Back when I was at Honeywell, I had the privilege of being involved in some massive projects — including OpenVEP and Experion Elevate SCADA. These were enterprise-grade control systems that took entire teams months to scope, configure, deploy, and integrate. I remember the time, cost, and sheer coordination it took to stand something up in a data center.

Fast forward to today, and I’m blown away that I can spin up a demo SCADA environment in just minutes using containers and a Kubernetes cluster on Civo. Of course, this is just for demonstration purposes — a production deployment would require persistent volumes and hardened security — but the fact that it’s even possible this quickly is remarkable.

This post walks you through how I deployed Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform to a Civo Kubernetes cluster using nothing more than the CLI, a few YAML files, and Docker Hub.

Step 1: Create the Kubernetes Cluster

I used the Civo web dashboard to create a new Kubernetes cluster. The process is straightforward:

Choose your cluster name, size, and node count (I used 3 nodes).
Under networking, select “default” or create a new network.
Let Civo auto-create a firewall or configure one manually if needed.
Hit Create Cluster and within a few minutes, your cluster is ready.

Civo even gives you an estimated time to completion and notifies you when everything is live.

Step 2: Set Up the CLI

Although the web UI is great, I prefer using the command line — especially when scripting deployments.

To install the Civo CLI on Windows:

choco install civo-cli

Once installed, link your CLI to your Civo account:

civo apikey save

You’ll need your API key, which you can find under Account Settings > Security in the Civo dashboard.

Step 3: Connect kubectl to Your Cluster

Get the kubeconfig for your cluster with:

civo kubernetes config <your_cluster_id> –save

This will merge the config with your existing kubeconfig file, allowing you to run:

kubectl config use-context ignitiondemo
kubectl get nodes

Step 4: Deploy Ignition

Ignition is available on Docker Hub under inductiveautomation/ignition. For this demo, I used version 8.1.41.

a) Create a Namespace

Save this to IgnitionNS.yaml:

Apply it with:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: ignition-demo

kubectl apply -f IgnitionNS.yaml

b) Create the Deployment

Here’s the deployment YAML (IgnitionDeploy.yaml):

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: ignition
namespace: ignition-demo
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
app: ignition
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: ignition
spec:
containers:
– name: ignition
image: inductiveautomation/ignition:8.1.41
ports:
– containerPort: 8088

Apply it with:

kubectl apply -f IgnitionDeploy.yaml

Step 5: Expose the Deployment

To make Ignition accessible externally, we’ll use a LoadBalancer service. Save this as IgnitionLB.yaml:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: ignition-lb
  namespace: ignition-demo
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  ports:
    - port: 80
      targetPort: 8088
      protocol: TCP
  selector:
    app: ignition

Apply it:

kubectl apply -f IgnitionLB.yaml

To get the public IP:

kubectl get service ignition-lb -n ignition-demo

You’ll see something like:

NAME           TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP     PORT(S)        AGE
ignition-lb    LoadBalancer   10.43.194.211   212.2.247.184   80:32013/TCP   2m

Now you can access Ignition from your browser:
http://212.2.247.184 (This demo is no longer online)

Final Thoughts

This deployment is meant for demonstration only. In a real production environment, you’d want:

Persistent storage for project and tag data
Secrets management for credentials
Network security policies
Backup and monitoring tools

Assessing these production readiness factors is central to technical due diligence when evaluating a company’s infrastructure maturity.

But still — seeing Ignition up and running on a public IP in under 30 minutes is impressive, especially when I think about the months-long projects of the past.

Civo, containers, and Kubernetes are reshaping the landscape. For those of us with a background in traditional industrial automation, it’s an exciting time to bridge the old with the new.

Final Thoughts

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