Is there major difference between Minikube and Kind?

Question

I know Kind needs Docker, and Minikube needs Virtual Box - but for learning Kubernetes features are they the same?

Thank you.

Answer 1

In terms of learning Kubernetes features, they are the same. You will get the same Kubernetes and Kubernetes resources in both: Pod, Deployments, ConfigMaps, StatefulSets, Secrets, etc. assuming they both have the same Kubernetes version.

Under the hood they very similar too with some implementation differences.

• Minikube

  • Runs K8s in VM (1.7.0 vesion now supports running minikube on Docker)
  • Support multiple Hypervisors (VirtualBox, Hyperkit, parallels, etc)
  • You need to ssh to VM to run docker. (minikube ssh)
  • On the positive side, if you are using VMs, you get the VM isolation which is 'more secure' per se.
  • Update: It does support running in docker with --driver=docker

• Kind

  • Runs Docker in a VM (Part of the docker desktop installation for Mac, or Windows)
  • Runs Kubernetes in that "Docker" VM
  • Supports Hyperkit (Mac) or Hyper-V (Windows) hypervisors.
  • Has the convenience that you can run the docker client from your Mac or Windows.
  • You can actually run it in Linux with no need to use a VM (It's a docker native installation on Linux)
  • It runs all K8s components in a single container.