kube-policy

A Kubernetes native policy engine

Motivation

How it works

The solution provides a possibility to validate the custom Kubernetes resources and modify them before their creation.

Components

• Policy Controller (/controller) allows defining custom resources which can be used in your Kubernetes cluster
• WebHooks Server (/server) implements connection between Kubernetes API server and Mutation WebHook
• Mutation WebHook (/webhooks) allows applying Nirmata policies for validation and mutation of the certain types of resources (see the list below)
• Kube Client (/kubeclient) allows other components to communicate with Kubernetes API server for resource management in a cluster
• Initialization functions (/init.go, /utils) allow running the controller inside the cluster without deep pre-tuning

The program initializes the configuration of the client API Kubernetes and creates an HTTPS server with a webhook for resource mutation. When a resource is created in a cluster for various reasons, the Kerbernetes core sends a request for a mutation of this resource to the webhook. The policy controller manages the objects of the policies created in the cluster and is always aware of which policies are currently in effect: information on the policies is available on the webhook due to the policy controller. The request to create a resource contains its full definition. If the resource matches to one or more of the current policies, the resource is mutated in accordance with them.

Policy application

Supported resource types:

• ConfigMap
• CronJob
• DaemonSet
• Deployment
• Endpoints
• HorizontalPodAutoscaler
• Ingress
• Job
• LimitRange
• Namespace
• NetworkPolicy
• PersistentVolumeClaim
• PodDisruptionBudget
• PodTemplate
• ResourceQuota
• Secret
• Service
• StatefulSet

When a request for a resource creation is received (i.e. a YAML file), it will be checked against the corresponding Nirmata policies. The policy for a resource is looked up either by the resource name, or with the help of selector. In case the data in the YAML file does not conform to the policy, the resource will be mutated with the help of the Mutation WebHook, which can perform one of the following:

• add: either add a lacking key and its value or replace a value of the already existing key;
• replace: either replace a value of the already existing key or add a lacking key and its value;
• remove: remove an unnecessary key and its value.

NOTE: add and replace behave in the same way, so they can be used interchangeably. However, there is the difference between the add and replace operations when mutating an array. In this case add will add an element to the list, whereas replace will replace the whole list.

After the resource YAML file is mutated, the required object is created in the Kubernetes cluster.

Examples

1. Mutation of deployment resource

Here is the policy:

apiVersion : policy.nirmata.io/v1alpha1
kind : Policy
metadata : 
  name : policy-deployment-ghost   
spec :
  failurePolicy: stopOnError
  rules:
    - resource:
        kind : Deployment    
        name :
        selector :
          matchLabels :
           nirmata.io/deployment.name: "ghost"
      patch:
      - path: /metadata/labels/isMutated
        op: add
        value: "true"
      - path: "/spec/strategy/rollingUpdate/maxSurge"
        op: add
        value: 5
      - path: "/spec/template/spec/containers/0/ports/0"
        op: replace
        value:
          containerPort: 2368
          protocol: TCP

In the name parameter, you should specify the policy name.

The failurePolicy parameter is optional. It is set to stopOnError by default. Other possible value is continueOnError. If continueOnError is specified, the resource will be created despite the errors that may have occurred in the webhook.

The rules section consists of the mandatory resource sub-section and an optional patch sub-section.

The resource sub-section defines to which kind of the supported resources a Nirmata policy has to be applied:

• In the kind parameter, you should specify the resource type. You can find the list of the supported types in the How it works section.
• In the name parameter, you should specify the name of the resource the policy has to be applied to. This parameter can be omitted if selector is specified.
• In the selector parameter, you should specify conditions based on which the resources will be chosen for the policy to be applied to. This parameter is optional if name is specified.

The patch sub-section defines what needs to be changed (i.e. mutated) before resource creation can take place. This section contains multiple entries of the path, operation, and value.

• In the path parameter, you should specify the required path.
• In the op parameter, you should specify the required operation (Add | Replace | Delete).
• In the value parameter, you should specify either a number, a YAML string, or text.

2. Adding secret and config map to namespace

apiVersion : policy.nirmata.io/v1alpha1
kind : Policy
metadata : 
  name : policy-namespace-default
spec :
  failurePolicy: stopOnError
  rules:
    - resource:
        kind : Namespace    
        name :
        selector :
          matchLabels :
           target: "production"
      configMapGenerator :
        name: game-config-env-file
        copyFrom: 
          namespace: some-ns
          name: some-other-config-map
        data:
          foo: bar
          app.properties: /
            foo1=bar1
            foo2=bar2
          ui.properties: /
            foo1=bar1
            foo2=bar2
      secretGenerator :
        name: game-secrets
        copyFrom: 
          namespace: some-ns
          name: some-other-secrets
        data: # data is optional

In this example, the rules section has the mandatory resource sub-section, additional secretGenerator and configMapGenerator sub-sections, and no optional patch sub-section.

The configMapGenerator sub-section defines the contents of the config-map which will be created in the future namespace.

The copyFrom parameter contains information about template config-map. The data parameter describes the contents of the created config-map. copyFrom and data are optional, but at least one of these fields must be specified. If both copyFrom and data are specified, then the template copyFrom will be used for the configuration, and then the specified data will be added to the config-map.

secretGenerator acts exactly as configMapGenerator, but creates a secret instead of the config-map.

More examples

An example of a policy that uses all available features: definitions/policy-example.yaml. See the contents of /examples: there are definitions and policies for every supported type of resource.

Build

Prerequisites

You need to have the go and dep utils installed on your machine. Ensure that the GOPATH environment variable is set to the desired location. Code generation for the CRD controller depends on kubernetes/hack, so before using code generation, execute:

go get k8s.io/kubernetes/hack

We are using dep

Cloning

git clone https://github.com/nirmata/kube-policy.git $GOPATH/src/github.com/nirmata/kube-policy Make sure that you use exactly the same subdirectory of the $GOPATH as shown above.

Restore dependencies

Navigate to the kube-policy project dir and execute the following command: dep ensure

This will install the necessary dependencies described in Gopkg.toml

Compiling

We are using the code generator for the custom resource objects from here: https://github.com/kubernetes/code-generator

Generate additional controller code before compiling the project:

scripts/update-codegen.sh

Then you can build the controller:

go build .

Installation

There are two possible ways of installing and using the controller: for development and for production

For development

At the time of creation of these instructions, only this installation method worked

1. Open your ~/.kube/config file and copy the value of certificate-authority-data to the clipboard.
2. Open crd/MutatingWebhookConfiguration_local.yaml and replace ${CA_BUNDLE} with the contents of the clipboard.
3. Open ~/.kube/config again and copy the IP of the server value, for example 192.168.10.117.
4. Run scripts/deploy-controller.sh --service=localhost --serverIp=<server_IP>, where <server_IP> is a server from the clipboard. This scripts will generate TLS certificate for webhook server and register this webhook in the cluster. Also it registers CustomResource Policy.
5. Start the controller using the following command: sudo kube-policy --cert=certs/server.crt --key=certs/server-key.pem --kubeconfig=~/.kube/config

For production

To be implemented The scripts for "development installation method" will be moved to the controller's code. The solution will perform the preparation inside the cluster automatically.