Cluster management project

Introduced in GitLab 12.5

A project can be designated as the management project for a cluster. A management project can be used to run deployment jobs with Kubernetes cluster-admin privileges.

This can be useful for:

Creating pipelines to install cluster-wide applications into your cluster, see management project template for details.
Any jobs that require cluster-admin privileges.

Permissions

Only the management project receives cluster-admin privileges. All other projects continue to receive namespace scoped edit level privileges.

Management projects are restricted to the following:

For project-level clusters, the management project must be in the same namespace (or descendants) as the cluster’s project.
For group-level clusters, the management project must be in the same group (or descendants) as the cluster’s group.
For instance-level clusters, there are no such restrictions.

Usage

To use a cluster management project for a cluster:

Select the project.
Configure your pipelines.
Set an environment scope.

Selecting a cluster management project

To select a cluster management project to use:

Navigate to the appropriate configuration page. For a:
- Project-level cluster, go to your project’s Infrastructure > Kubernetes clusters page.
- Group-level cluster, go to your group’s Kubernetes page.
- Instance-level cluster, go to Menu > Admin > Kubernetes page.
Select the project using Cluster management project field in the Advanced settings section.

Configuring your pipeline

After designating a project as the management project for the cluster, write a .gitlab-ci.yml in that project. For example:

configure cluster:
  stage: deploy
  script: kubectl get namespaces
  environment:
    name: production

Setting the environment scope

Environment scopes are usable when associating multiple clusters to the same management project.

Each scope can only be used by a single cluster for a management project.

For example, let’s say the following Kubernetes clusters are associated to a management project:

Cluster	Environment scope
Development	`*`
Staging	`staging`
Production	`production`

The following environments set in .gitlab-ci.yml deploy to the Development, Staging, and Production cluster respectively.

stages:
  - deploy

configure development cluster:
  stage: deploy
  script: kubectl get namespaces
  environment:
    name: development

configure staging cluster:
  stage: deploy
  script: kubectl get namespaces
  environment:
    name: staging

configure production cluster:
  stage: deploy
  script: kubectl get namespaces
  environment:
    name: production