Quick Start with KinD 
Manage your KinD clusters with Meshery. Deploy Meshery in your KinD cluster.
Prerequisites
- Install the Meshery command line client, mesheryctl.
- Install kubectl on your local machine.
- Install KinD on your local machine.
Also see: Install Meshery on Kubernetes
Available Deployment Methods
In-cluster Installation
Follow the steps below to install Meshery in your KinD cluster.
Preflight Checks
Before you deploy Meshery on KinD, check the following.
Preflight: Cluster Connectivity
If you don’t have a KinD cluster yet, create one:
kind create cluster
List your KinD clusters:
kind get clusters
Verify your kubeconfig’s current context.
kubectl config current-context
Installation: Using mesheryctl
Verify your Meshery context
Verify that your current Meshery context is set for an in-cluster deployment (platform: kubernetes) by executing:
mesheryctl system context view
If the platform is not kubernetes, create a new context with Kubernetes as the platform:
mesheryctl system context create context-name --platform kubernetes --url http://localhost:9081 --set --yes
With your KinD cluster as your current context, start Meshery:
mesheryctl system start -p kubernetes
Alternative Installation: Using Helm
See Helm Installation guide.
Post-Installation Steps
Meshery creates its service as type LoadBalancer by default, and KinD does not assign external addresses to LoadBalancer services on its own. The simplest option is mesheryctl system dashboard --port-forward. A KinD-specific option is Cloud Provider KIND, a standalone binary that runs on your host, connects to your KinD cluster, and provisions load balancer containers for your services.
Note: The --port-forward flag is intended for use exclusively when Meshery is deployed in a Kubernetes cluster (platform: kubernetes).
Optionally, verify the health of your Meshery deployment with mesheryctl system check.
You’re ready to use Meshery. Open Meshery UI in your browser.
Accessing Meshery UI
Once Meshery is running, mesheryctl system start opens Meshery UI in your default browser. On Docker, Meshery UI listens at http://localhost:9081 by default. On Kubernetes, mesheryctl opens the address of the meshery service in the meshery namespace, which the Helm chart creates as a LoadBalancer service on port 9081.
To open Meshery UI in your default browser at any time, run:
mesheryctl system dashboard
If your cluster does not give the meshery service a reachable address, forward a local port to Meshery instead. By default, mesheryctl listens on local port 9081; use -p to choose another port.
mesheryctl system dashboard --port-forward
You can also port-forward with kubectl:
kubectl port-forward svc/meshery 9081:9081 --namespace meshery
Verify Kubernetes Connection
Whichever way you installed Meshery, verify that Meshery is connected to your cluster:- In the Meshery UI, navigate to Lifecycle from the menu on the left.
- Select Connections.
- Ensure that your cluster appears in the list of connections and is marked as
Connected. - Click the cluster name to run a connectivity test and confirm that Meshery can reach your cluster.
Customizing Your Meshery Provider Callback URL
You can customize the callback URL that your Meshery Provider redirects to after sign-in. This helps when Meshery runs behind several layers of networking infrastructure.
For production deployments, we recommend that you expose Meshery UI through a reverse proxy or a load balancer. A custom callback URL makes sure that sign-in completes even when requests pass through several routing layers.
Note: For production deployments, use a Remote Provider so that you control which identity providers can sign users in. Learn more about this in the Extensibility: Providers guide.
To set a custom callback URL, set the MESHERY_SERVER_CALLBACK_URL environment variable when you start Meshery:
MESHERY_SERVER_CALLBACK_URL=https://custom-host mesheryctl system start
On Kubernetes, Meshery UI is then available at the EXTERNAL-IP of the meshery service. Run kubectl get svc meshery -n meshery to find it.