Installing the CLI

You can use the following tools to manage your IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service clusters. While you can install a subset of the tools, all the following tools are recommended.

Virtual Private Cloud Classic infrastructure Satellite

Understanding the CLI tools

Table 1: CLI tools
CLI	Description
`ibmcloud`	You can use the `ibmcloud` CLI to login to your account, add users, manage your catalogs and more.
`ks` plug-in	After installing the `ibmcloud` CLI, you can use the `ks` plug-in to create and manage IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service clusters.
`kubectl`	You can use the `kubectl` CLI to manage resources within your clusters like pods, deployments, and more.

Run the installation command

The latest version of the IBM Cloud CLI is installed when you run the command. As the CLI installs, keep an eye on the command line to authenticate as needed.

For MacOS, run the following command:

curl -fsSL https://clis.cloud.ibm.com/install/osx | sh

For Linux™, run the following command:

curl -fsSL https://clis.cloud.ibm.com/install/linux | sh

For Windows™, run the following command in PowerShell as an administrator:
```
iex (New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://clis.cloud.ibm.com/install/powershell')
```
To open PowerShell, right-click the Windows™ PowerShell icon, and select Run as administrator.

For WSL2 on Windows™, run the following command:

curl -fsSL https://clis.cloud.ibm.com/install/linux | sh

Verify the installation

To verify that the CLI was installed successfully, run the help command:

ibmcloud help

The output lists the usage instructions, the current version, and the supported commands.

Install CLI plug-ins and tools

To manually install the CLI plug-ins and tools, see Extending IBM Cloud CLI with plug-ins.

To install the container-service or ks plugin, run the following command.

ibmcloud plugin install ks

Install the Kubernetes CLI

You can use the kubectl CLI to deploy and manage resources in your IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service cluster.

To install the kubectl CLI, see Install tools.

For a full list of kubectl commands, see the Command line tool (kubectl) reference.