How to get started with Managed Service for Kubernetes®: Create your first cluster for Kubernetes

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Prepare your environment

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Install the CLIs and tools

sudo apt-get install jq
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl
curl -sSL https://storage.eu-north1.nebius.cloud/cli/install.sh | bash
nebius profile create

brew install jq
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/darwin/arm64/kubectl"
chmod +x ./kubectl
sudo mv ./kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl
sudo chown root: /usr/local/bin/kubectl
curl -sSL https://storage.eu-north1.nebius.cloud/cli/install.sh | bash
nebius profile create

• kubectl (how to install) is the Kubernetes command line interface.
• jq (how to install) parses JSON outputs from the Nebius AI Cloud CLI and extracts resource IDs for other commands.
• Nebius AI Cloud CLI (how to install) manages all Nebius AI Cloud resources.

nebius config set parent-id <project_ID>

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Create a cluster and a node group

1. Your cluster’s control plane and nodes will use private IP addresses from the default subnet. Get its ID:
   export SUBNET_ID=$(nebius vpc subnet list \
     --format json \
     | jq -r '.items[0].metadata.id')
   
2. Create a cluster with a public endpoint allocated to its control plane, and get the cluster ID:
   export CLUSTER_ID=$(nebius mk8s cluster create \
     --name quickstart-mk8s-cluster \
     --control-plane-subnet-id $SUBNET_ID \
     --control-plane-endpoints-public-endpoint true \
     --format json | jq -r '.metadata.id')
   
   The cluster’s control plane will run the Kubernetes version 1.32, which is the default version for Managed Kubernetes clusters. To explicitly specify another supported version, add the --control-plane-version <major.minor> parameter to nebius mk8s cluster create.
3. Create a node group and add it to the cluster:
   export NODE_USERNAME="user"
   nebius mk8s node-group create \
     --name quickstart-mk8s-nodes \
     --parent-id $CLUSTER_ID \
     --fixed-node-count 2 \
     --template-resources-platform "cpu-e2" \
     --template-resources-preset "2vcpu-8gb" \
     --template-boot-disk-type network_ssd \
     --template-boot-disk-size-bytes 137438953472 \
     --template-cloud-init-user-data "$(cat <<EOF
   users:
     - name: $NODE_USERNAME
       sudo: ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
       shell: /bin/bash
       ssh_authorized_keys:
         - $(cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub)
   EOF
   )" \
     --template-network-interfaces "[{\"public_ip_address\": {},
                                      \"subnet_id\": \"$SUBNET_ID\"}]"
   
   The command creates a group of 2 nodes. Each node is a non-GPU (--template-resources-platform "cpu-e2") virtual machine that has 2 vCPUs, 8 GiB of RAM, a 128 GiB Network SSD boot disk and a public IP address. You will be able to connect to both nodes via SSH as user (as specified in NODE_USERNAME).

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Connect to the cluster

1. Create a kubeconfig file containing the cluster details for kubectl:
   nebius mk8s cluster get-credentials \
     --id $CLUSTER_ID --external
   
2. Check that the cluster is accessible. For example:
   • Get addresses of the control plane and cluster services:
     kubectl cluster-info
     
   • Get the list of Pods:
     kubectl get pods -A
     

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What’s next

• How to create and modify Managed Service for Kubernetes® clusters
• Creating and modifying Managed Service for Kubernetes® node groups