kubeadm is the official tool for bootstrapping a production-grade Kubernetes cluster. This guide installs Kubernetes 1.30 on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS using kubeadm on a single control-plane node with worker nodes.

Tested and valid on:

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Prerequisites

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS servers (1 control-plane + at least 1 worker)
  • Minimum 2 vCPUs and 2 GB RAM per node
  • Unique hostnames and static IPs
  • A user with sudo privileges

Step 1 – Prepare All Nodes

On every node, disable swap and load required kernel modules:

sudo swapoff -a
sudo sed -i '/ swap / s/^(.*)$/#1/g' /etc/fstab

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/k8s.conf
overlay
br_netfilter
EOF

sudo modprobe overlay
sudo modprobe br_netfilter

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/k8s.conf
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables  = 1
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 1
net.ipv4.ip_forward                 = 1
EOF

sudo sysctl --system

Step 2 – Install containerd on All Nodes

Install containerd as the container runtime:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install containerd -y
sudo mkdir -p /etc/containerd
containerd config default | sudo tee /etc/containerd/config.toml
sudo sed -i 's/SystemdCgroup = false/SystemdCgroup = true/' /etc/containerd/config.toml
sudo systemctl restart containerd
sudo systemctl enable containerd

Step 3 – Install kubeadm, kubelet, kubectl

Add the Kubernetes repository and install:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gpg
curl -fsSL https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.30/deb/Release.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/kubernetes-apt-keyring.gpg
echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/kubernetes-apt-keyring.gpg] https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.30/deb/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y kubelet kubeadm kubectl
sudo apt-mark hold kubelet kubeadm kubectl

Step 4 – Initialise the Control-Plane Node

On the control-plane node only:

sudo kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr=192.168.0.0/16

After completion, set up kubectl:

mkdir -p $HOME/.kube
sudo cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf $HOME/.kube/config
sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) $HOME/.kube/config

Step 5 – Install a Pod Network (Calico)

Install the Calico CNI plugin on the control plane:

kubectl apply -f https://docs.projectcalico.org/manifests/calico.yaml

Step 6 – Join Worker Nodes

Run the join command shown by kubeadm init on each worker:

sudo kubeadm join control-plane-ip:6443 --token  --discovery-token-ca-cert-hash sha256:

Step 7 – Verify the Cluster

Check all nodes are ready:

kubectl get nodes
kubectl get pods --all-namespaces

Conclusion

A Kubernetes 1.30 cluster is now running on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Use kubectl to deploy workloads, manage namespaces, and scale applications across all nodes.