Minikube vs Kubernetes in Docker for Windows

Question

Most tutorials I've seen for developing with Kubernetes locally use Minikube. In the latest Edge release of Docker for Windows, you can also enable Kubernetes. I'm trying to understand the differences between the two and which I should use.

1. Minikube lets you choose the version of Kubernetes you want, can Docker for Windows do that? I don't see a way to configure it.
2. Minikube has CLI commands to enable the dashboard, heapster, ingress and other addons. I'm not sure why because my undertstanding is that these are simply executing kubectl apply -f http://....
3. With Minikube I can do a minikube ip to get the cluster IP address for ingress, how can I do this with Docker for Windows?
4. Is there anything else different that I should care about.

Answer 1

I feel like you largely understand the space, and mostly have answers to your questions already. You might find Docker for Mac vs. Docker Toolbox an informative read, even if it's about the Mac equivalent rather than Windows and about Docker packaged as a VM rather than Kubernetes specifically.

1. In fact you are stuck with the specific version of Kubernetes the Docker Edge desktop distribution publishes.

2. is answered in the question.

3. I believe NodePort-type Services are published on your host's IP address; there isn't an intermediate VM address like there is with Docker Toolbox.

4. Docker Toolbox and minikube always use a full-blown virtual machine with an off-the-shelf hypervisor. The Docker desktop application might use a lighter-weight virtualization engine if one is available.

5. Kubernetes can involve some significant background work. If you're using Kubernetes-in-Docker it's hard to "turn off" Kubernetes and still have Docker available; but if you have a separate minikube VM you can just stop it.

Answer 2

Here is a part from Docker documentation:

Kubernetes is only available in Docker for Windows 18.02 CE Edge. Kubernetes support is not included in Docker for Windows 18.02 CE Stable. To find out more about Stable and Edge channels and how to switch between them, see General configuration.

Docker for Windows 18.02 CE Edge includes a standalone Kubernetes server and client, as well as Docker CLI integration. The Kubernetes server runs locally within your Docker instance, is not configurable, and is a single-node cluster.

The Kubernetes server runs within a Docker container on your local system, and is only for local testing. When Kubernetes support is enabled, you can deploy your workloads, in parallel, on Kubernetes, Swarm, and as standalone containers. Enabling or disabling the Kubernetes server does not affect your other workloads.

See Docker for Windows > Getting started to enable Kubernetes and begin testing the deployment of your workloads on Kubernetes.

If you have enough CPU and RAM resources, you can easily have both, minikube and docker-for-desktop on the same machine and switch between them by selecting the context, e.g.:

> kubectl config get-contexts
> kubectl config use-context docker-for-desktop

There is no place at the moment to choose the Kubernetes version for docker-for-desktop. It is preselected in the Docker distribution package.

Unfortunately, version of docker inside the minikube is a step behind compared to available on the docker website, and some features could be missing, but if you are interested in Kubernetes environment, it doesn't really matter in most cases.

Some of the features of Kubernetes rely on external resources and could be unavailable for you in case of local installation. For example, you need an ability to create Cloud Load Balancer to use some types of the Ingress or Service objects.

But other resources can be easily started inside the minikube, or docker-for-desktop using kubectl create/apply.

To expose your cluster resources externally, you can use Webhook Relay Ingress controller.
Here is a link to the installation manual.