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What does the Kubernetes integration do?

Steadwing connects to your Kubernetes clusters to access pod status, container logs, and cluster events during incident analysis. Steadwing analyzes pod health, resource utilization, and deployment states to identify infrastructure-related issues that correlate with production incidents.

Why Use Kubernetes with Steadwing?

Pod Monitoring

Track pod status, restarts, and failures during incidents

Log Analysis

Access and analyze pod logs to identify error patterns

Resource Tracking

Monitor cluster resource usage and capacity issues

Event Correlation

Connect Kubernetes events to incident timing for better context

How do I connect Kubernetes to Steadwing?

Choose your platform and copy-paste the complete command block:
Next: Copy the entire output and upload it to Steadwing, or upload the steadwing-kubeconfig.yaml file.

Upload to Steadwing

After running the commands above:
  1. Option A: Copy the entire YAML output from your terminal
  2. Option B: Use the generated file steadwing-kubeconfig.yaml
  3. Go to IntegrationsKubernetesConnect
  4. Upload or paste the kubeconfig content
  5. Done!

What This Creates

  • Service account with read access and scoped write access for automated remediation
  • Token valid for 10 years
  • Read access to: pods, logs, events, deployments, jobs
  • Write access to: workload scaling, pod management, configuration updates
  • Isolated in steadwing namespace
  • Works with all Kubernetes versions 1.22+

What data does Steadwing pull from Kubernetes?

Data Collection

Steadwing queries Kubernetes for:
  • Pod Status - Running, pending, failed, and crashed pods
  • Pod Logs - Container logs for error analysis
  • Events - Cluster events related to scheduling, scaling, and failures
  • Deployments - Deployment status and replica counts
  • Resource Usage - Node and pod resource allocation

What permissions does the Kubernetes integration need?

Required Permissions

The service account has read access to:
  • pods, pods/log - View pods and their logs
  • events - Read cluster events
  • nodes, namespaces, services, endpoints - View cluster resources
  • deployments, replicasets, statefulsets, daemonsets - View workload status
  • jobs, cronjobs - View batch workloads
The service account has scoped write access for automated remediation:
  • deployments, statefulsets, daemonsets, replicasets - patch, update for workload updates
  • deployments/scale, statefulsets/scale, replicasets/scale - patch, update for scaling operations
  • pods - create, delete for pod management
  • pods/exec - create for executing commands in pods
  • configmaps, secrets, services - create, update, patch for configuration changes

Security

  • Read access for monitoring, scoped write access for automated remediation
  • All write operations require explicit user approval before execution
  • Token-based authentication
  • Token expiration set to 1 year (renewable)

Uninstall

To remove the Steadwing integration from your cluster:

FAQs

The integration works with Kubernetes 1.22 and later. It’s compatible with all major distributions including EKS, GKE, AKS, and self-hosted clusters.
Yes, Steadwing can execute approved infrastructure changes as part of automated remediation. Supported actions include scaling deployments, restarting pods, executing commands in pods, and updating configurations. All actions require explicit user approval before execution.
The token is generated with a 10-year (87600 hours) validity period. You’ll need to regenerate it after expiration by running the setup script again.
The integration will stop working. You’ll need to run the setup script again to recreate the service account and generate a new kubeconfig file.
Yes! Run the setup script for each cluster. Each cluster will generate its own kubeconfig file that you can upload separately to Steadwing.
Yes, as long as Steadwing can reach the cluster’s API server endpoint. For private clusters, you may need to configure network access or use a VPN.
Need additional help? Please reach out to us at hello@steadwing.com