Kubernetes clusters

Version history

We offer extensive integrations to help you connect and manage your Kubernetes clusters from GitLab.

Read through this document to get started.

Clusters infrastructure

Use Infrastructure as Code to create and manage your clusters with the GitLab integration with Terraform.

Benefit from the GitLab-Kubernetes integration

Using the GitLab-Kubernetes integration, you can benefit of GitLab features such as:

Supported cluster versions

GitLab is committed to support at least two production-ready Kubernetes minor versions at any given time. We regularly review the versions we support, and provide a three-month deprecation period before we remove support of a specific version. The range of supported versions is based on the evaluation of:

GitLab supports the following Kubernetes versions, and you can upgrade your Kubernetes version to any supported version at any time:

  • 1.19 (support ends on February 22, 2022)
  • 1.18 (support ends on November 22, 2021)
  • 1.17 (support ends on September 22, 2021)
  • 1.16 (support ends on July 22, 2021)
  • 1.15 (support ends on May 22, 2021)

Some GitLab features may support versions outside the range provided here.

Add and remove clusters

You can create new or add existing clusters to GitLab:

  • On the project-level, to have a cluster dedicated to a project.
  • On the group level, to use the same cluster across multiple projects within your group.
  • On the instance level, to use the same cluster across multiple groups and projects.

To create new clusters, use one of the following methods:

You can also add existing clusters to GitLab.

View your clusters

To view your project-level Kubernetes clusters, to go Infrastructure > Kubernetes clusters from your project. On this page, you can add a new cluster and view information about your existing clusters, such as:

  • Nodes count.
  • Rough estimates of memory and CPU usage.

Configuring your Kubernetes cluster

Use the GitLab Kubernetes Agent to safely configure your clusters. Otherwise, there are security implications.

Security implications

cautionThe whole cluster security is based on a model where developers are trusted, so only trusted users should be allowed to control your clusters.

The default cluster configuration grants access to a wide set of functionalities needed to successfully build and deploy a containerized application. Bear in mind that the same credentials are used for all the applications running on the cluster.

Multiple Kubernetes clusters

See how to associate multiple Kubernetes clusters with your GitLab project.

Cluster integrations

See the available cluster integrations to integrate third-party applications with your clusters through GitLab.

Cluster management project

Attach a Cluster management project to your cluster to manage shared resources requiring cluster-admin privileges for installation, such as an Ingress controller.

GitLab-managed clusters

See how to allow GitLab to manage your cluster for you.

Auto DevOps

You can use Auto DevOps to automatically detect, build, test, deploy, and monitor your applications.

Deploying to a Kubernetes cluster

See how to deploy to your Kubernetes cluster from GitLab.

Monitoring your Kubernetes cluster

Automatically detect and monitor Kubernetes metrics. Automatic monitoring of NGINX Ingress is also supported.

Read more about Kubernetes monitoring

Visualizing cluster health

Version history

When the Prometheus cluster integration is enabled, GitLab monitors the cluster’s health. At the top of the cluster settings page, CPU and Memory utilization is displayed, along with the total amount available. Keeping an eye on cluster resources can be important, if the cluster runs out of memory pods may be shutdown or fail to start.

Cluster Monitoring