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Kubernetes

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation's (CNCF) Kubernetes pack supports several cloud and data center infrastructure providers. This pack defines the default properties we use to deploy Kubernetes clusters and enables most of the Kubernetes hardening standards that the Center for Internet Security (CIS) recommends.

We also support managed Kubernetes distributions for Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), and Tencent Kubernetes Engine (TKE).

info

Review the Maintenance Policy to learn about pack update and deprecation schedules.


Support Lifecycle​

We support CNCF Kubernetes for N-3 Kubernetes minor versions for a duration of 14 months. The duration exceeds the official EOL by four months. Once we stop supporting the minor version, we initiate the deprecation process. Refer to the Kubernetes Support Lifecycle guide to learn more.

Versions Supported​

Prerequisites​

  • A minimum of 4 CPU and 4GB Memory.

  • Users or groups mapped to a Kubernetes RBAC role.

  • Operating System (OS) dependencies as listed in the table.

OS DistributionOS VersionSupports Kubernetes 1.27.x
CentOS7.7❌
Ubuntu22.04✅
Ubuntu20.04❌
Ubuntu18.04❌

Parameters​

ParameterDescription
pack.palette.config.oidcidentityProviderOIDC identity provider configuration.
pack.podCIDRThe CIDR range for Pods in cluster. This should match the networking layer property. Default: 192.168.0.0/16
pack.serviceClusterIpRangeThe CIDR range for services in the cluster. This should not overlap with any IP ranges assigned to nodes or pods. Default: 10.96.0.0/12
pack.serviceDomainThe cluster DNS service domain. Default: cluster.local. To change the default, you must add this parameter to the Kubernetes YAML file at cluster creation and specify the cluster DNS service domain to use. This value cannot be changed after cluster creation is complete. Refer to the Change Cluster DNS Service Domain section.
kubeadmconfig.apiServer.extraArgsA list of additional apiServer flags you can set.
kubeadmconfig.apiServer.extraVolumesA list of additional volumes to mount on apiServer.
kubeadmconfig.controllerManager.extraArgsA list of additional ControllerManager flags to set.
kubeadmconfig.scheduler.extraArgsA list of additional Kube scheduler flags to set.
kubeadmconfig.kubeletExtraArgsA list of kubelet arguments to set and copy to the nodes.
kubeadmconfig.filesA list of additional files to copy to the nodes.
kubeadmconfig.preKubeadmCommandsA list of additional commands to invoke before running kubeadm commands.
kubeadmconfig.postKubeadmCommandsA list of additional commands to invoke after running kubeadm commands.

Usage​

The Kubeadm configuration file is where you can do the following:

  • Change the default podCIDR and serviceClusterIpRange values. CIDR IPs specified in the configuration file take precedence over other defined CIDR IPs in your environment.

    As you build your cluster, check that the podCIDR value does not overlap with any hosts or with the service network and the serviceClusterIpRange value does not overlap with any IP ranges assigned to nodes or pods. For more information, refer to the Clusters guide and Cluster Deployment Errors.

  • Change the default cluster DNS service domain from cluster.local to a DNS domain that you specify. You can only change the DNS domain during cluster creation. For more information, refer to Change Cluster DNS Service Domain.

  • Add a certificate for the Spectro Proxy pack if you want to use a reverse proxy with a Kubernetes cluster. For more information, refer to the Spectro Proxy guide.

Change Cluster DNS Service Domain​

The pack.serviceDomain parameter with default value cluster.local is not visible in the Kubernetes YAML file, and its value can only be changed at cluster creation. To change the value, you must add serviceDomain: "cluster.local" to the Kubernetes YAML file when you create a cluster, and specify the service domain you want to use.

pack:
  k8sHardening: True
  podCIDR: "172.16.0.0/16"
  serviceClusterIPRange: "10.96.0.0/12"
  serviceDomain: "<your_cluster_DNS_service_domain>"
warning

You can only specify the service domain at cluster creation. After cluster creation completes, you cannot update the value. Attempting to update it results in the error serviceDomain update is forbidden for existing cluster.

For more information about networking configuration with DNS domains, refer to the Kubernetes Networking API documentation.

Configuration Changes​

The Kubeadm config is updated with hardening improvements that do the following:

  • Meet CIS standards for operating systems (OS).

  • Enable a Kubernetes audit policy in the pack. The audit policy is hidden, and you cannot customize the default audit policy. If you want to apply your custom audit policy, refer to the Enable Audit Logging guide to learn how to create your custom audit policy by adjusting API server flags.

  • Replace a deprecated PodSecurityPolicy (PSP) with one that offers three built-in policy profiles for broad security coverage:

    • Privileged: An unrestricted policy that provides wide permission levels and allows for known privilege escalations.

    • Baseline: A policy that offers minimal restrictions and prevents known privilege escalations. As shown in the example below, you can override the default cluster-wide policy to set baseline enforcement by enabling the PodSecurity Admission plugin in the enable-admission-plugins section of the YAML file. You can then add a custom Admission configuration and set the admission-control-config-file flag to the custom Admission.

      kubeadmconfig:
      apiServer:
        extraArgs:
          secure-port: "6443"
          anonymous-auth: "true"
          profiling: "false"
          disable-admission-plugins: "AlwaysAdmit"
          default-not-ready-toleration-seconds: "60"
          default-unreachable-toleration-seconds: "60"
          enable-admission-plugins: "AlwaysPullImages,NamespaceLifecycle,ServiceAccount,NodeRestriction,PodSecurity"
          admission-control-config-file: "/etc/kubernetes/pod-security-standard.yaml"
          audit-log-path: /var/log/apiserver/audit.log
          audit-policy-file: /etc/kubernetes/audit-policy.yaml

    • Restricted: A heavily restricted policy that follows Pod hardening best practices. This policy is set to warn and audit and identifies Pods that require privileged access.

      You can enforce these policies at the cluster level or the Namespace level. For workloads that require privileged access, you can relax PodSecurity enforcement by adding these labels in the Namespace:

      pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce: privileged
      pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce-version: v1.26

Kubeadm Configuration File​

The default pack YAML contains minimal configurations offered by the managed provider.

Configure OIDC Identity Provider​

You can configure an OpenID Connect (OIDC) identity provider to authenticate users and groups in your cluster. OIDC is an authentication layer on top of OAuth 2.0, an authorization framework that allows users to authenticate to a cluster without using a password.

OIDC requires a RoleBinding for the users or groups you want to provide cluster access. You must create a RoleBinding to a Kubernetes role that is available in the cluster. The Kubernetes role can be a custom role you created or a default Kubernetes role, such as the cluster-admin role. To learn how to create a RoleBinding through Palette, refer to Create Role Bindings.

Configure Custom OIDC​

The custom method to configure OIDC and apply RBAC for an OIDC provider can be used for all cloud services except Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Azure-AKS.

Follow these steps to configure a third-party OIDC IDP. You can apply these steps to all the public cloud providers except Azure AKS and Amazon EKS clusters. Azure AKS and Amazon EKS require different configurations. AKS requires you to use Azure Active Directory (AAD) to enable OIDC integration. Refer to Enable OIDC in Kubernetes Clusters With Entra ID to learn more. Click the Amazon EKS tab for steps to configure OIDC for EKS clusters.

  1. Add the following parameters to your Kubernetes YAML file when creating a cluster profile. Replace the identityProvider value with your OIDC provider name.
pack:
  palette:
    config:
      oidc:
        identityProvider: yourIdentityProviderNameHere
  1. Add the following kubeadmconfig parameters. Replace the values with your OIDC provider values.
kubeadmconfig:
  apiServer:
    extraArgs:
      oidc-issuer-url: "provider URL"
      oidc-client-id: "client-id"
      oidc-groups-claim: "groups"
      oidc-username-claim: "email"
  1. Under the clientConfig parameter section of Kubernetes YAML file, uncomment the oidc- configuration lines.
kubeadmconfig:
  clientConfig:
    oidc-issuer-url: "<OIDC-ISSUER-URL>"
    oidc-client-id: "<OIDC-CLIENT-ID>"
    oidc-client-secret: "<OIDC-CLIENT-SECRET>"
    oidc-extra-scope: profile,email,openid

Terraform​

You can reference Kubernetes in Terraform with the following code snippet.

data "spectrocloud_registry" "public_registry" {
  name = "Public Repo"
}

data "spectrocloud_pack_simple" "k8s" {
  name    = "kubernetes-aks"
  version = "1.26"
  type = "helm"
  registry_uid = data.spectrocloud_registry.public_registry.id
}

Resources​