Crossplane 1.8: Infrastructure as Code Evolution

Introduction

Crossplane 1.8, released on July 12, 2022, continues to evolve as a universal control plane for cloud infrastructure. This release enhances composition capabilities, improves provider support, and delivers better developer experience for managing cloud resources using Kubernetes-native APIs.

The “why” behind Crossplane is usually platform engineering: you want application teams to request infrastructure through approved, reusable abstractions—not hand-crafted cloud resources and copy-pasted Terraform snippets. Crossplane 1.8 is aimed at making those abstractions (compositions, claims, and provider integrations) easier to build and safer to operate at scale.

Enhanced Composition

• Composite resources (XRs) improvements enable teams to define more sophisticated infrastructure abstractions.
• Composition definitions enhancements provide better mapping of composite resources to underlying cloud resources.
• Resource claims improvements provide a simpler interface for application teams to request infrastructure.
• Policy enforcement ensures infrastructure adheres to organizational standards and compliance requirements.

Provider Ecosystem Expansion

1. AWS Provider enhancements support more AWS services with comprehensive resource coverage.
2. Azure Provider improvements enable better management of Azure resources including VMs, databases, and storage.
3. GCP Provider enhancements expand support for Google Cloud resources with native integration.
4. Community providers expansion adds support for additional cloud platforms and services.

Developer Experience Improvements

• CLI improvements provide better user experience with enhanced command output and error messages.
• Resource management enhancements simplify creating and managing cloud resources.
• Error handling improvements provide clearer error messages and recovery guidance.
• Documentation expansion includes comprehensive guides for common infrastructure scenarios.

Operational Benefits

• Unified tooling enables teams to use kubectl, Helm, and GitOps tools for both applications and infrastructure.
• RBAC integration provides fine-grained access control for infrastructure provisioning.
• Observability exposes metrics and events for infrastructure operations through Kubernetes-native mechanisms.
• Disaster recovery enables infrastructure to be recreated from Git repositories in case of failures.

Getting Started

kubectl create namespace crossplane-system
helm repo add crossplane-stable https://charts.crossplane.io/stable
helm install crossplane crossplane-stable/crossplane --namespace crossplane-system

Install AWS provider:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crossplane/provider-aws/v0.30.0/cluster/install.yaml

Create an S3 bucket:

apiVersion: s3.aws.crossplane.io/v1beta1
kind: Bucket
metadata:
  name: my-bucket
spec:
  forProvider:
    region: us-west-2
  providerConfigRef:
    name: aws-provider

Summary

Crossplane 1.8 transforms infrastructure management by bringing it into the Kubernetes ecosystem, enabling teams to manage cloud resources with the same tools and workflows they use for applications.