Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation

Creating a Kubernetes Configuration File

On Compute Cloud@Customer, you can set up a Kubernetes configuration file for each OKE cluster that you work with. Your Kubernetes configuration file enables you to access OKE clusters using the kubectl command and the Kubernetes Dashboard.

Kubernetes configuration files organize information about clusters, users, namespaces, and authentication mechanisms. You can define contexts to easily switch between clusters and namespaces. The kubectl tool uses Kubernetes configuration files to find the information it needs to choose a cluster and communicate with the API server of a cluster.

Installing the Kubernetes Command Line Tool

Install and configure the Kubernetes command line tool kubectl. The kubectl tool enables you to perform operations on OKE clusters such as deploy applications, inspect and manage cluster resources, and view logs.

To install kubectl, see Kubernetes Install Tools. The kubectl version must be within one minor version of the OKE cluster Kubernetes version. For example, a v1.29 client can communicate with v1.28, v1.29, and v1.30 control planes. See Supported Versions of Kubernetes.

For more information, including a complete list of kubectl operations, see the https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/ reference page.

Create a Kubernetes Configuration File

Use the CLI to create your Kubernetes configuration file.

Tip

The Quick Start button on a cluster details page in the Compute Cloud@Customer Console shows how to create a Kubernetes configuration file, and provides the OCID of the cluster.

  1. Get the OCID of the cluster: oci ce cluster list

  2. Run the oci ce cluster create-kubeconfig command as described to create the configuration file:

    The --cluster-id option is required.

    The default value of the --file option is ~/.kube/config. If you already have a file at the specified location and you want to replace it, use the --overwrite option. To maintain more than one configuration file, select a different file by using the KUBECONFIG environment variable or the --kubeconfig option.

    The value of the --kube-endpoint option must be PUBLIC_ENDPOINT.

    If you don't specify the --profile option, the current value of your OCI_CLI_PROFILE environment variable is used. Best practice is to specify this value.

    If provided, the value of the --token-version option must be 2.0.0.

    Example:

    Use the following command to configure a Kubernetes configuration file for the specified cluster using the public endpoint:

    $ oci ce cluster create-kubeconfig --cluster-id ocid1.cluster.unique_ID \
--file $HOME/.kube/config --kube-endpoint PUBLIC_ENDPOINT --profile profile-name
New config written to the Kubeconfig file /home/username/.kube/config

    A Kubernetes configuration file includes a CLI command that dynamically generates an authentication token and inserts it when you run a kubectl command. By default, the CLI command in the Kubernetes configuration file uses your current CLI profile when generating an authentication token. If you have defined multiple profiles in your CLI configuration file, use one of the following methods to specify which profile to use when generating the authentication token. The value of profile-name is the name of the profile in your CLI configuration file.

    • Ensure that your OCI_CLI_PROFILE environment variable is set to the profile for the tenancy where the ocid1.cluster.unique_ID resides. This setting is ignored if one of the following methods was used to specify the profile for this cluster in the Kubernetes configuration file.

    • Specify the --profile option on the create-kubeconfig command line as shown in the preceding example command.

    • Edit the generated configuration file as shown in the following example.

      user:
  exec:
    apiVersion: client.authentication.k8s.io/v1beta1
    args:
    - ce
    - cluster
    - generate-token
    - --cluster-id
    - cluster ocid
    - --profile
    - profile-name
    command: oci
    env: []

    Use the following command to set your KUBECONFIG environment variable to the Kubernetes configuration file that you created or updated in the preceding command:

    $ export KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/config

    The following command shows the content of your new YAML configuration file:

    $ kubectl config view

    If you run the command again with a different cluster OCID, the new information is merged with the existing information. The following message is displayed:

    Existing Kubeconfig file found at /home/username/.kube/config and new config merged into it

What's Next:

Verify Your Cluster Access.

Verify Your Cluster Access

Before you run kubectl commands, enure that your OCI_CLI_PROFILE environment variable is set to the name of the profile that is defined in your OCI configuration file:

$ export OCI_CLI_PROFILE=<profile-name>

Run the following command to confirm that you can access your cluster:

$ kubectl cluster-info

Every Kubernetes namespace contains at least one ServiceAccount: the default ServiceAccount for that namespace, which is named default. If you don't specify a ServiceAccount when you create a Pod, the OKE service automatically assigns the ServiceAccount named default in that namespace.

An application running inside a Pod can access the Kubernetes API using automatically mounted service account credentials.

What's Next:

Create a Kubernetes Dashboard.

Create a Kubernetes Dashboard

The dashboard helps you manage the cluster and manage and troubleshoot applications running in the cluster.

On the Kubernetes site, see Deploy and Access the Kubernetes Dashboard

What's Next:

Creating an OKE Worker Node Pool