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Cluster Administration Overview

The cluster administration overview is for anyone creating or administering a Kubernetes cluster. It assumes some familiarity with core Kubernetes concepts.

• Planning a cluster
• Managing a cluster
• Securing a cluster
• Optional Cluster Services

Planning a cluster

See the guides in Picking the Right Solution for examples of how to plan, set up, and configure Kubernetes clusters. The solutions listed in this article are called distros.

Before choosing a guide, here are some considerations:

• Do you just want to try out Kubernetes on your computer, or do you want to build a high-availability, multi-node cluster? Choose distros best suited for your needs.
• If you are designing for high-availability, learn about configuring clusters in multiple zones.
• Will you be using a hosted Kubernetes cluster, such as Google Kubernetes Engine, or hosting your own cluster?
• Will your cluster be on-premises, or in the cloud (IaaS)? Kubernetes does not directly support hybrid clusters. Instead, you can set up multiple clusters.
• If you are configuring Kubernetes on-premises, consider which networking model fits best.
• Will you be running Kubernetes on “bare metal” hardware or on virtual machines (VMs)?
• Do you just want to run a cluster, or do you expect to do active development of Kubernetes project code? If the latter, choose an actively-developed distro. Some distros only use binary releases, but offer a greater variety of choices.
• Familiarize yourself with the components needed to run a cluster.

Note: Not all distros are actively maintained. Choose distros which have been tested with a recent version of Kubernetes.

Managing a cluster

• Managing a cluster describes several topics related to the lifecycle of a cluster: creating a new cluster, upgrading your cluster’s master and worker nodes, performing node maintenance (e.g. kernel upgrades), and upgrading the Kubernetes API version of a running cluster.

• Learn how to manage nodes.

• Learn how to set up and manage the resource quota for shared clusters.

Securing a cluster

• Certificates describes the steps to generate certificates using different tool chains.

• Kubernetes Container Environment describes the environment for Kubelet managed containers on a Kubernetes node.

• Controlling Access to the Kubernetes API describes how to set up permissions for users and service accounts.

• Authenticating explains authentication in Kubernetes, including the various authentication options.

• Authorization is separate from authentication, and controls how HTTP calls are handled.

• Using Admission Controllers explains plug-ins which intercepts requests to the Kubernetes API server after authentication and authorization.

• Using Sysctls in a Kubernetes Cluster describes to an administrator how to use the sysctl command-line tool to set kernel parameters .

• Auditing describes how to interact with Kubernetes’ audit logs.

Securing the kubelet

• Master-Node communication
• TLS bootstrapping
• Kubelet authentication/authorization

Optional Cluster Services

• DNS Integration describes how to resolve a DNS name directly to a Kubernetes service.

• Logging and Monitoring Cluster Activity explains how logging in Kubernetes works and how to implement it.

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