Prerequisites

KubeNest is installed onto hosts you own, and every cluster it installs registers to a control plane. The first install creates that control plane inside the cluster it is installing, so the whole product starts from one Ubuntu host and no separate service to sign up for.

The first install

You need:

• one Ubuntu 24.04 host with at least 2 vCPU, 3.7 GiB RAM and 36 GiB of free disk on the root filesystem;
• SSH access from the machine running the CLI, with passwordless sudo on the host;
• either a pre-created kubenest-vg volume group or a blank storage device, given to the installer with --storage-device; and
• normal outbound access to container registries and Helm repositories, for the duration of the install.

The management host must also accept TCP 443 from the machine running the CLI: the console and the API are served there, and the CLI reads the bundle manifest and reports install progress over that connection.

kubenest platform install \
  --control-plane \
  --bundle 1.1 \
  --name mgmt \
  --ha single-server \
  --server 203.0.113.10 \
  --ssh-user ubuntu \
  --storage-device /dev/nvme1n1

That command installs the platform bundle and the control plane together, registers the cluster to its own control plane, and leaves the CLI logged in. See Quickstart for the full walkthrough and Install the platform for the flags, the stages and recovery.

Adding clusters

Further clusters are installed from a machine with the same host and SSH requirements, plus a CLI logged in to the management cluster’s control plane:

• when the CLI is already logged in, kubenest platform install with no --control-plane flag is enough;
• on a machine that has never logged in, run kubenest login --control-plane https://api.<domain> --token-stdin --ca-file <platform CA> first.

The new cluster’s agent connects out to the management cluster’s hub over wss on port 443, so the management host must accept 443 from the new cluster as well as from the machine running the CLI.

For the runnable commands, see Quickstart and Install the platform.