Kubernetes Cluster Admin Guide

The cluster admin guide is for anyone creating or administering a Kubernetes cluster. It assumes some familiarity with concepts in the User Guide.

Planning a cluster

There are many different examples of how to setup a kubernetes cluster. Many of them are listed in this matrix. We call each of the combinations in this matrix a distro.

Before choosing a particular guide, here are some things to consider:

• Are you just looking to try out Kubernetes on your laptop, or build a high-availability many-node cluster? Both models are supported, but some distros are better for one case or the other.
• Will you be using a hosted Kubernetes cluster, such as GKE, or setting one up yourself?
• Will your cluster be on-premises, or in the cloud (IaaS)? Kubernetes does not directly support hybrid clusters. We recommend setting up multiple clusters rather than spanning distant locations.
• Will you be running Kubernetes on "bare metal" or virtual machines? Kubernetes supports both, via different distros.
• Do you just want to run a cluster, or do you expect to do active development of kubernetes project code? If the latter, it is better to pick a distro actively used by other developers. Some distros only use binary releases, but offer is a greater variety of choices.
• Not all distros are maintained as actively. Prefer ones which are listed as tested on a more recent version of Kubernetes.
• If you are configuring kubernetes on-premises, you will need to consider what networking model fits best.
• If you are designing for very high-availability, you may want clusters in multiple zones.
• You may want to familiarize yourself with the various components needed to run a cluster.

Setting up a cluster

Pick one of the Getting Started Guides from the matrix and follow it. If none of the Getting Started Guides fits, you may want to pull ideas from several of the guides.

One option for custom networking is OpenVSwitch GRE/VxLAN networking (ovs-networking.md), which uses OpenVSwitch to set up networking between pods across Kubernetes nodes.

If you are modifying an existing guide which uses Salt, this document explains how Salt is used in the Kubernetes project.

Managing a cluster, including upgrades

Managing a cluster.

Managing nodes

Managing nodes.

Optional Cluster Services

• DNS Integration with SkyDNS (dns.md): Resolving a DNS name directly to a Kubernetes service.

• Logging with Kibana

Multi-tenant support

• Resource Quota (resource-quota.md)

Security

• Kubernetes Container Environment (docs/user-guide/container-environment.md): Describes the environment for Kubelet managed containers on a Kubernetes node.

• Securing access to the API Server accessing the api

• Authentication authentication

• Authorization authorization

• Admission Controllers admission_controllers