kata-on-kind

kata-on-kind

kind runs Kubernetes nodes as Docker containers. kata-deploy is a DaemonSet that installs the Kata Containers runtime + VM artifacts onto every node it lands on and reconfigures containerd to register the kata-qemu, kata-clh, and kata-fc RuntimeClasses. Combining the two on a Linux host gives microVM-isolated pods for local development.

Host prerequisites — Linux only

Kata-on-kind requires the host to expose /dev/kvm to the kind node container. macOS hosts (Apple Silicon or Intel) cannot do this — Hypervisor.framework does not expose nested KVM to a guest Linux VM. For macOS, use kina-microvm (Apple Container nodes) instead.

Linux host checklist:

# Kernel supports KVM
ls /dev/kvm

# Current user can use KVM (or run kind under sudo)
groups | grep -E '\b(kvm|libvirt)\b'

# Nested virt enabled on the CPU (Intel)
cat /sys/module/kvm_intel/parameters/nested  # expect Y or 1
# or AMD
cat /sys/module/kvm_amd/parameters/nested

# QEMU available on host (kata-deploy copies its own qemu into the node, but
# host-side qemu helps with debugging)
qemu-system-x86_64 --version

If /dev/kvm is missing, install KVM:

sudo apt-get install -y qemu-kvm libvirt-clients libvirt-daemon-system
sudo usermod -aG kvm $USER
# log out and back in for the group to take effect

Step 1 — create the kind cluster

cat <<'EOF' >kind-kata.yaml
kind: Cluster
apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
nodes:
  - role: control-plane
    extraMounts:
      - hostPath: /dev/kvm
        containerPath: /dev/kvm
        propagation: HostToContainer
EOF

kind create cluster --name kata --config kind-kata.yaml --image kindest/node:v1.31.0
kubectl cluster-info --context kind-kata

The extraMounts block passes /dev/kvm from the host into the kind node container. Without it, kata-deploy will install but pods will fail to start with qemu errors about KVM access.

Step 2 — install kata-deploy

# Canonical manifest from the kata-containers repo
kubectl apply -k "github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/tools/packaging/kata-deploy/kata-deploy/overlays/k3s"

# Or the base (works on most distros including kind):
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/main/tools/packaging/kata-deploy/kata-deploy/base/kata-deploy.yaml

# Wait for the DaemonSet to install Kata on every node
kubectl rollout status -n kube-system ds/kata-deploy --timeout=10m