Cannot find page about adding Windows nodes

[cqpr-nnit]

Everytime I try to go to https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/kubeadm/adding-windows-nodes/ I get redirected to https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/tools/kubeadm/create-cluster-kubeadm/ - Where is the guide to adding windows nodes?

[neolit123]

/sig docs windows cluster-lifecycle /kind bug

seems like a link problem? old page for 1.23 is here https://v1-23.docs.kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/kubeadm/adding-windows-nodes

[sftim]

/remove-kind bug

There is now no specific guide for creating Windows nodes (nor is there one for creating Linux nodes). SIG Windows opted to remove the guide that did exist, in PR #33324

If someone wants to write a new task page about adding a node to an existing cluster, we (SIG Docs) welcome it. That page could use tabs to cover Linux-specific vs Windows-specific details.

If the redirect is confusing, we could remove it.

/remove-sig windows /remove-sig cluster-lifecycle

[sftim]

/retitle Cannot find page about adding Windows nodes

[ashish-jaiswar]

/assign

[ashish-jaiswar]

/unassign

[RA489]

/sig windows /sig cluster-lifecycle

[neolit123]

There is now no specific guide for creating Windows nodes (nor is there one for creating Linux nodes). SIG Windows opted to remove the guide that did exist, in PR https://github.com/kubernetes/website/pull/33324

as discussed in the sig windows meeting yesterday, the removal of the old page with idea to have single linux / windows page might have been a bit too early. the windows setup is still quite different around cni.

we may have to have to link to external resources such as the Calico for Windows guide and tagging these parts as 'third party' at a k8s.io page.

@marosset @jsturtevant

[sftim]

A couple of things:

• We could use a tutorial or task page on adding a node to your cluster anyway. https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way/blob/master/docs/09-bootstrapping-kubernetes-workers.md could be an inspiration I don't want something GCE-specific, but I am happy to go into more detail specifically for nodes (we've decided as a project that we won't yet host an entire KTHW-style walkthrough of setting up a working cluster with a control plane, addons, etc). Adding a custom node is a task that folks legitimately might want to learn independently from the rest of those steps.
  • If we had that page, we could split it into the Windows and Linux versions as these stories are pretty different.
  • we wouldn't cover much about network plugin setup, because you're adding one node to a cluster and I assume your cluster was working before you started. We'd instead list prerequisites.
• :thought_balloon: a blog article about setting up your cluster to include Windows nodes?
  • would be very welcome (especially if it focused on deploying a hybrid cluster, so we're neutral on the Pod OS)

[marosset]

There is now no specific guide for creating Windows nodes (nor is there one for creating Linux nodes). SIG Windows opted to remove the guide that did exist, in PR #33324

@sftim - IIRC SIG-Windows opted to remove this content based on some of the review comments in https://github.com/kubernetes/website/pull/32862#pullrequestreview-938361343

The way we interpreted these was pages in k/website were discouraged from providing step-by-step instructions for configuring none K8s-owned components (like CNI solutions). Did we mis-understand that?

SIG-Windows is in the process of moving a lot of the docs that got removed to https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/sig-windows-tools/blob/master/guides/ and were hoping to link to this guide from k/website. Our thinking here was that having these guides hosted in a k-sigs repository would have more of a community-owned feeling.

[sftim]

The way we interpreted these was pages in k/website were discouraged from providing step-by-step instructions for configuring none K8s-owned components (like CNI solutions). Did we mis-understand that?

It's OK to provide step-by-step guides, but we don't like to give details where we're picking a particular solution from the ecosystem. For example, https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/tools/kubeadm/create-cluster-kubeadm/#preparing-the-hosts says that you need a compatible container runtime. What we don't say is something like:

For this example, we'll use Acme Containers. Go to acmecontainers.com and download it, then run acmesetup.sh. We'll walk you through configuring this interactively, but you can also do a scripted deploy…

because that's not very fair on every other CRI-compatible container runtime that we didn't pick. Node OS, different story. We support 2 OS kernel flavors, so we can document the story for a Linux node and for a Windows node.

There'll come a point where we suggest setting up networking, and that's where ideally we send folks off to https://landscape.cncf.io/ to pick something (if we're not happy with https://landscape.cncf.io/ then the fix is to work on improvements to that site instead - it's open source IIRC).

The existing guide for setting up a Windows-compatible cluster did need work - it covered lots of detail outside the specific topic of cluster setup - and I'm glad it got looked at, but that doesn't mean we can never have a guide to deploying a Windows node. A page on that, that follows our style and content guides, would be a nice addition to this site.

Hope that's more clear.

[sftim]

If we do add a page on setting up a Windows node, this should be part of an ambition to also document adding a Linux node (in about the same detail).

[sftim]

Duplicated by https://github.com/kubernetes/website/issues/37266

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[tengqm]

This issue is still there to be resolved. /remove-lifecycle stale

[twity1337]

Instead of redirecting, could we at least temporarily insert a warning page that hints about this issue (or the SIG windows guide respectively)? For me, it was very confusing because it is not clear that the target page ("Creating a cluster with kubeadm") is not focused on Windows. Especially when following links from search engines or forums, this is not resulting in a good user experience.

If a warning page is too much effort, at least drop the redirect and let it result in a standard 404.

[sftim]

https://github.com/kubernetes/website/issues/37266#issuecomment-1274509225 explains how - as I see it - things stand with regard to documenting node setup.

@twity1337 please consider filing a separate issue that covers the improvement you'd like to see - https://github.com/kubernetes/website/issues/new/choose It helps if you can frame it by describing the outcome (eg: “there is a tutorial that explains how to run PowerShell commands to set up an existing Windows server as a node in my existing Kubernetes cluster”). It's also OK to propose an approach to how we achieve the outcome.

This issue is mostly framed as a support query (and, because we've answered the question, it's less helpful to use this for tracking related requests).

[marosset]

We have some guides here https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/sig-windows-tools/blob/master/guides/guide-for-adding-windows-node.md and are still working on cleaning them up.

After the cleanup we can revisit linking to the guides from www.k8s.io

[sftim]

linking to the guides from www.k8s.io

We'd much prefer to have that documentation within the Kubernetes docs themselves.

[sftim]

https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/kubeadm/ has task pages for node upgrades.

Ideally we'd have two more task pages:

1. adding a Linux node to your cluster
2. adding a Windows node to your cluster

This issue is about the second page (adding a Windows node)

/language en /triage accepted

[jsturtevant]

The Linux tutorial was removed and so we followed suit with removing windows.

We removed the windows task pages based on feedback when we tried to update the doc that had the "adding a windows node to your cluster" section, in particular feedback around the third party content that specified how to set up CNI. In a call, we were given direction to host tutorials outside of the kubernetes docs.

What would the expected content of the two pages be? Does it include scripts? Does it mean installing and configuring the runtime? CNI? If all the other things are in place then it really is as simple as kubeadm join which was the intent of moving towards just pointing to the kubeadm join docs.

[sftim]

The best approach ceteris paribus would be to start with the Linux task page, get that written or at least outlined, and then write Windows equivalents for the same section.

We can and should define reasonable prerequisites including having the OS already installed, swap turned off on Linux, networking (but not CNI plugin) up, enough RAM and enough local storage, etc.

I'm fine if there's a big overlap with https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/tools/kubeadm/create-cluster-kubeadm/#join-nodes; however, someone who has a 4 node cluster and wants there to be 5 nodes probably won't look at a page titled “Creating a cluster with kubeadm”. That's why these task pages are worth adding.

[jsturtevant]

The best approach ceteris paribus would be to start with the Linux task page, get that written or at least outlined, and then write Windows equivalents for the same section.

+1 We can follow that as the example, it is required for windows to join a node anyways.

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/remove-triage accepted

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