Minikube

Minikube is a tool that allows you to run Kubernetes locally on your machine. It launches a single-node Kubernetes cluster inside a virtual machine on your laptop or desktop. This provides a simple way to try out Kubernetes without needing a production-grade cluster.

When you start Minikube, it provisions a virtual machine, installs the necessary Kubernetes components like kubelet and kubectl, and starts up a single-node cluster. Once the cluster is running, you can interact with it just like you would with a full Kubernetes cluster - deploy pods, create services, scale workloads etc. This is useful for development and testing locally before pushing your workloads to a real cluster. For example, you can test building container images, exploring Kubernetes features, and running simple apps. Minikube makes it easy to experiment with Kubernetes without the overhead of setting up a complete cluster.

So in summary, Minikube is a local development tool that lets developers quickly start evaluating Kubernetes on their workstations with minimal resource requirements. It's not suitable for production but allows for convenient and safe experimentation with Kubernetes.