Cluster Management

Overview

Cloud Orbiter provides comprehensive Kubernetes cluster lifecycle management — from initial provisioning to ongoing Day 2 operations — across any infrastructure type. It aims to provide an excellent user experience in managing hundreds of thousands of clusters and maintaining large-scale distributed applications.

Core capabilities:

• Deploy, create, manage, monitor, and upgrade multiple clusters across geo-distributed environments
• Manage all Kubernetes resources: nodes, events, namespaces, workloads, pods, ReplicaSets, Deployments, DaemonSets, StatefulSets, access control, network policies, storage, secrets, and ConfigMaps
• Connect multiple clusters so that all management flows through the Cloud Orbiter control plane
• Remote cluster management via outbound agent — no inbound firewall rules required

Cluster Types

Cluster Type	Description
CKP	Coredge Kubernetes Platform — custom K8s distribution for cloud, bare metal, edge, and IoT
AWS EKS	Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service — managed K8s on AWS
Azure AKS	Azure Kubernetes Service — managed K8s on Microsoft Azure
Google GKE	Google Kubernetes Engine — managed K8s on Google Cloud
Edge Clusters	K8s clusters at remote/isolated edge sites managed via central console
Brownfield Import	Existing Kubernetes clusters imported from any provider (VMware, OpenShift, EKS-Anywhere, etc.)

Creating a Cluster

1. Navigate to Clusters from the left navigation panel
2. Click + Add Cluster
3. Select Create Cluster
4. Choose cluster type and provide:
   • Cluster name and description
   • Kubernetes distribution and version
   • Networking and networking version
   • Provider configuration
   • Master nodes: count, host group, virtual IP
   • Worker nodes: count, host group
5. Click Create — a real-time cluster state dashboard tracks provisioning progress

Importing an Existing Cluster (Brownfield)

If you already have a running Kubernetes cluster, use the import option:

1. Go to Clusters → + Add Cluster → Import Cluster
2. Provide a cluster name, cluster type, description, and location parameters
3. Click Create
4. Download the generated bootstrap YAML config file
5. Apply the config to your existing cluster:

   kubectl apply -f bootstrap-cluster.yaml

6. The cluster connects to Cloud Orbiter and appears in the dashboard

Day 2 Operations

Cloud Orbiter automates the ongoing management tasks that keep clusters healthy and efficient:

Cluster Upgrades

Cloud Orbiter automates upgrading Kubernetes clusters to the latest version — ensuring clusters run on the latest stable release with up-to-date security patches and bug fixes. Upgrades are performed without application downtime.

Scaling

Add or remove cluster nodes through a centralized interface. Cloud Orbiter handles the node provisioning, Kubernetes registration, and workload redistribution automatically.

Monitoring

Real-time monitoring tracks:

• Node health status and availability
• CPU and memory usage per node and per workload
• Network I/O pressure
• Pod capacity vs. usage

Security

Day 2 security operations include:

• RBAC enforcement on every API call
• Network policies managing traffic between pods and namespaces
• Container image scanning for vulnerability detection

Backup and Restore

Cluster data protection through Velero integration — see Backup & Restore for details.

Cluster Monitoring

Health Monitoring

View the health status of each node and receive alerts when nodes become unhealthy. Quickly identify issues impacting cluster stability.

CPU and Memory Monitoring

Real-time CPU and memory usage tracking per node and per workload. Identify resource bottlenecks and performance issues as they occur.

Node Monitoring

Per-node metrics including:

• CPU utilization vs. capacity
• Memory usage vs. capacity
• Disk usage
• Network activity

Alerts can be configured to notify administrators when thresholds are exceeded.

Cluster Access Management

Service Accounts

Map Cloud Orbiter users to Kubernetes service accounts for fine-grained RBAC on target clusters:

1. Click Map User in the Cloud Orbiter Management Console
2. Enter the Namespace and Service Account for the mapping

Users can only perform actions on the target cluster that are permitted by their mapped service account.

Cluster Terminal

Access the Kubernetes CLI directly from the Cloud Orbiter dashboard:

1. Navigate to the cluster dashboard
2. Select the connected cluster
3. Click the Terminal button (top-right corner)
4. Execute kubectl commands directly — pods, namespaces, configmaps, secrets, and more

Kubeconfig Download

Download the kubeconfig file to access the cluster from a local machine:

1. Log in and navigate to the cluster
2. Click Download Kubeconfig from the top navigation menu
3. Save the file and use with kubectl locally

Location Tagging

Cloud Orbiter supports geo-aware cluster management with location tagging:

• Automatically detect cluster geolocation based on public IP
• View clusters in List View (status, version, distribution, health, pods, utilization) or Map View (graphical world map representation)
• Click a cluster marker on the map to view details and access cluster management

Service Discovery

Services

Cloud Orbiter exposes Kubernetes services for application access. Services provide network discovery without modifying application code — a Service makes the set of Pods running an application available to clients.

Centralized Ingress

Cloud Orbiter's Centralized Ingress enables cross-cluster service access without:

• Writing Ingress configuration files
• Creating NodePorts or Load Balancers manually
• External tenant or IP-based configuration

Applications are accessible across clusters automatically once services are created — Cloud Orbiter handles the routing.

Test Suites

Cloud Orbiter includes pre-configured test suites with pre-packaged test cases to:

• Verify cluster health before application deployment
• Confirm cluster performance after deployment
• Run proactive checks as part of ongoing operations

Test suite execution results are downloadable for audit and reporting purposes.