Deploying WordPress on Minikube

 

Introduction

In the ever-evolving landscape of web development, containerization has become a game-changer. Kubernetes, the de facto standard for container orchestration, provides a robust platform for deploying and managing containerized applications. However, setting up Kubernetes clusters for development and testing purposes can be complex and resource-intensive. Enter Minikube – a tool that allows you to run Kubernetes clusters locally.

What is Minikube?

Minikube is a lightweight Kubernetes implementation that runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster on your local machine. It’s perfect for development, testing, and learning Kubernetes concepts without the need for a full-fledged cluster.

Prerequisites

Before we dive into deploying WordPress on Minikube, ensure you have the following (listed below):

• A minikube instance ready to deploy–preferably with 12GiB of RAM and 4 CPUs to ensure a smoother operating experience.

• Your minikube instance should have xorg-x11-xauth package installed for forwarding X11 and a browser of your choice (e.g. Firefox, google, etc..)

We’ve configured our minikube instance with the following settings:

Hostname	mkube-srv2.localdomain
IP address	192.168.1.156
RAM	12
Cores	4
Docker Version	Docker version 25.0.1, build 29cf629
Kubectl Version	Client Version: v1.29.1 Kustomize Version: v5.0.4-0.20230601165947-6ce0bf390ce3 Server Version: v1.28.3
Working Directory	/home/admin/wordpress-deployment
Minikube Version	v1-32.0

 

Deploying WordPress on Minikube: Step-by-step Instructions

Now, let’s delve into the process of deploying WordPress on your Minikube instance.

Start Minikube

First, start Minikube by running the following command in your terminal:

$ minikube start

This command will spin up a local Kubernetes cluster using the Minikube VM. Run the following command (below) to check the running status of the various kubernetes components running on your Minikube instance:

$ kubectl get pods --all-namespaces

NAMESPACE     NAME                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS       AGE
kube-system   coredns-5dd5756b68-gbnw5           1/1     Running   0              3h5m
kube-system   etcd-minikube                      1/1     Running   0              3h5m
kube-system   kube-apiserver-minikube            1/1     Running   0              3h6m
kube-system   kube-controller-manager-minikube   1/1     Running   0              3h5m
kube-system   kube-proxy-s9vzj                   1/1     Running   0              3h5m
kube-system   kube-scheduler-minikube            1/1     Running   0              3h6m
kube-system   storage-provisioner                1/1     Running   0              3h5m

Setting up your Kustomization YAML file

Since version 1.14, kubectl has been equipped to manage Kubernetes objects via a kustomization file. Navigate to your working directory or create one on your Minikube instance with the following commands:

$ mkdir -p wordpress-deployment; cd wordpress-deployment

Generating secret

A Secret serves as a repository for confidential information, such as passwords or keys. To create a Secret using generators in a kustomization.yaml, incorporate the following command. Please replace “YOUR_PASSWORD” with the desired password.

[admin@mkube-srv2 wordpress-deployment]$ cat <<EOF >./kustomization.yaml
secretGenerator:
- name: mysql-pass
  literals:
  - password=YOUR_PASSWORD
EOF

Deploy MySQL

WordPress relies on a MySQL database to store its data. Let’s deploy MySQL to our Minikube cluster using the following YAML manifest:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: wordpress-mysql
  labels:
    app: wordpress
spec:
  ports:
    - port: 3306
  selector:
    app: wordpress
    tier: mysql
  clusterIP: None
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: mysql-pv-claim
  labels:
    app: wordpress
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 5Gi
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: wordpress-mysql
  labels:
    app: wordpress
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: wordpress
      tier: mysql
  strategy:
    type: Recreate
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: wordpress
        tier: mysql
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: mysql:8.0
        name: mysql
        env:
        - name: MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              name: mysql-pass
              key: password
        - name: MYSQL_DATABASE
          value: wordpress
        - name: MYSQL_USER
          value: wordpress
        - name: MYSQL_PASSWORD
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              name: mysql-pass
              key: password
        ports:
        - containerPort: 3306
          name: mysql
        volumeMounts:
        - name: mysql-persistent-storage
          mountPath: /var/lib/mysql
      volumes:
      - name: mysql-persistent-storage
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: mysql-pv-claim

Save the above YAML manifest to a file named mysql.yaml, we’ll apply it in the later sections.

Deploy WordPress

Now, let’s deploy WordPress to our Minikube cluster. Save the following YAML manifest to a file named wordpress.yaml:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: wordpress
  labels:
    app: wordpress
spec:
  ports:
    - port: 80
  selector:
    app: wordpress
    tier: frontend
  type: LoadBalancer
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: wp-pv-claim
  labels:
    app: wordpress
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 5Gi
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: wordpress
  labels:
    app: wordpress
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: wordpress
      tier: frontend
  strategy:
    type: Recreate
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: wordpress
        tier: frontend
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: wordpress:6.2.1-apache
        name: wordpress
        env:
        - name: WORDPRESS_DB_HOST
          value: wordpress-mysql
        - name: WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              name: mysql-pass
              key: password
        - name: WORDPRESS_DB_USER
          value: wordpress
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
          name: wordpress
        volumeMounts:
        - name: wordpress-persistent-storage
          mountPath: /var/www/html
      volumes:
      - name: wordpress-persistent-storage
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: wp-pv-claim

Update the Kustomization.yaml file

Once you’ve finished both the MySQL and WordPress YAML manifests, it’s time to update our kustomization file with the relevant information. Execute the following command to incorporate entries into the file:

[admin@mkube-srv2 wordpress-deployment]$ cat <<EOF >>./kustomization.yaml
resources:
  - mysql.yaml
  - wordpress.yaml
EOF

Apply Kustomization

Finally, apply the contents of the kustomization.yaml file with the following command:

$ kubectl apply -k ./

Executing this command will apply the secrets, persistent storage volumes, MySQL, and WordPress deployments as displayed in the output below.

secret/mysql-pass-df44tkf8t9 created
service/wordpress created
service/wordpress-mysql created
persistentvolumeclaim/mysql-pv-claim created
persistentvolumeclaim/wp-pv-claim created
deployment.apps/wordpress created
deployment.apps/wordpress-mysql created

Verify Deployments

Check and verify the status of all running deployments using the following command:

$ kubectl get pods; kubectl get pvc; kubectl get secret; kubectl get deployments

NAME                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
wordpress-cd74ffcf-b4wmb           1/1     Running   0          16m
wordpress-mysql-86f59dbdd7-l6qgz   1/1     Running   0          16m

NAME             STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
mysql-pv-claim   Bound    pvc-850f1849-363d-4e54-bc2b-7413051edcb1   5Gi        RWO            standard       16m
wp-pv-claim      Bound    pvc-77ab030d-c54b-4332-a18d-6226482719a8   5Gi        RWO            standard       16m

NAME                    TYPE     DATA   AGE
mysql-pass-df44tkf8t9   Opaque   1      16m

NAME              READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
wordpress         1/1     1            1           16m
wordpress-mysql   1/1     1            1           16m

Access WordPress

Once all deployments are up and running, you can access WordPress by running:

$ minikube service wordpress

|-----------|-----------|-------------|---------------------------|
| NAMESPACE |   NAME    | TARGET PORT |            URL            |
|-----------|-----------|-------------|---------------------------|
| default   | wordpress |          80 | http://192.168.49.2:31251 |
|-----------|-----------|-------------|---------------------------|
🎉  Opening service default/wordpress in default browser...
👉  http://192.168.49.2:31251

This command will open WordPress in your default web browser, allowing you to complete the installation process.

Photo by admingeek from Infotechys

Perfect! Our wordpress site is working as expected. In case you need to wipe the slate clean and start over with something else, run the following command to delete all deployments in your kustomization.yaml file:

$ kubectl delete -k ./