Minikube 1.12: Local Kubernetes with Production Parity

Introduction

On August 4, 2020, the Minikube team shipped version 1.12, cementing local Kubernetes as a faithful stand-in for production clusters. Multi-node support exited beta, runtime switching became seamless, and container image workflows gained speed.

Multi-Node Clusters Reach GA

• Spin up two or more worker nodes with minikube start --nodes=2 to validate DaemonSets, topology-aware controllers, and service failover.
• Node replacement is now automated; minikube node delete gracefully cordons and recreates nodes for churn testing.
• Works with all VM and container drivers, including Docker, HyperKit, KVM2, and VirtualBox.

Runtime & Image Management

• Runtime toggling: Switch between containerd, CRI-O, and Docker without rebuilding clusters via minikube start --container-runtime=<runtime>.
• Image load cache: The new minikube image load --daemon command persists container images across restarts, shaving minutes off inner loops.
• Integrates with local registries and minikube cache to share artifacts across multiple clusters.

Developer Experience Upgrades

1. Profile Isolation: minikube profile now snapshots driver choice, runtime, and Kubernetes version per project directory.
2. Tunnel Resilience: Load balancer tunneling handles sleep/wake events and publishes health endpoints for CI.
3. Addons Refresh: Istio, Knative, CSI hostpath, and Ingress addons ship at current upstream versions with compatibility tests.

Getting Started

minikube start --nodes=2 --kubernetes-version=v1.18.6 --driver=docker --container-runtime=containerd
minikube image load my-app:dev
kubectl get nodes -o wide

Use minikube ssh or minikube kubectl for environments where host tooling is locked down.

Summary

Minikube 1.12 transforms the laptop cluster from a toy into a production rehearsal space, letting teams catch drift and regression risks before code ever leaves the desk.