Primary system and API concepts are documented in the User guide.
Overall API conventions are described in the API conventions doc.
Complete API details are documented via Swagger. The Kubernetes apiserver (aka "master") exports an API that can be used to retrieve the Swagger spec for the Kubernetes API, by default at /swaggerapi
. It also exports a UI you can use to browse the API documentation at /swagger-ui
if the apiserver is passed --enable-swagger-ui=true flag. We also host generated API reference docs.
Remote access to the API is discussed in the access doc.
The Kubernetes API also serves as the foundation for the declarative configuration schema for the system. The Kubectl command-line tool can be used to create, update, delete, and get API objects.
Kubernetes also stores its serialized state (currently in etcd) in terms of the API resources.
Kubernetes itself is decomposed into multiple components, which interact through its API.
Every API that is added to Kubernetes carries with it increased cost and complexity for all parts of the Kubernetes ecosystem. New APIs imply new code to maintain, new tests that may flake, new documentation that users are required to understand, increased cognitive load for kubectl users and many other incremental costs.
Of course, the addition of new APIs also enables new functionality that empowers users to simply do things that may have been previously complex, costly or both.
Given this balance between increasing the complexity of the project versus the reduction of complexity in user actions, we have set out to set up a set of criteria to guide how we as a development community decide when an API should be added to the set of core Kubernetes APIs.
The criteria for inclusion are as follows:
cron
has a well understood and generally accepted
specification, whereas there are countless different systems for definition workflows of dependent actions (e.g. Celery et al.).Of course for every set of rules, we need to ensure that we are not hamstrung or limited by slavish devotion to those rules. Thus we also introduce two exceptions for adding APIs in Kubernetes that violate these criteria.
These exceptions are:
In our experience, any system that is successful needs to grow and change as new use cases emerge or existing ones change. Therefore, we expect the Kubernetes API to continuously change and grow. However, we intend to not break compatibility with existing clients, for an extended period of time. In general, new API resources and new resource fields can be expected to be added frequently. Elimination of resources or fields will require following a deprecation process. The precise deprecation policy for eliminating features is TBD, but once we reach our 1.0 milestone, there will be a specific policy.
What constitutes a compatible change and how to change the API are detailed by the API change document.
To make it easier to eliminate fields or restructure resource representations, Kubernetes supports
multiple API versions, each at a different API path, such as /api/v1
or
/apis/extensions/v1beta1
.
We chose to version at the API level rather than at the resource or field level to ensure that the API presents a clear, consistent view of system resources and behavior, and to enable controlling access to end-of-lifed and/or experimental APIs.
Note that API versioning and Software versioning are only indirectly related. The API and release versioning proposal describes the relationship between API versioning and software versioning.
Different API versions imply different levels of stability and support. The criteria for each level are described in more detail in the API Changes documentation. They are summarized here:
alpha
(e.g. v1alpha1
).beta
(e.g. v2beta3
).vX
where X
is an integer.To make it easier to extend the Kubernetes API, we are in the process of implementing API
groups. These are simply different interfaces to read and/or modify the
same underlying resources. The API group is specified in a REST path and in the apiVersion
field
of a serialized object.
Currently there are two API groups in use:
/api/v1
and is not specified as part of the apiVersion
field, e.g.
apiVersion: v1
./apis/extensions/$VERSION
, and which uses
apiVersion: extensions/$VERSION
(e.g. currently apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
).
This holds types which will probably move to another API group eventually.In the future we expect that there will be more API groups, all at REST path /apis/$API_GROUP
and
using apiVersion: $API_GROUP/$VERSION
. We expect that there will be a way for third parties to
create their own API groups, and to avoid naming collisions.
DaemonSets, Deployments, HorizontalPodAutoscalers, Ingress, Jobs and ReplicaSets are enabled by default.
Other extensions resources can be enabled by setting runtime-config on
apiserver. runtime-config accepts comma separated values. For ex: to disable deployments and jobs, set
--runtime-config=extensions/v1beta1/deployments=false,extensions/v1beta1/jobs=false
As of June 4, 2015, the Kubernetes v1 API has been enabled by default. The v1beta1 and v1beta2 APIs were deleted on June 1, 2015. v1beta3 is planned to be deleted on July 6, 2015.
We're working to convert all documentation and examples to v1. Use kubectl create --validate
in order to validate your json or yaml against our Swagger spec.
Changes to services are the most significant difference between v1beta3 and v1.
service.spec.portalIP
property is renamed to service.spec.clusterIP
.service.spec.createExternalLoadBalancer
property is removed. Specify service.spec.type: "LoadBalancer"
to create an external load balancer instead.service.spec.publicIPs
property is deprecated and now called service.spec.deprecatedPublicIPs
. This property will be removed entirely when v1beta3 is removed. The vast majority of users of this field were using it to expose services on ports on the node. Those users should specify service.spec.type: "NodePort"
instead. Read External Services for more info. If this is not sufficient for your use case, please file an issue or contact @thockin.Some other difference between v1beta3 and v1:
pod.spec.containers[*].privileged
and pod.spec.containers[*].capabilities
properties are now nested under the pod.spec.containers[*].securityContext
property. See Security Contexts.pod.spec.host
property is renamed to pod.spec.nodeName
.endpoints.subsets[*].addresses.IP
property is renamed to endpoints.subsets[*].addresses.ip
.pod.status.containerStatuses[*].state.termination
and pod.status.containerStatuses[*].lastState.termination
properties are renamed to pod.status.containerStatuses[*].state.terminated
and pod.status.containerStatuses[*].lastState.terminated
respectively.pod.status.Condition
property is renamed to pod.status.conditions
.status.details.id
property is renamed to status.details.name
.Some important differences between v1beta1/2 and v1beta3:
id
is now called name
.name
, labels
, annotations
, and other metadata are now nested in a map called metadata
desiredState
is now called spec
, and currentState
is now called status
/minions
has been moved to /nodes
, and the resource has kind Node
/api/v1beta3/namespaces/{namespace}/{resource_collection}/{resource_name}
. If you were not using a namespace before, use default
here.replicationControllers
, use replicationcontrollers
.?watch=true
query parameter along with the desired resourceVersion
parameter to watch from.labels
query parameter has been renamed to labelSelector
.fields
query parameter has been renamed to fieldSelector
.entrypoint
has been renamed to command
, and command
has been renamed to args
.resources{cpu:1}
) rather than as individual fields, and resource values support scaling suffixes rather than fixed scales (e.g., milli-cores)."Always"
) rather than as a nested map (always{}
).PullAlways
, PullNever
, and PullIfNotPresent
to Always
, Never
, and IfNotPresent
.source
is inlined into volume
rather than nested.hostDir
to hostPath
to better reflect that they can be files or directories.