NetBird Kubernetes Operator

For easily provisioning access to Kubernetes resources using NetBird.

netbird-ingress-preview.mp4

Description

This operator easily provides NetBird access on Kubernetes clusters, allowing users to access internal resources directly.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• (Recommended) helm version 3+
• kubectl version v1.11.3+.
• Access to a Kubernetes v1.11.3+ cluster.
• (Recommended) Cert Manager.

Deployment

1. Add helm repository.

helm repo add netbirdio https://netbirdio.github.io/kubernetes-operator

2. (Recommended) Install cert-manager for k8s API to communicate with the NetBird operator.

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.17.0/cert-manager.yaml

3. Add NetBird API token

kubectl create namespace netbird
kubectl -n netbird create secret generic netbird-mgmt-api-key --from-literal=NB_API_KEY=$(cat ~/nb-pat.secret)

4. (Recommended) Create a values.yaml file, check helm show values netbirdio/kubernetes-operator for more info.
5. Install using helm install --create-namespace -f values.yaml -n netbird netbird-operator netbirdio/kubernetes-operator.
6. (Recommended) Check pod status using kubectl get pods -n netbird.
7. (Optional) Create an exposed-nginx.yaml file to create a Nginx service for testing.
8. (Optional) Apply the Nginx service:

kubectl apply -f exposed-nginx.yaml

Learn more about the values.yaml options here and Granting controller access to NetBird Management.

Uninstallation

Important

Most operator resources are annotated with finalizers, attempting to delete the namespace will result in hanged deletion.

1. (If ingress mode is enabled) Remove all instances of netbird.io/expose annotation on Services.
2. Run helm uninstall -n netbird netbird-operator.
3. Wait for all deletion jobs to finish.

Version

We have developed and executed tests against Kubernetes v1.31, but it should work with most recent Kubernetes version.

Latest operator version: v0.1.1.

Tested against:

Distribution	Test status	Kubernetes Version
Google GKE	Pass	1.31.5
AWS EKS	Pass	1.31
Azure AKS	Not tested	N/A
OpenShift	Not tested	N/A

We would love community feedback to improve the test matrix. Please submit a PR with your test results.

Usage

Check the usage of usage.md and examples.

Contributing

Prerequisites

To be able to develop this project, you need to have the following tools installed:

• Git.
• Make.
• Go programming language.
• Docker CE.
• Kubernetes cluster (v1.16+). KIND is recommended.
• Kubebuilder.

Running tests

Running unit tests

make test

Running E2E tests

kind create cluster # If not already created, you can check with `kind get clusters`
make test-e2e