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Install k0rdent#

This section assumes that you already have a kubernetes cluster installed. If you need to setup a cluster you can follow the Create and prepare a Kubernetes cluster with k0s to create a test cluster, or Create and prepare a production grade Kubernetes cluster with EKS to create something more substantial.

The actual management cluster is a Kubernetes cluster with the k0rdent application installed. The simplest way to install k0rdent is through its Helm chart. You can find the latest release here, and from there you can deploy the Helm chart, as in:

helm install kcm oci://ghcr.io/k0rdent/kcm/charts/kcm --version 1.4.0 -n kcm-system --create-namespace

Pulled: ghcr.io/k0rdent/kcm/charts/kcm:1.4.0
Digest: sha256:6c7b320c3919f66705a89a9276c4605407201fd4d067006374f2417dc15c3648
NAME: kcm
LAST DEPLOYED: Tue Sep 30 12:54:32 2025
NAMESPACE: kcm-system
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None

Note

Make sure to specify the correct release version number.

The helm chart deploys the KCM operator and prepares the environment, and KCM then proceeds to deploy the various subcomponents, including CAPI. The entire process takes a few minutes.

Cleanup: Uninstall k0rdent#

And of course when you need to clean up, you can use helm as well. Follow these steps:

  1. Remove any ClusterDeployment objects in the cluster.

  2. Delete the Management object:

    kubectl delete management.k0rdent kcm

  3. Remove the kcm Helm release:

    helm uninstall kcm -n kcm-system

  4. Finally, remove the kcm-system namespace:

    kubectl delete ns kcm-system