---
title: Minikube
description: Instructions to set up minikube for Istio.
weight: 50
skip_seealso: true
aliases:
    - /docs/setup/kubernetes/prepare/platform-setup/minikube/
    - /docs/setup/kubernetes/platform-setup/minikube/
keywords: [platform-setup,kubernetes,minikube]
owner: istio/wg-environments-maintainers
test: no
---

Follow these instructions to prepare minikube for Istio installation with sufficient
resources to run Istio and some basic applications.

## Prerequisites

- Administrative privileges are required to run minikube.

- To enable the [Secret Discovery Service](https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/latest/configuration/security/secret#sds-configuration) (SDS) for your mesh, you must add [extra configurations](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod-container/configure-service-account/#service-account-token-volume-projection) to your Kubernetes deployment.
Refer to the [`api-server` reference docs](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/kube-apiserver/) for the most up-to-date flags.

## Installation steps

1.  Install the latest version of
    [minikube](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/#minikube) and a
    [minikube hypervisor driver](https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/start/#install-a-hypervisor).

1.  If you're not using the default driver, set your minikube hypervisor driver.

    For example, if you installed the KVM hypervisor, set the `driver`
    within the minikube configuration using the following command:

    {{< text bash >}}
    $ minikube config set driver kvm2
    {{< /text >}}

1.  Start minikube with 16384 `MB` of memory and 4 `CPUs`. This example uses Kubernetes version **1.26.1**.
    You can change the version to any Kubernetes version supported by Istio by altering the
    `--kubernetes-version` value:

    {{< text bash >}}
    $ minikube start --memory=16384 --cpus=4 --kubernetes-version=v1.26.1
    {{< /text >}}

    Depending on the hypervisor you use and the platform on which the hypervisor
    is run, minimum memory requirements vary. 16384 `MB` is sufficient to run
    Istio and bookinfo.

    {{< tip >}}
    If you don't have enough RAM allocated to the minikube
    virtual machine, the following errors could occur:

    - image pull failures
    - healthcheck timeout failures
    - kubectl failures on the host
    - general network instability of the virtual machine and the host
    - complete lock-up of the virtual machine
    - host NMI watchdog reboots

    One effective way to monitor memory usage in minikube is to `ssh` into the minikube virtual machine
    and from that prompt run the top command:

    {{< text bash >}}
    $ minikube ssh
    {{< /text >}}

    {{< text bash >}}
    $ top
    GiB Mem : 12.4/15.7
    {{< /text >}}

    This shows 12.4GiB used of an available 15.7 GiB RAM within the virtual
    machine.  This data was generated with the VMWare Fusion hypervisor on a
    Macbook Pro 13" with 16GiB RAM running Istio 1.2 with bookinfo installed.
    {{< /tip >}}

1.  (Optional, recommended) If you want minikube to provide a load balancer for use
    by Istio, you can use the
    [minikube tunnel](https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/tasks/loadbalancer/#using-minikube-tunnel) feature.
    Run this command in a different terminal, because the minikube tunnel feature will block your
    terminal to output diagnostic information about the network:

    {{< text bash >}}
    $ minikube tunnel
    {{< /text >}}

    {{< warning >}}
    Sometimes minikube does not clean up the tunnel network properly. To force a proper
    cleanup:

    {{< text bash >}}
    $ minikube tunnel --cleanup
    {{< /text >}}

    {{< /warning >}}