managed_seed.md

Register Shoot as Seed

An existing shoot can be registered as a seed by creating a ManagedSeed resource. This resource replaces the use-as-seed annotation that was previously used to create shooted seeds, and that is already deprecated. It contains:

• The name of the shoot that should be registered as seed.
• An optional seedTemplate section that contains the Seed spec and parts of its metadata, such as labels and annotations.
• An optional gardenlet section that contains:
  • gardenlet deployment parameters, such as the number of replicas, the image, etc.
  • The GardenletConfiguration resource that contains controllers configuration, feature gates, and a seedConfig section that contains the Seed spec and parts of its metadata.
  • Additional configuration parameters, such as the garden connection bootstrap mechanism (see TLS Bootstrapping), and whether to merge the provided configuration with the configuration of the parent gardenlet.

Either the seedTemplate or the gardenlet section must be specified, but not both:

• If the seedTemplate section is specified, gardenlet is not deployed to the shoot, and a new Seed resource is created based on the template.
• If the gardenlet section is specified, gardenlet is deployed to the shoot, and it registers a new seed upon startup based on the seedConfig section of the GardenletConfiguration resource.

Note the following important aspects:

• Unlike the Seed resource, the ManagedSeed resource is namespaced. Currently, managed seeds are restricted to the garden namespace.
• The newly created Seed resource always has the same name as the ManagedSeed resource. Attempting to specify a different name in seedTemplate or seedConfig will fail.
• The ManagedSeed resource must always refer to an existing shoot. Attempting to create a ManagedSeed referring to a non-existing shoot will fail.
• A shoot that is being referred to by a ManagedSeed cannot be deleted. Attempting to delete such a shoot will fail.
• You can omit practically everything from the seedTemplate or gardenlet section, including all or most of the Seed spec fields. Proper defaults will be supplied in all cases, based either on the most common use cases or the information already available in the Shoot resource.
• Some Seed spec fields, for example the provider type and region, networking CIDRs for pods, services, and nodes, etc., must be the same as the corresponding Shoot spec fields of the shoot that is being registered as seed. Attempting to use different values (except empty ones, so that they are supplied by the defaulting mechanims) will fail.

Deploying Gardenlet to the Shoot

To register a shoot as a seed and deploy gardenlet to the shoot using a default configuration, create a ManagedSeed resource similar to the following:

apiVersion: seedmanagement.gardener.cloud/v1alpha1
kind: ManagedSeed
metadata:
  name: my-managed-seed
  namespace: garden
spec:
  shoot:
    name: crazy-botany
  gardenlet: {}

For an example that uses non-default configuration, see 55-managed-seed-gardenlet.yaml

Creating a Seed from a Template

To register a shoot as a seed from a template without deploying gardenlet to the shoot using a default configuration, create a ManagedSeed resource similar to the following:

apiVersion: seedmanagement.gardener.cloud/v1alpha1
kind: ManagedSeed
metadata:
  name: my-managed-seed
  namespace: garden
spec:
  shoot:
    name: crazy-botany
  seedTemplate:
    spec:
      dns:
        ingressDomain: ""
      networks:
        pods: ""
        services: ""
      provider:
        type: ""
        region: ""

For an example that uses non-default configuration, see 55-managed-seed-seedtemplate.yaml

Migrating from the use-as-seed Annotation to ManagedSeeds

If you have existing seeds managed via the use-as-seed annotation, you should migrate them to ManagedSeed resources before support for the annotation has been completely removed from Gardener.

The seed registration controller that is responsible for reconciling the use-as-seed annotation is still functional, However, instead of reconciling the annotation directly as before, it converts it to a ManagedSeed resource and lets the managed seed controller perform the actual reconciliation. Therefore, for every use-as-seed annotation, you already have an equivalent ManagedSeed resource in your cluster. Since it has been created by reconciling an annotation on a shoot, it is also "owned" by the shoot, that is it contains an ownerReference to the corresponding shoot. This owner reference is used by the seed registration controller to determine that it should continue updating (or deleting) the ManagedSeed as a result of reconciling changes to (or the removal of) the use-as-seed annotation.

In order to migrate the use-as-seed annotation to a ManagedSeed, you should simply:

• Remove the owner reference to the shoot from the existing ManagedSeed resource.
• Remove the use-as-seed annotation from the Shoot resource.
• From this moment on, update or delete the ManagedSeed directly, instead of indirectly via the use-as-seed annotation.

If the shoot containing the use-as-seed annotation was created via a yaml file (e.g. via kubectl apply -f), a helm chart, or a script, you should update the corresponding file, template, or script so that it contains or generates the ManagedSeed that you have in your cluster, instead of the use-as-seed annotation. If you use an automated approach, make sure that the owner reference is removed from the existing ManagedSeed before removing the annotation from the Shoot.

Specifying apiServer replicas and autoscaler options

A few of use-as-seed configuration options are not supported in a Seed resource, and therefore also not in a ManagedSeed. These options are (from the shooted seeds description):

Option	Description
apiServer.autoscaler.minReplicas	Controls the minimum number of kube-apiserver replicas for the shooted seed cluster.
apiServer.autoscaler.maxReplicas	Controls the maximum number of kube-apiserver replicas for the shooted seed cluster.
apiServer.replicas	Controls how many kube-apiserver replicas the shooted seed cluster gets by default.

For backward compatibility, it is still possible to specify these options via the shoot.gardener.cloud/managed-seed-api-server annotation, using exactly the same syntax as before.

If you use any of these fields in any or your use-as-seed annotations, instead of removing the annotation completely as mentioned above, simply rename it to managed-seed-api-server, keeping these fields, and removing everything else.