Need Assistance with etcd Installation and Cluster Backup Strategies for CKA Preparation

General Discussions
1

Hello Kubernetes Community,

I’m currently preparing for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) exam and have set up a local Kubernetes cluster using Vagrant with VirtualBox on Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS. I followed the setup instructions from the C2Platform documentation.

Setup Details:

  • Environment: Vagrant with VirtualBox
  • OS: Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS
  • Kubernetes Version: v1.31.7
  • CRI: Cri-O v1.33.0

Commands Used:

I used the following command to initialize the cluster:

shell

kubeadm init --apiserver-advertise-address=$C2_CONTROL_IP \
  --apiserver-cert-extra-sans=$C2_CONTROL_IP \
  --pod-network-cidr=$C2_POD_CIDR \
  --service-cidr=$C2_SERVICE_CIDR \
  --node-name "$C2_NODE_NAME" \
  --ignore-preflight-errors Swap

Issue:

After setting up the cluster, I expected etcd and etcdctl to be installed locally, but they are not present on my system. However, I can see an etcd pod running in the kube-system namespace:

shell

kubectl get pods -n kube-system

Questions:

  1. etcd Installation: Is the lack of a local etcd and etcdctl installation a normal setup in this version of Kubernetes, or am I missing a step in the installation process?
  2. Backup/Restore Documentation: I’m looking for guidance on how to effectively back up and restore the cluster, which I believe is essential for the CKA exam. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find relevant material in the C2Platform documentation. Could anyone recommend resources or share their insights on best practices for this procedure?
  3. Changes in etcd Operations: Is there a change in how etcd operations are handled in newer versions of Kubernetes that differs from conventional methods?

Node Information:

shell

$ kubectl get nodes -o wide
NAME              STATUS   ROLES           AGE     VERSION   INTERNAL-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   OS-IMAGE             KERNEL-VERSION      CONTAINER-RUNTIME
c2d-cka-cp        Ready    control-plane   6h33m   v1.31.7   192.168.56.10   <none>        Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS   5.15.0-30-generic   cri-o://1.33.0
c2d-cka-worker1   Ready    worker          6h6m    v1.31.7   192.168.56.21   <none>        Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS   5.15.0-30-generic   cri-o://1.33.0
c2d-cka-worker2   Ready    worker          6h2m    v1.31.7   192.168.56.22   <none>        Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS   5.15.0-30-generic   cri-o://1.33.0
c2d-cka-worker3   Ready    worker          5h58m   v1.31.7   192.168.56.23   <none>        Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS   5.15.0-30-generic   cri-o://1.33.0

I appreciate any guidance or resources the community can provide. Thank you in advance for your help!