Install Crossplane

Crossplane installs into an existing Kubernetes cluster, creating the Crossplane pod.

Installing Crossplane enables the installation of Crossplane Provider, Function, and Configuration resources.

{{< hint "tip" >}} If you don't have a Kubernetes cluster create one locally with Kind. {{< /hint >}}

Prerequisites

• An actively supported Kubernetes version
• Helm version v3.2.0 or later

Install Crossplane

Install Crossplane using the Helm chart.

Add the Crossplane Helm repository

Add the Crossplane stable repository with the helm repo add command.

helm repo add crossplane-stable https://charts.crossplane.io/stable

Update the local Helm chart cache with helm repo update.

helm repo update

Install the Crossplane Helm chart

Install the Crossplane Helm chart with helm install.

{{< hint "tip" >}} View the changes Crossplane makes to your cluster with the helm install --dry-run --debug options. Helm shows what configurations it applies without making changes to the Kubernetes cluster. {{< /hint >}}

Crossplane creates and installs into the crossplane-system namespace.

helm install crossplane \
--namespace crossplane-system \
--create-namespace crossplane-stable/crossplane

View the installed Crossplane pods with kubectl get pods -n crossplane-system.

kubectl get pods -n crossplane-system
NAME                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
crossplane-6d67f8cd9d-g2gjw                1/1     Running   0          26m
crossplane-rbac-manager-86d9b5cf9f-2vc4s   1/1     Running   0          26m

Installation options

Customize the Crossplane Helm chart

Crossplane supports customizations at install time by configuring the Helm chart.

Read the Helm chart README to learn what customizations are available.

Read the Helm documentation to learn how to run Helm with custom options using --set or values.yaml.

Feature flags

Crossplane introduces new features behind feature flags. By default alpha features are off. Crossplane enables beta features by default. To enable a feature flag, set the args value in the Helm chart. Available feature flags can be directly found by running crossplane core start --help, or by looking at the table below.

{{< expand "Feature flags" >}} {{< table caption="Feature flags" >}}

Set these flags either in the values.yaml file or at install time using the --set flag, for example: --set args='{"--enable-composition-functions","--enable-composition-webhook-schema-validation"}'.

Install pre-release Crossplane versions

Install pre-release versions of Crossplane from the master Crossplane Helm channel.

Versions in the master channel are under active development and may be unstable.

{{< hint "warning" >}} Don't use Crossplane master releases in production. Only use stable channel. Only use master for testing and development. {{< /hint >}}

Add the Crossplane master Helm repository

Add the Crossplane repository with the helm repo add command.

helm repo add crossplane-master https://charts.crossplane.io/master/

Update the local Helm chart cache with helm repo update.

helm repo update

Install the Crossplane master Helm chart

Install the Crossplane Helm chart from the master channel with helm install. Use the --devel flag to install the latest pre-release version.

helm install crossplane \
--namespace crossplane-system \
--create-namespace crossplane-master/crossplane \
--devel

Build and install from source

Building Crossplane from the source code gives you complete control over the build and installation process. Full instructions for this advanced installation path is in the [install from source code guide]({{<ref "../guides/install-from-source.md">}}).