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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 Setup 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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