8001/api/v1/namespaces/kubernetes-dashboard/services/http:kubernetes-dashboard:/proxy/

To learn more about Kubernetes and MiniKube refer to the official documentation.