Getting started

Installation

Realm running as client does not require any external dependencies. The following guidelines are only for Realm agent.

Linux

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y containerd containernetworking-plugins

If Realm was built with ZFS support (make TAGS=zfs), install ZFS utilities and create the pool:

sudo apt install -y zfsutils-linux zfs-dkms
sudo zpool create realm_volumes /dev/sdX  # Replace /dev/sdX with your device

Note: The pool name must match the volumes_pool configuration (default: realm_volumes).

Windows

Realm agent can deploy native windows containers. Follow these steps to enable them on your Windows system:

1. Enable native Windows containers:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Containers -All

2. Download Windows containerd binaries from the official repository
3. Extract to C:\Program Files\containerd
4. Generate config:

containerd config default > C:\Program Files\containerd\config.toml

5. Register as a Windows service:

containerd.exe --register-service
Start-Service containerd

6. Verify it is running:

Get-Service containerd
C:\Program Files\containerd\bin\ctr version

Now you will need to install CNI plugins to enable container networking:

1. Download Windows CNI binaries from the official repository
2. Extract to C:\Program Files\containerd\cni\bin

Note: all the recommended installation paths are also the default paths used by Realm, but you can also set different paths on the Realm configuration file.