Deploy Dapr on a Kubernetes cluster

When setting up Kubernetes you can use either the Dapr CLI or Helm.

For more information on what is deployed to your Kubernetes cluster read the Kubernetes overview

Prerequisites

• Install Dapr CLI
• Install kubectl
• Kubernetes cluster (see below if needed)

Create cluster

You can install Dapr on any Kubernetes cluster. Here are some helpful links:

• Setup Minikube Cluster
• Setup Azure Kubernetes Service Cluster
• Setup Google Cloud Kubernetes Engine
• Setup Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service

Install with Dapr CLI

You can install Dapr to a Kubernetes cluster using the Dapr CLI.

Install Dapr

The -k flag initializes Dapr on the Kubernetes cluster in your current context.

Run the following command on your local machine to init Dapr on your cluster:

dapr init -k

⌛  Making the jump to hyperspace...

✅  Deploying the Dapr control plane to your cluster...
✅  Success! Dapr has been installed to namespace dapr-system. To verify, run "dapr status -k" in your terminal. To get started, go here: https://aka.ms/dapr-getting-started

Install in custom namespace

The default namespace when initializing Dapr is dapr-system. You can override this with the -n flag.

dapr init -k -n mynamespace

Install in highly available mode

You can run Dapr with 3 replicas of each control plane pod in the dapr-system namespace for production scenarios.

dapr init -k --enable-ha=true

Disable mTLS

Dapr is initialized by default with mTLS. You can disable it with:

dapr init -k --enable-mtls=false

Wait for the installation to complete

You can wait for the installation to complete its deployment with the --wait flag.

The default timeout is 300s (5 min), but can be customized with the --timeout flag.

dapr init -k --wait --timeout 600

Uninstall Dapr on Kubernetes with CLI

Run the following command on your local machine to uninstall Dapr on your cluster:

dapr uninstall -k

Install with Helm (advanced)

You can install Dapr on Kubernetes using a Helm 3 chart.

Add and install Dapr Helm chart

1. Make sure Helm 3 is installed on your machine

2. Add Helm repo and update

   helm repo add dapr https://dapr.github.io/helm-charts/
   helm repo update
   # See which chart versions are available
   helm search repo dapr --devel --versions
   

3. Install the Dapr chart on your cluster in the dapr-system namespace.

   helm upgrade --install dapr dapr/dapr \
   --version=1.1.2 \
   --namespace dapr-system \
   --create-namespace \
   --wait
   

   To install in high availability mode:

   helm upgrade --install dapr dapr/dapr \
   --version=1.1.2 \
   --namespace dapr-system \
   --create-namespace \
   --set global.ha.enabled=true \
   --wait
   

   See Guidelines for production ready deployments on Kubernetes for more information on installing and upgrading Dapr using Helm.

Uninstall Dapr on Kubernetes

helm uninstall dapr --namespace dapr-system

More information

• Read this guide for recommended Helm chart values for production setups
• See this page for details on Dapr Helm charts.

Verify installation

Once the installation is complete, verify that the dapr-operator, dapr-placement, dapr-sidecar-injector and dapr-sentry pods are running in the dapr-system namespace:

kubectl get pods --namespace dapr-system

NAME                                     READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
dapr-dashboard-7bd6cbf5bf-xglsr          1/1       Running   0          40s
dapr-operator-7bd6cbf5bf-xglsr           1/1       Running   0          40s
dapr-placement-7f8f76778f-6vhl2          1/1       Running   0          40s
dapr-sidecar-injector-8555576b6f-29cqm   1/1       Running   0          40s
dapr-sentry-9435776c7f-8f7yd             1/1       Running   0          40s

Next steps

• Configure state store & pubsub message broker