Authorization (RBAC)

Learn about authorization in Kubernetes.

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Authorization happens immediately after successful authentication, and we’ll sometimes see it shortened to authZ (pronounced “auth zee”).

Kubernetes authorization is pluggable, and we can run multiple authZ modules on a single cluster. However, most clusters use RBAC. Also, if our cluster has multiple authorization modules, as soon as any module authorizes a request, it moves immediately to admissions control.

RBAC big picture

The most common authorization module is RBAC (Role-Based Access Control). At the highest level, RBAC is about three things:

  1. Users

  2. Actions

  3. Resources

Which users can perform which actions against which resources.

The following table shows a few examples.

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