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kplane [Experimental]

Kplane is a CLI for running a local management plane and creating virtual control planes (VCPs). Each VCP is a logical Kubernetes control plane backed by a shared API server, isolated by request path (.../clusters/<name>/control-plane).

Why This Matters

Traditional Kubernetes control planes and clusters scale out by duplicating controllers, apiservers, and supporting infrastructure. That means per-cluster CPU and memory overhead just to keep the lights on. The multicluster-runtime project showed that controllers can be made multi-cluster aware and share resources effectively. The apiserver side has had many proposals, but nothing has landed upstream.

Baseline kplane virtual control planes (VCPs) use about 0.8MB of memory per control plane.

Kplane explores a practical path forward: try to keep compatibility with upstream API contracts while virtualizing the apiserver, scheduler, and controller manager. (kplane-dev/apiserver). The goal is to understand upstream limitations, solve them in a compatible way, and advocate the right upstream approaches.

Highlights from the apiserver design:

• Single store per resource with cluster-scoped key rewriting and one watchcache.
• Server-owned cluster labels to enforce isolation and cache keying. (temporarily due to upstream limitations)
• Per-cluster admission, webhook, and namespace lifecycle environments.
• Shared client and informer pools to reduce per-cluster overhead.
• CEL runtime caching and storage diagnostics for safer operations.

Install (Homebrew)

brew tap kplane-dev/tap
brew install kplane

Install (Manual)

Install to your PATH:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kplane-dev/kplane/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

The installer adds alias kp="kplane" to your shell rc file. Restart your shell (or run source ~/.zshrc / source ~/.bashrc) to use kp.

Or download manually and make it executable:

chmod +x ./kplane-<os>-<arch>

macOS Gatekeeper (temporary): unsigned binaries may be blocked. If you see a warning, run:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./kplane-<os>-<arch>

Prereqs

• Go 1.22+ (to build the CLI)
• kubectl in your PATH
• Docker (for local providers)
• One of:
  • kind in your PATH (default)
  • k3d in your PATH (for k3s-in-docker)

Getting Started

Build the CLI:

go build -o ./bin/kplane ./cmd/kplane

Bring up the management plane (default provider: Kind):

./bin/kplane up

Or bring up the management plane with k3s (via k3d):

./bin/kplane up --provider k3s

If you want future commands to target a specific provider like k3s:

./bin/kplane config set-provider k3s

Create a virtual control plane:

./bin/kplane create cluster demo

Fetch credentials and switch context:

./bin/kplane get-credentials demo
./bin/kplane config use-context kplane-demo

Verify:

kubectl get ns

How It Works

• kplane up creates (or reuses) a local management cluster (Kind or k3s via k3d) and installs the management plane stack (etcd, shared apiserver, controlplane-operator, CRDs).
• kplane create cluster <name> creates a ControlPlane and a ControlPlaneEndpoint in the management cluster.
• Each VCP is served by the shared apiserver, isolated by path: https://127.0.0.1:<port>/clusters/<name>/control-plane.
• The CLI stores the chosen ingress port in the management cluster so all kubeconfigs resolve to the correct endpoint.

Roadmap

Planned for later releases:

• Multi-cluster scheduler
• Multi-cluster controller manager
• Worker node management (join/leave)

Commands

• kplane up — creates or reuses the local management cluster (Kind or k3s via k3d) and installs the management plane stack (etcd, shared apiserver, controlplane-operator, CRDs).
• kplane down — deletes the management cluster.
• kplane create cluster <name> — creates a ControlPlane and ControlPlaneEndpoint and writes a VCP kubeconfig context.
• kplane cc <name> — alias for kplane create cluster <name>.
• kplane get clusters — lists the management cluster and existing VCPs.
• kplane get-credentials <name> — writes kubeconfig for a local management cluster or VCP and optionally switches the current context.
• kplane config use-context <name> — switches your kubeconfig context (aliasing kubectl config use-context).