Install UXP

Upbound Universal Crossplane (UXP) is the Upbound official enterprise-grade distribution of Crossplane for self-hosted control planes.

Install UXP into an existing Kubernetes cluster to access Upbound features like official providers or community Crossplane features.

Installing UXP requires the Up command-line.

Use the up uxp install command to install UXP into the current Kubernetes cluster based on ~/.kube/config.

1

up uxp install

Up installs the latest stable UXP release into the upbound-system namespace.

Install a specific version of UXP with up uxp install <version>.

The list of available versions is in the charts.upbound.io/stable listing.

Don’t include the universal-crossplane- name when using up uxp install <version>. For example, up uxp install 1.8.1-up.1

Install UXP into a specific namespace using the -n <NAMESPACE> option.

For example, to install UXP into the upbound-test namespace use the command

1

up uxp install -n upbound-test

Install unreleased versions of UXP for testing or troubleshooting. Don’t install unreleased versions for production use without explicit guidance from Upbound.

Find available unreleased releases in the charts.upbound.io/main listing.

Install the latest unreleased version with the --unstable flag.

up uxp install --unstable

Install a specific release with up uxp install --unstable <version>

Don’t include the universal-crossplane- name when using up uxp install --unstable <version>. For example, up uxp install --unstable 1.9.0-up.1.rc.1.6.g3b4985a

Change default install settings via the command-line with --set <key>=<value> or a settings file with -f <file>.

A configuration file is the recommended method to customize the UXP install.

Provide file-based configurations as a Helm values file.

For example to configure two Crossplane pod replicas with --set:

up uxp install --set replicas=2

or with a file:

1
2

cat settings.yaml
replicas: 2

1

up uxp install -f settings.yaml

View the upbound-system pods to see two Crossplane pods deployed.

1
2
3
4
5
6

kubectl get pods -n upbound-system
NAME                                         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS        AGE
crossplane-75556d97b6-gpzq7                  1/1     Running   0               4m23s
crossplane-75556d97b6-xm8bj                  1/1     Running   0               4m23s
crossplane-rbac-manager-8f5c76d46-kvmpm      1/1     Running   0               4m23s
provider-aws-a1113cd136a1-59b8587f6f-q8bpt   1/1     Running   0               4h55m

If you have installed uxp directly from the Amazon EKS management console, you need to grant crossplane and any provider additional cluster level roles.

Why are those actions needed? The uxp installation has been tailored to fit AWS requirements and the crossplane-rbac-manager has been disabled for the installation.

This means that in order to install and use any provider, you will need to configure uxp by granting additional cluster scope permissions to the crossplane pod and provider pods.

These steps are necessary only for the installations without crossplane-rbac-manager.

First grant crossplane a cluster-admin role.

1
2
3

kubectl create clusterrolebinding cluster-crossplane-admin \
        --clusterrole=cluster-admin \
        --serviceaccount upbound-system:crossplane

Next, for each installed provider, add cluster-admin role binding. Here is an example for provider AWS.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

# Retrieve provider sa name
provider_aws=$(kubectl get sa -n upbound-system \
              | grep provider-aws \
              | awk '{print $1}')
# Grant cluster-admin role
kubectl create clusterrolebinding cluster-provider-aws-admin \
        --clusterrole=cluster-admin \
        --serviceaccount upbound-system:"$provider_aws"

Restart crossplane and provider aws pods for the changes to take effect

1
2
3
4
5

AWS_POD=$(kubectl get pods -n upbound-system | grep provider-aws | awk '{print $1}') && \
          kubectl delete pod -n upbound-system $AWS_POD

CROSSPLANE_POD=$(kubectl get pods -n upbound-system | grep crossplane | awk '{print $1}') && \
          kubectl delete pod -n upbound-system $CROSSPLANE_POD