secure way to connect kubectl to digital ocean managed kubernetes

Posted on July 31, 2021

Iam using digital ocean’s manged kubernetes. my questions is do we have to configure our own ssl connection from my pc to cluster on digital ocean or the default admin user created by digital ocean and the config file download from the website configure ssl / encrypted connection between my pc and cluster while using kubectl?

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Nabeel

July 31, 2021

Accepted Answer

kubectl uses https for its communications. You can verify this by running kubectl in verbose mode. For example: kubectl get pods --v=6

Of course when you download the config file from digital ocean’s dashboard, that’s through an https connection, and if you use doctl it’s almost certainly the same.

If you have concerns about having admin power, you can also create a user with more limited access and use that user’s token instead of the admin token.

Bobby Iliev

July 8, 2024

Hi there,

A quick update here in case that anyone comes across this in the future.

DigitalOcean has just announced that Control plane firewalls are now available in Early Availability.

The feature improves security and traffic for your cluster. Once enabled, only configured IP addresses, cluster worker nodes and workloads, and internal systems that manage the cluster (such as cluster upgrades) can access the control plane.

Existing open connections continue to work until they terminate. However, for WATCH requests, the API server enforces a maximum of 30 minutes for terminating the open connection.

For more information, see How to Add a Control Plane Firewall.

- Bobby