Having a private Docker registry can significantly improve your productivity by reducing the time spent in uploading and downloading Docker images. The registry shipped with MicroK8s is hosted within the Kubernetes cluster and is exposed as a NodePort service on port 32000 of the localhost. Note that this is an insecure registry and you may need to take extra steps to limit access to it.

Working with MicroK8s’ built-in registry

You can install the registry with:

microk8s enable registry

The add-on registry is backed up by a 20Gi persistent volume is claimed for storing images. To satisfy this claim the storage add-on is also enabled along with the registry.

From version 1.18.3 it is also possible to specify the amount of storage to be added. E.g., to use 40Gi:

microk8s enable registry:size=40Gi

The containerd daemon used by MicroK8s is configured to trust this insecure registry. To upload images we have to tag them with localhost:32000/your-image before pushing them:

We can either add proper tagging during build:

ⓘ Note: The :registry tag used below is just an example. Any tag can be used. However, containerd will cache them when pulling from the registry, and subsequent pushes won’t have any effect on Pods running inside of MicroK8s. You can either manually update the containerd image with microk8s ctr image pull localhost:32000/mynginx:registry, or use the :latest (or no) tag, which containerd will not cache.

docker build . -t localhost:32000/mynginx:registry

Or tag an already existing image using the image ID. Obtain the ID by running:

docker images

The ID is listed in the output:

REPOSITORY          TAG                 IMAGE ID            SIZE
mynginx             local               1fe3d8f47868        16.1MB
....

Then use the tag command:

docker tag 1fe3d8f47868 localhost:32000/mynginx:registry

Now that the image is tagged correctly, it can be pushed to the registry:

docker push localhost:32000/mynginx

Pushing to this insecure registry may fail in some versions of Docker unless the daemon is explicitly configured to trust this registry. To address this we need to edit /etc/docker/daemon.json and add:

{
  "insecure-registries" : ["localhost:32000"]
}

The new configuration should be loaded with a Docker daemon restart:

sudo systemctl restart docker

At this point we are ready to microk8s kubectl apply -f a deployment with our image:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx-deployment
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: localhost:32000/mynginx:registry
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80

What if MicroK8s runs inside a VM?

Often MicroK8s is placed in a VM while the development process takes place on the host machine. In this setup pushing container images to the in-VM registry requires some extra configuration.

Let’s assume the IP of the VM running MicroK8s is 10.141.241.175. When we are on the host the Docker registry is not on localhost:32000 but on 10.141.241.175:32000. As a result the first thing we need to do is to tag the image we are building on the host with the right registry endpoint:

docker build . -t 10.141.241.175:32000/mynginx:registry

If we immediately try to push the mynginx image we will fail because the local Docker does not trust the in-VM registry. Here is what happens if we try a push:

docker push  10.141.241.175:32000/mynginx

The push refers to repository [10.141.241.175:32000/mynginx]
Get https://10.141.241.175:32000/v2/: http: server gave HTTP response to HTTPS client

We need to be explicit and configure the Docker daemon running on the host to
trust the in-VM insecure registry. Add the registry endpoint in
/etc/docker/daemon.json:

{
  "insecure-registries" : ["10.141.241.175:32000"]
}

Then restart the docker daemon on the host to load the new configuration:

sudo systemctl restart docker

We can now docker push 10.141.241.175:32000/mynginx and see the image getting uploaded. During the push our Docker client instructs the in-host Docker daemon to upload the newly built image to the 10.141.241.175:32000 endpoint as marked by the tag on the image. The Docker daemon sees (on /etc/docker/daemon.json) that it trusts the registry and proceeds with uploading the image.

Consuming the image from inside the VM involves no changes:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx-deployment
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: localhost:32000/mynginx:registry
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80

Reference the image with localhost:32000/mynginx:registry since the registry runs inside the VM so it is on localhost:32000.

Using the local registry from another node in a MicroK8s cluster

If you have joined up other machines into a cluster with the machine that has the registry, you need to change the configuration files to point to the IP of the master node:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx-deployment
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: <IP of the master node>:32000/mynginx:registry
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80

ⓘ Note: You will also need to manually edit the containerd TOML on each of the worker nodes to point to and trust this custom registry. Instructions for this are in the private registry instructions in the Configuring Micro8s section.