I just started messing with containers and managing them. Then I came across with Kubernetes. I've already installed Docker and tried out a few examples. But when it came to managing them with Kubernetes, I've kinda stuck.

I've found out that I can run Kubernetes with minikube on Windows on my laptop for development. But I want to know if I can run Kubernetes on my production server or local development environment because as they point out minikube doesn't have all featues that Kubernetes can offer. So in production I guess I can't use minikube, right?

Because of the data that I'm using I can't use Google cloud or Azure for production, laws forbid that. So in short do I have to switch to cloud to use Kubernetes or can I use it in my Windows Server machine without any cloud environment?

I've already read How to do local development with Kubernetes? question but they've also recommended minikube.

Thanks for your answers.