Centralized Resource Display for Multiple Kubernetes Clusters

2025-03-21

Nowadays, it is common to have multiple Kubernetes clusters. There are a number of reasons why organizations might choose to have multiple clusters, including:

To isolate different environments: For example, you might have one cluster for development, one for staging, and one for production. This can help to prevent problems in one environment from affecting other environments.
To meet compliance requirements: Some organizations may have compliance requirements that dictate that certain applications must be deployed to separate clusters.
To support different regions: You can deploy applications to different clusters in different regions to improve performance and availability for users in those regions.

Importance of Having a Centralized Location for Viewing Resource Summaries

Managing multiple Kubernetes clusters effectively requires a centralized location for viewing a summary of resources. Here are some key reasons why this is important:

Centralized Visibility: A central location provides a unified view of resource summaries, allowing you to monitor and visualize resources from all your clusters in one place. This simplifies issue detection, trend identification, and problem troubleshooting across multiple clusters.
Efficient Troubleshooting and Issue Resolution: With a centralized resource view, you can swiftly identify the affected clusters when an issue arises, compare them with others, and narrow down potential causes. This comprehensive overview of resource states and dependencies enables efficient troubleshooting and quicker problem resolution.
Enhanced Security and Compliance: Centralised resource visibility strengthens security and compliance monitoring. It enables you to monitor cluster configurations, identify security vulnerabilities, and ensure consistent adherence to compliance standards across all clusters. You can easily track and manage access controls, network policies, and other security-related aspects from a single location.

Sveltos Solution

Sveltos is an open-source project that provides a Kubernetes add-on controller that simplifies the deployment and management of add-ons across multiple Kubernetes clusters.

It can also collect and display information about resources in managed clusters from a central location.

Centralized Resource Display for Multiple Kubernetes Clusters

To do this, Sveltos uses three main concepts:

1. ClusterHealthCheck is the CRD used to tell Sveltos from which set of clusters to collect information;

2. HealthCheck is the CRD used to tell Sveltos which resources to collect;

3. Sveltosctl is the CLI used to display collected information.

For example, you could use ClusterHealthCheck to specify that you want Sveltos to collect information from all of your Kubernetes clusters that are running in the env=prod environment. You could then use HealthCheck to specify that you want Sveltos to collect information about all of the pods, deployments, and services in those clusters. Finally, you could use Sveltosctl to display the collected information in a human-readable format.

Here is an example of the output of the sveltosctl show resourcescommand:

     Shell 
   
 
 
   ./sveltosctl show resources --kind=pod --namespace=nginx
+-----------------------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------------------------+-------------------+
|           CLUSTER           |      GVK      | NAMESPACE |               NAME                |      MESSAGE      |
+-----------------------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------------------------+-------------------+
| default/clusterapi-workload | /v1, Kind=Pod | nginx     | nginx-deployment-85996f8dbd-7tctq | Deployment: nginx |
|                             |               | nginx     | nginx-deployment-85996f8dbd-tz4gd | Deployment: nginx |
| gke/pre-production          |               | nginx     | nginx-deployment-c4f7848dc-6jtwg  | Deployment: nginx |
|                             |               | nginx     | nginx-deployment-c4f7848dc-trllk  | Deployment: nginx |
| gke/production              |               | nginx     | nginx-deployment-676cf9b46d-k84pb | Deployment: nginx |
|                             |               | nginx     | nginx-deployment-676cf9b46d-mmbl4 | Deployment: nginx |
+-----------------------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------------------------+-------------------+ 
  

This output shows from all the managed clusters. It contains the name of the cluster, the GVK (group, version, kind) of the resource, the namespace, the name of the resource, and a message about the resource.

In the next sections, we will cover all three of these concepts in detail with concrete examples.

ClusterHealthCheck

A ClusterHealthCheck instance is a Kubernetes custom resource (CRD) that specifies which clusters Sveltos should collect information from. It has two main fields:

clusterSelector: This field is a Kubernetes label selector that specifies which clusters Sveltos should collect information from. For example, the clusterSelector field in the example provided specifies that Sveltos should collect information from all clusters that have the label env=fv.
livenessCheck: this field references an HealthCheck instance. The HealthCheck instance contains detailed instructions on which resources to collect.

     YAML 
   
 
 
   apiVersion: lib.projectsveltos.io/v1alpha1
kind: ClusterHealthCheck
metadata:
  name: production
spec:
  clusterSelector: env=fv
  livenessChecks:
  - name: deployment
    type: HealthCheck
    livenessSourceRef:
      kind: HealthCheck
      apiVersion: lib.projectsveltos.io/v1alpha1
      name: deployment-replicas
  notifications:
  - name: event
    type: KubernetesEvent 
  

When a ClusterHealthCheck instance is created in the management cluster, Sveltos will collect the information specified in the referenced HealthCheck in all managed clusters matching clusterSelector.

HealthCheck

A HealthCheck instance is a Kubernetes custom resource (CRD) that specifies which resources Sveltos should collect.

It has the following fields in its Spec section:

Group: This field specifies the group of the Kubernetes resources that the HealthCheck is for.
Version: This field specifies the version of the Kubernetes resources that the HealthCheck is for.
Kind: This field specifies the kind of Kubernetes resources that the HealthCheck is for.
Namespace: This field can be used to filter resources by namespace.
LabelFilters: This field can be used to filter resources by labels.
Script: This field can contain a Lua script, which defines a custom health check. The script must contain an evaluate method which is passed an instance of resource collected (obj) and must return a struct (hs).

     YAML 
   
 
 
   apiVersion: lib.projectsveltos.io/v1alpha1
kind: HealthCheck
metadata:
 name: deployment-replicas
spec:
 group: "apps"
 version: v1
 kind: Deployment
 script: |
   function evaluate()
     hs = {}
     hs.status = "Progressing"
     hs.message = ""
     if obj.spec.replicas == 0 then
       hs.ignore=true
       return hs
     end
     if obj.status ~= nil then
       if obj.status.availableReplicas ~= nil then
         if obj.status.availableReplicas == obj.spec.replicas then
           hs.status = "Healthy"
           hs.message = "All replicas " .. obj.spec.replicas .. " are healthy"
         else
           hs.status = "Progressing"
           hs.message = "expected replicas: " .. obj.spec.replicas .. " available: " .. obj.status.availableReplicas
         end
       end
       if obj.status.unavailableReplicas ~= nil then
          hs.status = "Degraded"
          hs.message = "deployments have unavailable replicas"
       end
     end
     return hs
   end 
  

In the above examples deployments in all namespaces are collected. Deployments with requested replicas set to zero are ignored. Any other deployment is collected, and the message indicates whether all requested replicas are active or not.

This is another example of HealthCheck to collect the pod-to-deployment relationships.

     YAML 
   
 
 
   apiVersion: lib.projectsveltos.io/v1alpha1
kind: HealthCheck
metadata:
 name: pod-in-deployment
spec:
 group: ""
 version: v1
 kind: Pod
 script: |
   function setContains(set, key)
    return set[key] ~= nil
   end

   function evaluate()
     hs = {}
     hs.status = "Healthy"
     hs.message = ""
     hs.ignore = true
     if obj.metadata.labels ~= nil then
       if setContains(obj.metadata.labels, "app") then
         if obj.status.phase == "Running" then
           hs.ignore = false
           hs.message = "Deployment: " .. obj.metadata.labels["app"]
         end
       end
     end
     return hs
   end 
  

Sveltoctl

Sveltosctl is Sveltos’ CLI. sveltosctl show resources command displays collected information.

Here are some examples:

     Shell 
   
 
 
   kubectl exec -it -n projectsveltos sveltosctl-0 -- ./sveltosctl show resources --kind=deployment 
+-----------------------------+--------------------------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+----------------------------+
|           CLUSTER           |           GVK            |   NAMESPACE    |                  NAME                   |          MESSAGE           |
+-----------------------------+--------------------------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+----------------------------+
| default/clusterapi-workload | apps/v1, Kind=Deployment | kube-system    | calico-kube-controllers                 | All replicas 1 are healthy |
|                             |                          | kube-system    | coredns                                 | All replicas 2 are healthy |
|                             |                          | kyverno        | kyverno-admission-controller            | All replicas 1 are healthy |
|                             |                          | kyverno        | kyverno-background-controller           | All replicas 1 are healthy |
|                             |                          | kyverno        | kyverno-cleanup-controller              | All replicas 1 are healthy |
|                             |                          | kyverno        | kyverno-reports-controller              | All replicas 1 are healthy |
|                             |                          | projectsveltos | sveltos-agent-manager                   | All replicas 1 are healthy |
| gke/pre-production          |                          | gke-gmp-system | gmp-operator                            | All replicas 1 are healthy |
|                             |                          | gke-gmp-system | rule-evaluator                          | All replicas 1 are healthy |
|                             |                          | kube-system    | antrea-controller-horizontal-autoscaler | All replicas 1 are healthy |
|                             |                          | kube-system    | egress-nat-controller                   | All replicas 1 are healthy |
...
+-----------------------------+--------------------------+----------------+-----------------------------------------+---------------------------- 
  

     Shell 
   
 
 
   ./sveltosctl show resources  
+-----------------------------+--------------------------+-----------+------------------+---------------------+
|           CLUSTER           |           GVK            | NAMESPACE |       NAME       |       MESSAGE       |
+-----------------------------+--------------------------+-----------+------------------+---------------------+
| default/clusterapi-workload | apps/v1, Kind=Deployment | nginx     | nginx-deployment | Image: nginx:1.14.2 |
| gke/pre-production          |                          | nginx     | nginx-deployment | Image: nginx:latest |
| gke/production              |                          | nginx     | nginx-deployment | Image: nginx:1.14.2 |
+-----------------------------+--------------------------+-----------+------------------+---------------------+ 
  

Here are the available options to filter what show resources will display:

     Shell 
   
 
 
   --group=<group>: Show Kubernetes resources deployed in clusters matching this group. If not specified, all groups are considered.
--kind=<kind>: Show Kubernetes resources deployed in clusters matching this Kind. If not specified, all kinds are considered.
--namespace=<namespace>: Show Kubernetes resources in this namespace. If not specified, all namespaces are considered.
--cluster-namespace=<name>: Show Kubernetes resources in clusters in this namespace. If not specified, all namespaces are considered.
--cluster=<name>: Show Kubernetes resources in the cluster with the specified name. If not specified, all cluster names are considered. 
  

Audits

This feature can also be used for auditing purposes. For example, if we have Kyverno in each managed cluster with a Kyverno audit policy that reports each Pod that is using an image with the latest tag, we can then instruct Sveltos to collect the audit results from all managed clusters using the following HealthCheck instance:

     YAML 
   
 
 
   apiVersion: lib.projectsveltos.io/v1alpha1
kind: HealthCheck
metadata:
 name: deployment-replicas
spec:
 collectResources: true
 group: wgpolicyk8s.io
 version: v1alpha2
 kind: PolicyReport
 script: |
   function evaluate()
     hs = {}
     hs.status = "Healthy"
     hs.message = ""
     for i, result in ipairs(obj.results) do
       if result.result == "fail" then
          hs.status = "Degraded"
          for j, r in ipairs(result.resources) do
             hs.message = hs.message .. " " .. r.namespace .. "/" .. r.name
          end
       end
     end
     if hs.status == "Healthy" then
       hs.ignore = true
     end
     return hs
   end 
  

Once the HealthCheck instance is created, we can use the sveltosctl show resources command to see consolidated results from all managed clusters:

     Shell 
   
 
 
   ./sveltosctl show resources  
+-------------------------------------+--------------------------------+-----------+--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
|               CLUSTER               |              GVK               | NAMESPACE |           NAME           |                 MESSAGE                 |
+-------------------------------------+--------------------------------+-----------+--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| default/sveltos-management-workload | wgpolicyk8s.io/v1alpha2,       | nginx     | cpol-disallow-latest-tag |  nginx/nginx-deployment                 |
|                                     | Kind=PolicyReport              |           |                          | nginx/nginx-deployment-6b7f675859       |
|                                     |                                |           |                          | nginx/nginx-deployment-6b7f675859-fp6tm |
|                                     |                                |           |                          | nginx/nginx-deployment-6b7f675859-kkft8 |
+-------------------------------------+--------------------------------+-----------+--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ 
  

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Thank you for reading!