Cluster Administration

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

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.

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

Before choosing a guide, here are some considerations:

Do you 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.
Will you be using a hosted Kubernetes cluster, such as , 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.
Will you be running Kubernetes on “bare metal” hardware or on virtual machines (VMs)?
Do you 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.

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

Generate Certificates describes the steps to generate certificates using different tool chains.
describes the environment for Kubelet managed containers on a Kubernetes node.
Controlling Access to the Kubernetes API describes how Kubernetes implements access control for its own API.
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.
describes to an administrator how to use the command-line tool to set kernel parameters .
Auditing describes how to interact with Kubernetes’ audit logs.