What Is Crossplane?

Crossplane is an open-source CNCF project that extends Kubernetes to provision and manage cloud infrastructure resources. It lets you define and manage AWS, Azure, and GCP resources like databases, storage buckets, and networks using the Kubernetes API. Platform teams use Crossplane to build self-service infrastructure platforms where developers provision cloud resources through familiar kubectl commands.

Why Crossplane Matters

Traditionally, cloud infrastructure is managed separately from Kubernetes workloads using tools like Terraform. Crossplane unifies everything under the Kubernetes API, meaning teams can manage both their applications and their cloud infrastructure with the same tools, workflows, and access controls. This simplifies operations and enables powerful self-service platforms for developers.

Teams that understand and adopt crossplane gain a significant operational advantage, reducing manual effort and improving the reliability and scalability of their infrastructure. As cloud-native adoption accelerates, familiarity with crossplane has become a core competency for DevOps engineers, platform teams, and site reliability engineers working in production Kubernetes and cloud environments.

How Crossplane Works

Crossplane installs as a set of controllers in your Kubernetes cluster. Providers add support for specific cloud platforms by registering CRDs for their resources. When you create a custom resource like an RDSInstance, Crossplane's controller communicates with the cloud API to provision the actual database. Platform teams create Compositions that define how to assemble multiple cloud resources into higher-level abstractions for self-service.

Understanding how crossplane fits into the broader cloud-native ecosystem is important for making informed architecture decisions. It works alongside other tools and practices in the DevOps and platform engineering space, and choosing the right combination depends on your team's specific requirements, scale, and operational maturity.

Key Features

Kubernetes-Native

Manage cloud infrastructure using kubectl, RBAC, namespaces, and all standard Kubernetes tooling and workflows.

Compositions

Build higher-level abstractions that combine multiple cloud resources into self-service building blocks for developers.

Multi-Cloud

Provision and manage resources across AWS, Azure, GCP, and other providers from a single Kubernetes cluster.

GitOps Compatible

Store all infrastructure definitions in Git and reconcile them using Flux or Argo CD.

Common Use Cases

Building a self-service platform where developers provision databases and storage through Kubernetes manifests.

Managing cloud infrastructure with the same GitOps workflow used for Kubernetes application deployments.

Creating standardized infrastructure compositions that enforce security and compliance requirements automatically.

Unifying multi-cloud resource management under the Kubernetes API for consistent operations across providers.

How Obsium Helps

Obsium's DevOps solutions team helps organizations implement and optimize crossplane as part of production-grade infrastructure. Whether you are adopting crossplane for the first time or looking to improve an existing implementation, our engineers bring hands-on experience across cloud platforms and Kubernetes environments. Learn more about our DevOps solutions services →