Imported Clusters
You can import Kubernetes clusters created outside of Palette into Palette for visibility, limited Day-2 management, and additional capabilities such as application lifecycle management. Palette supports importing clusters from various infrastructure providers, including public and private clouds and bare-metal environments.
When you import a cluster into Palette, the Palette agent is installed on the cluster. The cluster infrastructure details displayed in the Palette UI depend on the infrastructure provider (cloud-specific or generic), and the agent's Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) permissions depend on the import mode (read-only or full permissions).
Supported Infrastructure Providers
Palette supports importing clusters deployed using a variety of infrastructure providers. Supported cloud-specific clusters display additional infrastructure details in the Palette UI compared to generic clusters.
| Cluster Type | Supported Environments | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud-Specific | - AWS IaaS - Azure IaaS - GCP IaaS | Provides a similar experience to Palette-deployed clusters, with better visibility into infrastructure details such as VPC IDs, availability zones, subnets, security groups, and instance metadata. |
| Generic | Other | Displays limited metadata compared to cloud-specific imported clusters. At the cluster configuration level, only region is available. At the machine pool level, only basic compute specifications such as CPU, memory, and disk size are available. |
Self-hosted Palette also supports importing clusters. Ensure network connectivity is available between the target import cluster and the Palette instance.
Import Modes
When importing a cluster, choose between read-only mode and full permission mode to determine the level of control Palette has over your imported cluster. Certain Day-2 operations, such as OS patching and node pool management, are not supported for imported clusters because Palette does not provision or control the underlying infrastructure.
| Import Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| Read-Only | The Palette agent observes the cluster with limited RBAC permissions but does not modify workloads or infrastructure. The agent does not install a metrics server. If you want Palette to display resource utilization data, ensure a metrics server is present before importing your cluster. Refer to Import a Cluster for details. You can migrate to full permission mode at any time. |
| Full Permission | The Palette agent has broad RBAC permissions and can deploy add-on profiles, configure RBAC bindings, run compliance scans, and manage workloads. The agent automatically detects whether a metrics server is present and installs one if none is found. |
Deploying add-on cluster profiles on imported clusters with the Generic cloud type requires Palette 4.9.41 or later. On earlier versions, the cluster with the add-on profile imports successfully and continues to report health, cost, and event data, but packs are never applied. Clusters imported as AWS IaaS, Azure IaaS, or GCP IaaS are not affected on any version.
The following table summarizes what actions are supported by Palette depending on your import mode.
| Operation | Read-Only Mode | Full Permission Mode |
|---|---|---|
| View event logs, cost, and health checks | ✅ | ✅ |
| Deploy and manage add-on cluster profiles Generic requires Palette 4.9.41 or later | ❌ | ✅ |
| Configure RBAC bindings and namespaces | ❌ | ✅ |
| Configure HTTP proxy settings | ❌ | ✅ |
| Run compliance scans and schedule backups | ❌ | ✅ |
| Designate cluster as a virtual cluster host | ❌ | ✅ |
| Apply OS patches | ❌ | ❌ |
| Use full or infrastructure cluster profiles | ❌ | ❌ |
| Download kubeconfig from Palette | ❌ | ❌ |
| Scale, add, or remove node pools | ❌ | ❌ |
| Deploy the Spectro Proxy pack | ❌ | ❌ |
Delete Imported Cluster
When you delete an imported cluster from Palette using the standard deletion process, Palette removes the link to the imported cluster as well as the Palette agent and all Palette dependencies installed on the cluster during the import process. However, deleting the cluster from Palette does not delete the cluster itself. To completely delete the cluster, you must manually delete it through the hosting infrastructure provider.
Next Steps
To get started, refer to the Import a Cluster guide for instructions on how to import an external cluster into Palette. If you import a cluster in full permission mode, you can expand on the functionality of your cluster by attaching add-on profiles. You can migrate clusters originally imported in read-only mode to full permission mode at any time. Refer to our Migrate to Full Permissions guide for more information.