A Kubernetes operator for managing CloudFormation stacks via kubectl and a custom resource definition.

Warning: this project is in alpha state. It should only be used to try out the demo and get the general idea.

This version uses the new operator-sdk. It's untested and may not work correctly

You need API access to a cluster running at least Kubernetes v1.17.0+.

Start the CloudFormation operator in your cluster by using the provided manifests:

$ make deploy IMG=quay.io/linki/cloudformation-operator:latest

Modify the region flag to match your cluster's.

Additionally you need to make sure that the operator Pod has enough AWS IAM permissions to create, update and delete CloudFormation stacks as well as permission to modify any resources that are part of the CloudFormation stacks you intend to deploy. In order to follow the example below it needs access to CloudFormation as well as S3.

The operator will require an IAM role or user credentials. Use the following Policy document as a guideline in order to follow the tutorial:

MyIAMRole: Properties: ... Policies: - PolicyDocument: Statement: - {Action: 'cloudformation:*', Effect: Allow, Resource: '*'} - {Action: 's3:*', Effect: Allow, Resource: '*'} Version: '2012-10-17' ...

The operator will usually use the IAM role of the EC2 instance it's running on, so you have to add those permissions to that role. If you're using Kube2IAM or similar and give your Pod a dedicated IAM role then you have to add the permissions to that role.

Once running the operator should print some output but shouldn't actually do anything at this point. Leave it running, keep watching its logs and continue with the steps below.

Currently you don't have any stacks.

$ kubectl get stacks No resources found.

Let's create a simple one that manages an S3 bucket:

apiVersion: cloudformation.linki.space/v1alpha1 kind: Stack metadata: name: my-bucket spec: template: |  ---  AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'   Resources:  S3Bucket:  Type: AWS::S3::Bucket  Properties:  VersioningConfiguration:  Status: Suspended

The Stack resource's definition looks a lot like any other Kubernetes resource manifest. The spec section describes an attribute called template which contains a regular CloudFormation template.

Go ahead and submit the stack definition to your cluster:

$ kubectl apply -f config/samples/cfs-my-bucket-v1.yaml stack "my-bucket" created $ kubectl get stacks NAME AGE my-bucket 21s

Open your AWS CloudFormation console and find your new stack.

Once the CloudFormation stack is created check that your S3 bucket was created as well.

The operator will write back additional information about the CloudFormation Stack to your Kubernetes resource's status section, e.g. the stackID:

$ kubectl get stacks my-bucket -o yaml spec:  template:  ... status:  stackID: arn:aws:cloudformation:eu-central-1:123456789012:stack/my-bucket/327b7d3c-f27b-4b94-8d17-92a1d9da85ab

Voilà, you just created a CloudFormation stack by only talking to Kubernetes.

You can also update your stack: Let's change the VersioningConfiguration from Suspended to Enabled:

apiVersion: cloudformation.linki.space/v1alpha1 kind: Stack metadata: name: my-bucket spec: template: |  ---  AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'   Resources:  S3Bucket:  Type: AWS::S3::Bucket  Properties:  VersioningConfiguration:  Status: Enabled

As with most Kubernetes resources you can update your Stack resource by applying a changed manifest to your Kubernetes cluster or by using kubectl edit stack my-stack.

$ kubectl apply -f config/samples/cfs-my-bucket-v2.yaml stack "my-bucket" configured

Wait until the operator discovered and executed the change, then look at your AWS CloudFormation console again and find your stack being updated, yay.

You may want to assign tags to your CloudFormation stacks. The tags added to a CloudFormation stack will be propagated to the managed resources. This feature may be useful in multiple cases, for example, to distinguish resources at billing report. Current operator provides two ways to assign tags:

• --tag command line argument or AWS_TAGS environment variable which allows setting default tags for all resources managed by the operator. The format is --tag=foo=bar --tag=wambo=baz on the command line or with a line break when specifying as an env var. (e.g. in zsh: AWS_TAGS="foo=bar"$'\n'"wambo=baz")
• tags parameter at kubernetes resource spec:

apiVersion: cloudformation.linki.space/v1alpha1 kind: Stack metadata: name: my-bucket spec: tags: foo: dataFromStack template: |  ---  AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'   Resources:  S3Bucket:  Type: AWS::S3::Bucket  Properties:  VersioningConfiguration:  Status: Enabled

Resource-specific tags have precedence over the default tags. Thus if a tag is defined at command-line arguments and for a Stack resource, the value from the Stack resource will be used.

If we run the operation and a Stack resource with the described above examples, we'll see such picture:

However, often you'll want to extract dynamic values out of your CloudFormation stack template into so called Parameters so that your template itself doesn't change that often and, well, is really a template.

Let's extract the VersioningConfiguration into a parameter:

apiVersion: cloudformation.linki.space/v1alpha1 kind: Stack metadata: name: my-bucket spec: parameters: VersioningConfiguration: Enabled template: |  ---  AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'   Parameters:  VersioningConfiguration:  Type: String  Default: none  AllowedValues:  - "Enabled"  - "Suspended"   Resources:  S3Bucket:  Type: AWS::S3::Bucket  Properties:  VersioningConfiguration:  Status:  Ref: VersioningConfiguration

and apply it to your cluster:

$ kubectl apply -f config/samples/cfs-my-bucket-v3.yaml stack "my-bucket" configured

Since we changed the template a little this will update your CloudFormation stack. However, since we didn't actually change anything because we injected the same VersioningConfiguration value as before, your S3 bucket shouldn't change.

Any CloudFormation parameters defined in the CloudFormation template can be specified in the Stack resource's spec.parameters section. It's a simple key/value map.

Furthermore, CloudFormation supports so called Outputs. These can be used for dynamic values that are only known after a stack has been created. In our example, we don't define a particular S3 bucket name but instead let AWS generate one for us.

Let's change our CloudFormation template to expose the generated bucket name via an Output:

apiVersion: cloudformation.linki.space/v1alpha1 kind: Stack metadata: name: my-bucket spec: parameters: VersioningConfiguration: Enabled template: |  ---  AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'   Parameters:  VersioningConfiguration:  Type: String  Default: none  AllowedValues:  - "Enabled"  - "Suspended"   Resources:  S3Bucket:  Type: AWS::S3::Bucket  Properties:  VersioningConfiguration:  Status:  Ref: VersioningConfiguration   Outputs:  BucketName:  Value: !Ref 'S3Bucket'  Description: Name of the sample Amazon S3 bucket.

Apply the change to our cluster and wait until the operator has successfully updated the CloudFormation stack.

$ kubectl apply -f config/samples/cfs-my-bucket-v4.yaml stack "my-bucket" configured

Every Output you define will be available in your Kubernetes resource's status section under the outputs field as a key/value map.

Let's check the name of our S3 bucket:

$ kubectl get stacks my-bucket -o yaml spec:  template:  ... status:  stackID: ...  outputs:  BucketName: my-bucket-s3bucket-tarusnslfnsj

In the template we defined an Output called BucketName that should contain the name of our bucket after stack creation. Looking up the corresponding value under .status.outputs[BucketName] reveals that our bucket was named my-bucket-s3bucket-tarusnslfnsj.

The operator captures the whole lifecycle of a CloudFormation stack. So if you delete the resource from Kubernetes, the operator will teardown the CloudFormation stack as well. Let's do that now:

$ kubectl delete stack my-bucket stack "my-bucket" deleted

Check your CloudFormation console once more and validate that your stack as well as your S3 bucket were deleted.

Clean up the resources:

$ make undeploy

This project uses the operator sdk.

$ make $ WATCH_NAMESPACE=default KUBERNETES_CONFIG=~/.kube/config make run OPERATOR_FLAGS="--region eu-central-1"

$ make docker-build quay.io/linki/cloudformation-operator:latest $ make docker-push quay.io/linki/cloudformation-operator:latest

You can use OPERATOR_FLAGS to pass in flags using the operator-sdk.

Assuming you are using minikube:

$ minikube start # you will be have a kubeconfig read to use by cloudformation operator $ export AWS_PROFILE=my_profile # setup your aws config $ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/linki/cloudformation-operator $ # run cloudformation operator based on previous settings and env vars $ WATCH_NAMESPACE=staging make run OPERATOR_FLAGS="--dry-run=true --region=eu-central-1" I0122 16:31:14.509064 195514 request.go:645] Throttling request took 1.027790903s, request: GET:https://api.crc.testing:6443/apis/template.openshift.io/v1?timeout=32s 2021-01-22T16:31:15.863-0500 INFO controller-runtime.metrics metrics server is starting to listen {"addr": ":8080"} 2021-01-22T16:31:15.864-0500 INFO setup  2021-01-22T16:31:15.864-0500 INFO setup starting manager 2021-01-22T16:31:15.864-0500 INFO controller-runtime.manager starting metrics server {"path": "/metrics"} 2021-01-22T16:31:15.864-0500 INFO controller-runtime.manager.controller.stack Starting EventSource {"reconciler group": "cloudformation.linki.space", "reconciler kind": "Stack", "source": "kind source: /, Kind="} 2021-01-22T16:31:15.965-0500 INFO controller-runtime.manager.controller.stack Starting Controller {"reconciler group": "cloudformation.linki.space", "reconciler kind": "Stack"} 2021-01-22T16:31:15.965-0500 INFO controller-runtime.manager.controller.stack Starting workers {"reconciler group": "cloudformation.linki.space", "reconciler kind": "Stack", "worker count": 1}