Crossplane

Cloud & Infrastructure advanced

Crossplane is an open-source Kubernetes add-on that extends the Kubernetes API to provision and manage cloud infrastructure and services using Kubernetes-native declarative configuration.

Summary

Crossplane turns Kubernetes into a universal control plane for cloud infrastructure by introducing Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) that represent cloud resources, allowing teams to provision databases, storage, and networks using standard Kubernetes tooling.

What is Crossplane?

Crossplane installs into a Kubernetes cluster and adds CRDs for cloud provider resources—AWS RDS instances, GCP buckets, Azure virtual networks—alongside a set of controllers that reconcile those resources against the real cloud APIs. From the user perspective, provisioning a database looks identical to deploying a pod.

Composite Resources (XRs) and Compositions are the key abstraction layer: platform teams define Compositions that map a simple, opinionated CRD to a set of concrete cloud resources. Application teams consume the simple CRD without needing to understand the underlying complexity. This enables a self-service internal developer platform built on Kubernetes.

Crossplane providers are the plugins that know how to talk to specific cloud APIs. The ecosystem includes providers for AWS, GCP, Azure, Helm, and SQL, among many others.

Why is Crossplane relevant?

  • Single control plane: Manage application workloads and their cloud dependencies through one Kubernetes API
  • GitOps compatible: Infrastructure definitions live in Git and are reconciled continuously
  • Abstraction layers: Platform teams define golden paths; application teams consume simple APIs
  • Policy enforcement: Kubernetes admission controllers and OPA apply to infrastructure too

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Related Terms

Terraform

Terraform is HashiCorp's open-source Infrastructure as Code tool for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure declaratively.

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CRD (Custom Resource Definition)

A CRD extends the Kubernetes API by allowing users to define their own custom resource types managed by the Kubernetes control plane.

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GitOps

GitOps is an operational framework that uses Git as the single source of truth for declarative infrastructure and application delivery, with automated reconciliation between desired and actual state.

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