How will you install Kubernetes on bare metal and in the cloud?

For bare metal, I use kubeadm. First, I initialize the control plane nodes (kubeadm init), then add worker nodes (kubeadm join). I make sure to deploy a network plugin (such as Calico or Flannel). I consider the specifics of the network infrastructure and storage.

For cloud environments (such as AWS, GCP, Azure), I use managed Kubernetes services like EKS, GKE, or AKS. This relieves me from managing master nodes, scaling, and updates. The setup process involves creating a cluster via the cloud provider's web interface or CLI.

Differences:

Bare Metal	Cloud
Full control	Managed service
Manual network and storage setup	Integrated with cloud resources
Responsibility for master nodes	Responsibility lies with the provider
More effort needed for High Availability	HA is usually built-in or easy to configure

Example of kubeadm initialization:

# Initialize the control plane node
sudo kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr=10.244.0.0/16

Example of joining a worker node:

# Command shown after initializing the control plane node
sudo kubeadm join <master-ip>:<master-port> --token <token> --discovery-token-ca-cert-hash sha256:<hash>

Using cloud CLI (AWS EKS):

# Example of creating an EKS cluster with eksctl
eksctl create cluster --name my-cluster --region eu-central-1 --node-type t3.medium --nodes 3

In both cases, after installation, kubectl must be configured to interact with the cluster.

# Configure kubectl
mkdir -p $HOME/.kube
sudo cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf $HOME/.kube/config
sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) $HOME/.kube/config

Then, necessary applications, Helm charts are installed, and CI/CD is configured.