Skip to content

Integration: Cluster API

kubevirt-manager supports integration with the KubeVirt Cluster API provider to provision tenant Kubernetes clusters inside your KubeVirt environment.

This feature allows you to create and manage nested Kubernetes clusters directly from KubeVirt Manager.

1. Install Cluster API

Follow the official Cluster API documentation to install and configure the KubeVirt Cluster API provider: Cluster API Quick Start Guide

2. Enable the ClusterResourceSet Feature

The ClusterResourceSet feature must be enabled for this integration to work. kubevirt-manager relies on it to automatically provision CNI plugins and additional features inside standard clusters.

Before running clusterctl generate, export the following environment variable:

export EXP_CLUSTER_RESOURCE_SET=true

3. Enabling ClusterResourceSet in a Running Controller

If your Cluster API controller is already running, you can enable the feature gate by editing the deployment and adding the ClusterResourceSet=true flag to the command-line arguments.

Example deployment snippet:

    spec:
      containers:
      - args:
        - --leader-elect
        - --diagnostics-address=:8443
        - --insecure-diagnostics=false
        - --feature-gates=MachinePool=true,ClusterResourceSet=true,ClusterTopology=true,RuntimeSDK=false,MachineSetPreflightChecks=true,MachineWaitForVolumeDetachConsiderVolumeAttachments=true,PriorityQueue=false
        command:
        - /manager

To edit your running Controller use:

kubectl edit -n capi-system deployment.apps/capi-controller-manager

4. Verifying the Integration

Once the setup is done, you should be able to see a Clusters option on the left menu.