controlplane-operator

controlplane-operator

controlplane-operator provides a simple way to run and manage Kubernetes control planes on top of an existing Kubernetes cluster.

How it works?

controlplane-operator runs as a Kubernetes operator and watches ManagedControlPlane custom resources. For each resource, it provisions and manages a fully functional Kubernetes API server according to the declared specification.

The operator handles the full lifecycle of the control plane, including:

• Bootstrapping the Kubernetes API
• Configuration and reconciliation
• Upgrades and version changes

Unlike traditional approaches, controlplane-operator abstracts the control plane away from the underlying hosts. Only worker nodes are managed as cluster hosts, making deployment and operations simpler and more flexible.

Getting started

# crds
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/patrostkowski/controlplane-operator/main/config/crd/controlplane.patrostkowski.dev_managedcontrolplanes.yaml

# deploy
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/patrostkowski/controlplane-operator/main/config/deploy/manifests.yaml

Development

Prerequisites

The following tools are required for local development:

• Docker
• kind
• Taskfile

Local workflow

# create Kind cluster
task kind:create

# install dependencies
task dev:install

# run locally for quick feedback loop
task dev:run

Roadmap

• Deploy control plane as Kubernetes workloads
• kubeadm-compatible control plane
• Highly available control plane
• Pluggable etcd-compatible backend
• Control plane upgrade orchestration
• Metrics, health checks, and observability
• Helm chart
• Documentation and usage examples
• CI/CD automation

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING for details on submitting patches and contribution workflow.

Licensing

controlplane-operator is under the Apache 2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.