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Creating a Talos Linux cluster on Digital Ocean via the CLI

In this guide we will create an HA Kubernetes cluster with 1 worker node, in the NYC region. We assume an existing Space, and some familiarity with DigitalOcean. If you need more information on DigitalOcean specifics, please see the official DigitalOcean documentation.

Create the image

Download the DigitalOcean image digital-ocean-amd64.raw.gz from the Image Factory .
Note: the minimum version of Talos required to support Digital Ocean is v1.3.3.
Using an upload method of your choice (doctl does not have Spaces support), upload the image to a space. (It’s easy to drag the image file to the space using DigitalOcean’s web console.) Note: Make sure you upload the file as public. Now, create an image using the URL of the uploaded image:
Save the image ID. We will need it when creating droplets.

Create a load balancer

Note the returned ID of the load balancer. We will need the IP of the load balancer. Using the ID of the load balancer, run:
Note that it may take a few minutes before the load balancer is provisioned, so repeat this command until it returns with the IP address.

Create the machine configuration files

Using the IP address (or DNS name, if you have created one) of the loadbalancer, generate the base configuration files for the Talos machines. Also note that the load balancer forwards port 443 to port 6443 on the associated nodes, so we should use 443 as the port in the config definition:

Create the Droplets

Create a dummy SSH key

Although SSH is not used by Talos, DigitalOcean requires that an SSH key be associated with a droplet during creation. We will create a dummy key that can be used to satisfy this requirement.
Note the ssh key ID that is returned - we will use it in creating the droplets.

Create the control plane nodes

Run the following commands to create three control plane nodes:
Note the droplet ID returned for the first control plane node.

Create the worker nodes

Run the following to create a worker node:

Bootstrap etcd

To configure talosctl we will need the first control plane node’s IP:
Set the endpoints and nodes:
Bootstrap etcd:

Retrieve the kubeconfig

At this point we can retrieve the admin kubeconfig by running:
We can also watch the cluster bootstrap via: