clusterctl move

The clusterctl move command allows to move the Cluster API objects defining workload clusters, like e.g. Cluster, Machines, MachineDeployments, etc. from one management cluster to another management cluster.

You can use:

clusterctl move --to-kubeconfig="path-to-target-kubeconfig.yaml"

To move the Cluster API objects existing in the current namespace of the source management cluster; in case if you want to move the Cluster API objects defined in another namespace, you can use the --namespace flag.

Pivot

Pivoting is a process for moving the provider components and declared Cluster API resources from a source management cluster to a target management cluster.

This can now be achieved with the following procedure:

  1. Use clusterctl init to install the provider components into the target management cluster
  2. Use clusterctl move to move the cluster-api resources from a Source Management cluster to a Target Management cluster

Bootstrap & Pivot

The pivot process can be bounded with the creation of a temporary bootstrap cluster used to provision a target Management cluster.

This can now be achieved with the following procedure:

  1. Create a temporary bootstrap cluster, e.g. using Kind or Minikube
  2. Use clusterctl init to install the provider components
  3. Use clusterctl generate cluster ... | kubectl apply -f - to provision a target management cluster
  4. Wait for the target management cluster to be up and running
  5. Get the kubeconfig for the new target management cluster
  6. Use clusterctl init with the new cluster’s kubeconfig to install the provider components
  7. Use clusterctl move to move the Cluster API resources from the bootstrap cluster to the target management cluster
  8. Delete the bootstrap cluster

Note: It’s required to have at least one worker node to schedule Cluster API workloads (i.e. controllers). A cluster with a single control plane node won’t be sufficient due to the NoSchedule taint. If a worker node isn’t available, clusterctl init will timeout.

Dry run

With --dry-run option you can dry-run the move action by only printing logs without taking any actual actions. Use log level verbosity -v to see different levels of information.