Architecture #

This document will introduce the architecture of KWOK.

kwok #

kwok is a resource controller, similar to kube-controller-manager, that is responsible for simulating the lifecycle of fake nodes, pods, and other Kubernetes API resources.

It can run in any environment, use in-cluster or kubeconfig to connect to a kube-apiserver of cluster, and then manage the resources of the cluster.

So far, kwok has implemented the following controllers:

• Node Controller - It is responsible for selecting the node to simulate, and then simulating the node’s lifecycle, just by updating the heartbeat of the node.
• Pod Controller - It is responsible for pod that is on selected node, and plays the stage of pod’s lifecycle.

See Stages Configuration for more details.

kwokctl #

kwokctl is a CLI tool designed to streamline the creation and management of clusters, with nodes simulated by kwok.

It creates the cluster with the kwokctl create cluster command.

Use the runtime to start the control plane component, and then access it from kube-apiserver as if it was a real cluster.

Runtimes #

We now provide some runtime to simulate the cluster, such as:

• binary - It will download required binaries of control plane components and start them directly.
• docker - It will use docker to start the control plane components.
• podman - It will use podman to start the control plane components.
• nerdctl - It will use nerdctl to start the control plane components.
• kind - It will use kind to start a cluster and deploy the kwok into it.

Components #

This is a list of control plane components that kwokctl will start:

• etcd
• kube-apiserver
• kube-controller-manager
• kube-scheduler
• kwok-controller (as kwok)
• prometheus (optional, for metrics)

Tools #

kwokctl provides some well-known tools as subcommands to access the cluster, such as:

• kwokctl kubectl
• kwokctl etcdctl