Canonical Kubernetes Snap

Canonical Kubernetes is an opinionated distribution of Kubernetes which includes all the tools needed to create and manage a scalable cluster with LTS. Canonical Kubernetes builds on the main Kubernetes project by providing all the necessary pieces for a zero-ops experience, such as Ingress, DNS, networking, and so on. Whether you are a complete beginner to Kubernetes or a seasoned system administrator, Canonical Kubernetes provides a way to easily deploy a cluster allowing you to focus on applications over infrastructure.

Basic usage

Canonical Kubernetes provides a way for you to easily enable, disable, and configure the essential default Kubernetes features in your cluster.

For example, if you want a load balancer with L2 mode enabled, run:

sudo k8s enable load-balancer
sudo k8s set load-balancer.l2-mode=true

Or, if you want to disable the default local storage before implementing your own storage solution, run:

sudo k8s disable local-storage

Use kubectl to interact with k8s just as you would with any other Kubernetes cluster:

sudo k8s kubectl get pods -A

If you want to explore the possibilities of what you can do with Canonical Kubernetes, be sure to check out its how-to guides .

Installation

Canonical Kubernetes is available for Ubuntu 22.04 and higher. It's also available in other Linux distributions that support snaps.

Install the snap:

sudo snap install k8s --channel=1.32-classic/stable --classic

Initialize the cluster:

sudo k8s bootstrap

If you would like to customize the deployment, see our installation guides .

Documentation

The Canonical Kubernetes documentation provides information about how to grow your cluster by adding additional nodes, how your cluster can stay up-to-date with the latest Kubernetes releases automatically, backing up your cluster, and much more.

Community and support

Do you have questions about Canonical Kubernetes? Perhaps you'd like some advice from more experienced users or discuss how to achieve a certain goal? Get in touch on the #canonical-kubernetes channel on the Kubenetes Slack workspace .

You can report any bugs or issues you find on GitHub.

Canonical Kubernetes is covered by the Ubuntu Code of Conduct.

Contribute to Canonical Kubernetes

Canonical Kubernetes is a proudly open source project and we welcome and encourage contributions to the code and documentation. If you are interested, take a look at our contributing guide .

License and copyright

Canonical Kubernetes is released under the GPL-3.0 license.

© 2015-2025 Canonical Ltd.