Installing, upgrading, and uninstalling Config Connector

Beta

This product or feature is in a pre-release state and might change or have limited support. For more information, see the product launch stages.

This topic describes how to install Config Connector on your cluster.

Before you begin

To prepare for this task, perform the following steps:

• Ensure that you have enabled the Google Kubernetes Engine API.
Enable Google Kubernetes Engine API
• Ensure that you have installed the Cloud SDK.
• Set your default project ID:

  gcloud config set project [PROJECT_ID]

• If you are working with zonal clusters, set your default compute zone:

  gcloud config set compute/zone [COMPUTE_ZONE]

• If you are working with regional clusters, set your default compute region:

  gcloud config set compute/region [COMPUTE_REGION]

• Update gcloud to the latest version:

  gcloud components update

Note: You can override these default settings in gcloud commands using the --project, --zone, and --region operational flags.

• You must configure kubectl to connect to your clusters. Follow the steps for GKE clusters or GKE On-Prem clusters.

Choosing your installation method

You can install Config Connector with either a GCP Identity Service Account or a GKE Workload Identity.

GCP Identity

Creating a ClusterRoleBinding

Config Connector needs permission to create Kubernetes Roles before it can create resources.

Verify that you can create Roles by running the following command.

kubectl auth can-i create roles

If the output is yes, continue to Create an Identity.

If the output is no, create a ClusterRoleBinding in your cluster. This allows you to create Roles. Replace [ACCOUNT_EMAIL] with the email associated with your GCP account.

kubectl create clusterrolebinding cluster-admin-binding \
--clusterrole cluster-admin \
--user [ACCOUNT_EMAIL]

The outputs should contain the phrase cluster-admin-binding created. If it does not, contact your account or cluster administrator about permissions.

Creating an identity

A Config Connector cluster needs a GCP identity to communicate with other resources. To set up the identity, you create an Cloud Identity and Access Management (Cloud IAM) Service Account and Service Account Key. After that, you import the Key's credentials as a Secret in each cluster that runs Config Connector.

Creating a service account

1. Create the cnrm-system Service Account with gcloud:

   gcloud iam service-accounts create cnrm-system

2. Give the IAM Service Account elevated permissions on your project. Replace [PROJECT_ID] with your project ID.

   Note: If you prefer to grant editor access to the project replace roles/owner with roles/editor. Granting the editor role allows most Config Connector functionality except [project/organization] wide configurations such as Cloud IAM modifications.

   gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding [PROJECT_ID] \
   --member serviceAccount:cnrm-system@[PROJECT_ID].iam.gserviceaccount.com \
   --role roles/owner

3. Create a Service Account Key and export its credentials to a file. Replace [PROJECT_ID] with your project ID and run the following:

   gcloud iam service-accounts keys create --iam-account \
   cnrm-system@[PROJECT_ID].iam.gserviceaccount.com key.json

Applying credentials to your cluster

Apply the credentials to each cluster where you will run Config Connector.

1. Create the cnrm-system namespace.

   kubectl create namespace cnrm-system

2. Import the key's credentials as a Secret.

   kubectl create secret generic gcp-key --from-file key.json --namespace cnrm-system

3. Remove the credentials from your system.

   rm key.json

Installing Config Connector

To manually install Config Connector, download the installation tar file and extract it, then apply the contents to your cluster.

1. Download the latest installation bundle tar file:

   curl -X GET -sLO \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
   --location-trusted \
   https://us-central1-cnrm-eap.cloudfunctions.net/download/latest/infra/install-bundle.tar.gz

2. Extract the tar file:

   tar zxvf install-bundle.tar.gz

3. Apply the manifests to your cluster:

   kubectl apply -f install-bundle/

Workload Identity

Prerequisites

Before you install Config Connector to a cluster, perform the following steps.

• Create or identigy a GKE cluster where Config Connector has not yet been installed.
• Set up Workload Identity on the cluster where you will install Config Connector.

Create an Identity

Setting up the identity includes:

• Creating an Cloud IAM Service Account.
• Creating a binding between the Cloud IAM Service Account and Config Connector's Kubernetes service account.

Note: This step needs to be performed only once per cluster.

1. Create the cnrm-system Service Account with gcloud:

   gcloud iam service-accounts create cnrm-system

2. Give the IAM Service Account elevated permissions on your project. Replace [PROJECT_ID] with your project ID.

   Note: If you prefer to grant editor access to the project replace roles/owner with roles/editor. Granting the editor role allows most Config Connector functionality except [project/organization] wide configurations such as Cloud IAM modifications.

   gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding [PROJECT_ID] \
   --member="serviceAccount:cnrm-system@[PROJECT_ID].iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
   --role="roles/owner"
   

3. Create a Cloud IAM policy binding between the IAM Service Account and the predefined Kubernetes service account run by KCC.

   gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding cnrm-system@[PROJECT_ID].iam.gserviceaccount.com \
   --member="serviceAccount:[PROJECT_ID].svc.id.goog[cnrm-system/cnrm-controller-manager]" \
   
   --role="roles/iam.workloadIdentityUser"

Deploying Config Connector

1. Download the latest installation bundle tarball:

   curl -X GET -sLO \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
    --location-trusted \
   https://us-central1-cnrm-eap.cloudfunctions.net/download/latest/infra/install-bundle-with-workload-identity.tar.gz

2. Extract the tar file.

   tar zxvf install-bundle-with-workload-identity.tar.gz

3. Replace ${PROJECT_ID?} with your project ID in the installation manifest.

   sed -i 's/${PROJECT_ID?}/[PROJECT_ID]/' install-bundle/0-cnrm-system.yaml

4. Apply the manifests to your cluster.

   kubectl apply -f install-bundle/

Verify Your Installation

Config Connector runs a single system process named cnrm-system. You can verify the pod for this process has a STATUS of Running, by executing the following command:

kubectl wait -n cnrm-system \
 --for=condition=Initialized pod \
 cnrm-controller-manager-0

If Config Connector is installed correctly, the output is similar to the following:

pod/cnrm-controller-manager-0 condition met

Note: The controller pod may take several minutes to start.

Setting your default namespace

You can simplify commands and avoid adding `--namespace` to each `kubectl` command by changing the default context's Namespace. To do so, run the following command, replacing [NAMESPACE_NAME] with your Namespace name:

kubectl config set-context --current --namespace [NAMESPACE_NAME]

Troubleshooting

The installation bundle or samples archive is empty or seems to be corrupted.

Verify your authorization token with gcloud auth print-access-token. A valid token is a long string beginning with text similar to ya29.XXXXXXX...X.

gcloud auth print-access-token

If the token is not valid, re-authenticate to GCP.

After authenticating, re-deploy Config Connector.

Manually uninstall Config Connector

To manually uninstall Config Connector, delete the installation bundle from your cluster.

From the same folder containing the contents of the unpacked tar file from the manual installation, run this command to delete:

kubectl delete -f install-bundle/crds.yaml \
kubectl delete -f install-bundle/0-cnrm-system.yaml

Upgrading Config Connector

Note: Upgrades from alpha versions of Config Connector are not supported. Install Config Connector on a different cluster when using the beta.

To manually upgrade Config Connector:

1. Run the manual uninstall steps
2. Run the manual install steps

What's next

Get started with Config Connector.