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Installation

docs/installation.md

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Installation

Helm Chart

helm can be used to install templated kubernetes manifests.

Prerequisites

  • Kubernetes ≥ v1.22 – v1.22 is the first release where the CRI v1 API became the default and RuntimeClass left alpha. The chart depends on those stable interfaces; earlier clusters need feature‑gates or CRI shims that are out of scope.

  • Kata Release 3.12 - v3.12.0 introduced publishing the helm-chart on the release page for easier consumption, since v3.8.0 we shipped the helm-chart via source code in the kata-containers GitHub repository.

  • CRI‑compatible runtime (containerd or CRI‑O). If one wants to use the multiInstallSuffix feature one needs at least containerd-2.0 which supports drop-in config files

  • Nodes must allow loading kernel modules and installing Kata artifacts (the chart runs privileged containers to do so)

helm install

sh
# Install directly from the official ghcr.io OCI registry
# update the VERSION X.YY.Z to your needs or just use the latest

export VERSION=$(curl -sSL https://api.github.com/repos/kata-containers/kata-containers/releases/latest | jq .tag_name | tr -d '"')
export CHART="oci://ghcr.io/kata-containers/kata-deploy-charts/kata-deploy"

$ helm install kata-deploy "${CHART}" --version "${VERSION}"

# See everything you can configure
$ helm show values "${CHART}" --version "${VERSION}"

This installs the kata-deploy DaemonSet and the default Kata RuntimeClass resources on your cluster.

To see what versions of the chart are available:

sh
$ helm show chart oci://ghcr.io/kata-containers/kata-deploy-charts/kata-deploy

helm uninstall

sh
$ helm uninstall kata-deploy -n kube-system

During uninstall, Helm will report that some resources were kept due to the resource policy (ServiceAccount, ClusterRole, ClusterRoleBinding). This is normal. A post-delete hook Job runs after uninstall and removes those resources so no cluster-wide RBAC is left behind.

Pre-Built Release

Kata can also be installed using the pre-built releases: https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/releases

This method does not have any facilities for artifact lifecycle management.