minikube runs Kubernetes on the Linux VM on macOS. It relies on a hypervisor (virtualization technology), such as VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org), VMWare fusion (https://www.vmware.com/products/fusion.html), or hyperkit (https://github.com/moby/hyperkit) In addition, we will need to have the Kubernetes command-line interface (CLI) kubectl, which is used to connect through the hypervisor, to control Kubernetes.

With minikube, you can run the entire suite of the Kubernetes stack on your macOS, including the Kubernetes master, node, and CLI. It is recommended that macOS has enough memory to run Kubernetes. By default, minikube uses VirtualBox as the hypervisor.

In this chapter, however, we will demonstrate how to use hyperkit, which is the most lightweight solution. As Linux VM consumes 2 GB of memory, at least 4 GB of memory is recommended. Note that hyperkit is built on the top of the hypervisor framework (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hypervisor) on macOS; therefore, macOS 10.10 Yosemite or later is required.

The following diagram shows the relationship between kubectl, the hypervisor, minikube, and macOS: