Overview of clusterctl

The clusterctl CLI tool handles the lifecycle of a Cluster API management cluster.

The clusterctl command line interface is specifically designed for providing a simple “day 1 experience” and a quick start with Cluster API. It automates fetching the YAML files defining provider components and installing them.

Additionally it encodes a set of best practices in managing providers, that helps the user in avoiding mis-configurations or in managing day 2 operations such as upgrades.

Below you can find a list of main clusterctl commands:

• clusterctl init Initialize a management cluster.
• clusterctl upgrade plan Provide a list of recommended target versions for upgrading Cluster API providers in a management cluster.
• clusterctl upgrade apply Apply new versions of Cluster API core and providers in a management cluster.
• clusterctl delete Delete one or more providers from the management cluster.
• clusterctl generate cluster Generate templates for creating workload clusters.
• clusterctl generate yaml Process yaml using clusterctl’s yaml processor.
• clusterctl get kubeconfig Gets the kubeconfig file for accessing a workload cluster.
• clusterctl move Move Cluster API objects and all their dependencies between management clusters.
• clusterctl alpha rollout Manages the rollout of Cluster API resources. For example: MachineDeployments.

For the full list of clusterctl commands please refer to commands.

Avoiding GitHub rate limiting

While using providers hosted on GitHub, clusterctl is calling GitHub API which are rate limited; for normal usage free tier is enough but when using clusterctl extensively users might hit the rate limit.

To avoid rate limiting for the public repos set the GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable. To generate a token follow this documentation. The token only needs repo scope for clusterctl.

Installing clusterctl

Instructions are available in the Quick Start.