Translate a Docker Compose File to Kubernetes Resources

What's Kompose? It's a conversion tool for all things compose (namely Docker Compose) to container orchestrators (Kubernetes or OpenShift).

More information can be found on the Kompose website at http://kompose.io .

Before you begin

You need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. It is recommended to run this tutorial on a cluster with at least two nodes that are not acting as control plane hosts. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using minikube or you can use one of these Kubernetes playgrounds:

To check the version, enter kubectl version .

Install Kompose

We have multiple ways to install Kompose. Our preferred method is downloading the binary from the latest GitHub release.

Kompose is released via GitHub on a three-week cycle, you can see all current releases on the GitHub release page . 

# Linux
curl -L https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose/releases/download/v1.26.0/kompose-linux-amd64 -o kompose
# macOS
curl -L https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose/releases/download/v1.26.0/kompose-darwin-amd64 -o kompose
# Windows
curl -L https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose/releases/download/v1.26.0/kompose-windows-amd64.exe -o kompose.exe
chmod +x kompose
sudo mv ./kompose /usr/local/bin/kompose

Alternatively, you can download the tarball .

Installing using go get pulls from the master branch with the latest development changes. 

go get -u github.com/kubernetes/kompose

Kompose is in EPEL CentOS repository. If you don't have EPEL repository already installed and enabled you can do it by running sudo yum install epel-release .

If you have EPEL enabled in your system, you can install Kompose like any other package. 

sudo yum -y install kompose

Kompose is in Fedora 24, 25 and 26 repositories. You can install it like any other package. 

sudo dnf -y install kompose

On macOS you can install the latest release via Homebrew : 

brew install kompose

Use Kompose

In a few steps, we'll take you from Docker Compose to Kubernetes. All you need is an existing docker-compose.yml file.

  1. Go to the directory containing your docker-compose.yml file. If you don't have one, test using this one. 

    version: "2"
services:
  redis-master:
    image: registry.k8s.io/redis:e2e
    ports:
      - "6379"
  redis-slave:
    image: gcr.io/google_samples/gb-redisslave:v3
    ports:
      - "6379"
    environment:
      - GET_HOSTS_FROM=dns
  frontend:
    image: gcr.io/google-samples/gb-frontend:v4
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    environment:
      - GET_HOSTS_FROM=dns
    labels:
      kompose.service.type: LoadBalancer

  2. To convert the docker-compose.yml file to files that you can use with kubectl , run kompose convert and then kubectl apply -f <output file> . 

    kompose convert

    The output is similar to: 

    INFO Kubernetes file "frontend-tcp-service.yaml" created 
INFO Kubernetes file "redis-master-service.yaml" created 
INFO Kubernetes file "redis-slave-service.yaml" created 
INFO Kubernetes file "frontend-deployment.yaml" created 
INFO Kubernetes file "redis-master-deployment.yaml" created 
INFO Kubernetes file "redis-slave-deployment.yaml" created

     kubectl apply -f frontend-tcp-service.yaml,redis-master-service.yaml,redis-slave-service.yaml,frontend-deployment.yaml,redis-master-deployment.yaml,redis-slave-deployment.yaml

    The output is similar to: 

    service/frontend-tcp created
service/redis-master created
service/redis-slave created
deployment.apps/frontend created
deployment.apps/redis-master created
deployment.apps/redis-slave created

    Your deployments are running in Kubernetes.

  3. Access your application.

    If you're already using minikube for your development process: 

    minikube service frontend

    Otherwise, let's look up what IP your service is using! 

    kubectl describe svc frontend

    Name:                     frontend-tcp
Namespace:                default
Labels:                   io.kompose.service=frontend-tcp
Annotations:              kompose.cmd: kompose convert
                          kompose.service.type: LoadBalancer
                          kompose.version: 1.26.0 (40646f47)
Selector:                 io.kompose.service=frontend
Type:                     LoadBalancer
IP Family Policy:         SingleStack
IP Families:              IPv4
IP:                       10.43.67.174
IPs:                      10.43.67.174
Port:                     80  80/TCP
TargetPort:               80/TCP
NodePort:                 80  31254/TCP
Endpoints:                10.42.0.25:80
Session Affinity:         None
External Traffic Policy:  Cluster
Events:
  Type    Reason                Age   From                Message
  ----    ------                ----  ----                -------
  Normal  EnsuringLoadBalancer  62s   service-controller  Ensuring load balancer
  Normal  AppliedDaemonSet      62s   service-controller  Applied LoadBalancer DaemonSet kube-system/svclb-frontend-tcp-9362d276

    If you're using a cloud provider, your IP will be listed next to LoadBalancer Ingress . 

    curl http://192.0.2.89

  4. Clean-up.

    After you are finished testing out the example application deployment, simply run the following command in your shell to delete the resources used. 

    kubectl delete -f frontend-tcp-service.yaml,redis-master-service.yaml,redis-slave-service.yaml,frontend-deployment.yaml,redis-master-deployment.yaml,redis-slave-deployment.yaml

User Guide

Kompose has support for two providers: OpenShift and Kubernetes. You can choose a targeted provider using global option --provider . If no provider is specified, Kubernetes is set by default.

kompose convert

Kompose supports conversion of V1, V2, and V3 Docker Compose files into Kubernetes and OpenShift objects.

Kubernetes kompose convert example 

kompose --file docker-voting.yml convert

WARN Unsupported key networks - ignoring
WARN Unsupported key build - ignoring
INFO Kubernetes file "worker-svc.yaml" created
INFO Kubernetes file "db-svc.yaml" created
INFO Kubernetes file "redis-svc.yaml" created
INFO Kubernetes file "result-svc.yaml" created
INFO Kubernetes file "vote-svc.yaml" created
INFO Kubernetes file "redis-deployment.yaml" created
INFO Kubernetes file "result-deployment.yaml" created
INFO Kubernetes file "vote-deployment.yaml" created
INFO Kubernetes file "worker-deployment.yaml" created
INFO Kubernetes file "db-deployment.yaml" created

db-deployment.yaml  docker-compose.yml         docker-gitlab.yml  redis-deployment.yaml  result-deployment.yaml  vote-deployment.yaml  worker-deployment.yaml
db-svc.yaml         docker-voting.yml          redis-svc.yaml     result-svc.yaml        vote-svc.yaml           worker-svc.yaml

You can also provide multiple docker-compose files at the same time: 

kompose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-guestbook.yml convert

INFO Kubernetes file "frontend-service.yaml" created         
INFO Kubernetes file "mlbparks-service.yaml" created         
INFO Kubernetes file "mongodb-service.yaml" created          
INFO Kubernetes file "redis-master-service.yaml" created     
INFO Kubernetes file "redis-slave-service.yaml" created      
INFO Kubernetes file "frontend-deployment.yaml" created      
INFO Kubernetes file "mlbparks-deployment.yaml" created      
INFO Kubernetes file "mongodb-deployment.yaml" created       
INFO Kubernetes file "mongodb-claim0-persistentvolumeclaim.yaml" created
INFO Kubernetes file "redis-master-deployment.yaml" created  
INFO Kubernetes file "redis-slave-deployment.yaml" created