Controller Operations

Operational patterns for running Kubernetes controllers in production. Covers leader election, RBAC management, finalizer safety, Server-Side Apply, extension points, credential rotation, and drift detection.

Leader Election

Lease-Based Election

Use Lease objects (not ConfigMaps) for leader election:

mgr, err := ctrl.NewManager(cfg, ctrl.Options{
    LeaderElection:          true,
    LeaderElectionID:        "my-controller-leader",
    LeaderElectionNamespace: "my-system",
    // Graceful shutdown: release lease when stopping
    LeaderElectionReleaseOnCancel: true,
})