Configure Kubectl to connect to a local network Kubernetes cluster

Question

I'm trying to connect to a kube.netes cluster running on my Windows PC from my Mac. This is so I can continue to develop from my Mac but run everything on a machine with more resources. I know that to do this I need to change the kubectl context on my Mac to point towards my Windows PC but don't know how to manually do this.

When I've connected to a cluster before on AKS, I would use az aks get-credentials and this would correctly an entry to.kube/config and change the context to it. I'm basically trying to do this but on a local.network.

I've tried to add an entry into kubeconfig but get The connection to the server 192.168.1.XXX:6443 was refused - did you specify the right host or port? . I've also checked my antivirus on the Windows computer and no requests are getting blocked.

apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
    certificate-authority-data: {CERT}
    server: https://192.168.1.XXX:6443
  name: windows-docker-desktop
current-context: windows-docker-desktop
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: windows-docker-desktop
  user:
    client-certificate-data: {CERT}
    client-key-data: {KEY}

I've also tried using kubectl --insecure-skip-tls-verify --context=windows-docker-desktop get pods which results in the same error: The connection to the server 192.168.1.XXX:6443 was refused - did you specify the right host or port? .

Many thanks.

Answer 1

From your MAC try if the port is open: Like nc -zv 192.168.yourwindowsIp 6443. If it doest respond Open, you have a.network problem. Try this.

clusters:
- cluster:
    server: https://192.168.1.XXX:6443
    name: windows-docker-desktop
    insecure-skip-tls-verify: true

directly in the configfile

the set-context you dont need to specify as you have only one. To be sure it is not your firewall, disable it just for a very short period, only to test the conection.

Last thing: Seems you are using Kube.netes in Docker-Desktop. If not and you have a local cluster with more than 1 node, you need to install a.network fabric in your cluster like Flannel or Calico. https://projectcalico.docs.tigera.io/about/about-calico https://github.com/flannel-io/flannel