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Post 7: Installing Portainer

Published by bobo on May 26, 2025

After getting storage sorted in our Kubernetes cluster with Longhorn for application configs and NFS for media, it’s time to give ourselves a powerful UI: Portainer.

Portainer provides a clean and intuitive dashboard to manage Kubernetes workloads. It’s especially handy when you want to visualize deployments, troubleshoot pods, or just get a better lay of the land.

Step 1: Installing Portainer via Helm

We’ll install the Portainer Business Edition (free for homelab use) using Helm. From our jumpbox (10.0.0.8), run the following commands:

helm repo add portainer https://portainer.github.io/k8s/
helm repo update

helm install portainer portainer/portainer \
  --namespace portainer --create-namespace \
  --set service.type=LoadBalancer \
  --set service.loadBalancerIP=10.0.0.31 \
  --set persistence.enabled=true \
  --set persistence.size=10Gi \
  --set persistence.storageClass=longhorn

This does the following:

  • Creates a new namespace called portainer
  • Deploys Portainer with a LoadBalancer service on a fixed MetalLB IP (10.0.0.31)
  • Stores Portainer’s config in a 10Gi PVC backed by Longhorn

Step 2: Accessing Portainer

Give the cluster a minute or two to pull the image and assign the IP. Then go to:

http://10.0.0.31:9000

On first login, it will prompt you to create an admin account.

Step 3: Managing Your Cluster

Once logged in:

  1. Click Add Environment.
  2. Choose Kubernetes.
  3. Select Local (since Portainer is running inside your cluster).
  4. It will auto-detect your cluster.

You can now:

  • See all running pods, deployments, and namespaces
  • Manage secrets, PVCs, and services
  • Deploy apps from templates or custom YAML

Step 4: Importing Existing Workloads

Portainer auto-discovers existing workloads. You’ll find your previously deployed services like:

  • WordPress
  • Kavita
  • Longhorn

Just navigate to the appropriate namespace and you’ll see your resources laid out cleanly.

Wrap Up

With Portainer installed, you’ve now got a visual control panel for your k3s cluster. It’s a great way to bridge the gap between raw YAML and intuitive management.

In the next post, we’ll look at securing your cluster access with Cloudflare Tunnel.

Published inKubernetes