Service accounts

In Kubernetes, service accounts are used to provide an identity for pods. Pods that want to interact with the API server will authenticate with a particular service account. By default, applications will authenticate as the default service account in the namespace they are running in. This means, for example, that an application running in the test namespace will use the default service account of the test namespace.

Access Control

Applications are authorized to perform certain actions based on the service account selected. We currently allow the following service accounts:

kube-system:system

Used only for admin access in kube-system namespace.

kube-system:default

Used for read only access in the kube-system namespace.

default:default

Gives read-only access to the Kubernetes API.

*:operator

Gives full access to the used namespace and read-write access to TPR, storage classes, persistent volumes in all namespaces.

Additional service accounts are used by the Kubernetes’ controller manager to allow it to work properly.

How to create service accounts

Service accounts can be created for your namespace via pipelines (or via zkubectl in test clusters) by placing the respective YAML in the apply folder and executing it. For example, to request operator access you will need to create the following service account:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
imagePullSecrets:
- name: pierone.stups.zalan.do  # required to pull images from private registry
metadata:
  name: operator
  namespace: $YOUR_NAMESPACE

The service account can be used in an example deployment like this:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx
  namespace: acid
spec:
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: nginx
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
      serviceAccountName: operator  #this is where your service account is specified
      hostNetwork: true