Composite Resources

Crossplane Composite Resources are opinionated Kubernetes Custom Resources that are composed of Managed Resources. We often call them XRs for short.

Composite Resources are designed to let you build your own platform with your own opinionated concepts and APIs without needing to write a Kubernetes controller from scratch. Instead, you define the schema of your XR and teach Crossplane which Managed Resources it should compose (i.e. create) when someone creates the XR you defined.

If you’re already familiar with Composite Resources and looking for a detailed configuration reference or some tips, tricks, and troubleshooting information, try the Composition Reference.

Below is an example of a Composite Resource:

 1apiVersion: database.example.org/v1alpha1
 2kind: XPostgreSQLInstance
 3metadata:
 4  name: my-db
 5spec:
 6  parameters:
 7    storageGB: 20
 8  compositionRef:
 9    name: production
10  writeConnectionSecretToRef:
11    namespace: crossplane-system
12    name: my-db-connection-details

You define your own XRs, so they can be of whatever API version and kind you like, and contain whatever spec and status fields you need.

How It Works

The first step towards using Composite Resources is configuring Crossplane so that it knows what XRs you’d like to exist, and what to do when someone creates one of those XRs. This is done using a CompositeResourceDefinition (XRD) resource and one or more Composition resources.

Once you’ve configured Crossplane with the details of your new XR you can either create one directly, or use a claim. Typically only the folks responsible for configuring Crossplane (often a platform or SRE team) have permission to create XRs directly. Everyone else manages XRs via a lightweight proxy resource called a Composite Resource Claim (or claim for short). More on that later.

If you’re coming from the Terraform world you can think of an XRD as similar to the variable blocks of a Terraform module, while the Composition is the rest of the module’s HCL code that describes how to use those variables to create a bunch of resources. In this analogy the XR or claim is a little like a tfvars file providing inputs to the module.

Defining Composite Resources

A CompositeResourceDefinition (or XRD) defines the type and schema of your XR. It lets Crossplane know that you want a particular kind of XR to exist, and what fields that XR should have. An XRD is a little like a CustomResourceDefinition (CRD), but slightly more opinionated. Writing an XRD is mostly a matter of specifying an OpenAPI “structural schema”.

The XRD that defines the XPostgreSQLInstance XR above would look like this:

 1apiVersion: apiextensions.crossplane.io/v1
 2kind: CompositeResourceDefinition
 3metadata:
 4  name: xpostgresqlinstances.database.example.org
 5spec:
 6  group: database.example.org
 7  names:
 8    kind: XPostgreSQLInstance
 9    plural: xpostgresqlinstances
10  claimNames:
11    kind: PostgreSQLInstance
12    plural: postgresqlinstances
13  versions:
14  - name: v1alpha1
15    served: true
16    referenceable: true
17    schema:
18      openAPIV3Schema:
19        type: object
20        properties:
21          spec:
22            type: object
23            properties:
24              parameters:
25                type: object
26                properties:
27                  storageGB:
28                    type: integer
29                required:
30                - storageGB
31            required:
32            - parameters

You might notice that the XPostgreSQLInstance example above has some fields that don’t appear in the XRD, like the writeConnectionSecretToRef and compositionRef fields. This is because Crossplane automatically injects some standard Crossplane Resource Model (XRM) fields into all XRs.

Configuring Composition

A Composition lets Crossplane know what to do when someone creates a Composite Resource. Each Composition creates a link between an XR and a set of one or more Managed Resources - when the XR is created, updated, or deleted the set of Managed Resources are created, updated or deleted accordingly.

You can add multiple Compositions for each XRD, and choose which should be used when XRs are created. This allows a Composition to act like a class of service - for example you could configure one Composition for each environment you support, such as production, staging, and development.

A basic Composition for the above XPostgreSQLInstance might look like this:

 1apiVersion: apiextensions.crossplane.io/v1
 2kind: Composition
 3metadata:
 4  name: example
 5  labels:
 6    crossplane.io/xrd: xpostgresqlinstances.database.example.org
 7    provider: gcp
 8spec:
 9  writeConnectionSecretsToNamespace: crossplane-system
10  compositeTypeRef:
11    apiVersion: database.example.org/v1alpha1
12    kind: XPostgreSQLInstance
13  resources:
14  - name: cloudsqlinstance
15    base:
16      apiVersion: database.gcp.crossplane.io/v1beta1
17      kind: CloudSQLInstance
18      spec:
19        forProvider:
20          databaseVersion: POSTGRES_12
21          region: us-central1
22          settings:
23            tier: db-custom-1-3840
24            dataDiskType: PD_SSD
25            ipConfiguration:
26              ipv4Enabled: true
27              authorizedNetworks:
28                - value: "0.0.0.0/0"
29    patches:
30    - type: FromCompositeFieldPath
31      fromFieldPath: spec.parameters.storageGB
32      toFieldPath: spec.forProvider.settings.dataDiskSizeGb

The above Composition tells Crossplane that when someone creates an XPostgreSQLInstance XR Crossplane should create a CloudSQLInstance in response. The storageGB field of the XPostgreSQLInstance should be used to configure the dataDiskSizeGb field of the CloudSQLInstance. This is only a small subset of the functionality a Composition enables - take a look at the reference page to learn more.

We almost always talk about XRs composing Managed Resources, but actually an XR can also compose other XRs to allow nested layers of abstraction. XRs don’t support composing arbitrary Kubernetes resources (e.g. Deployments, operators, etc) directly but you can do so using our Kubernetes and Helm providers.

Claiming Composite Resources

Crossplane uses Composite Resource Claims (or just claims, for short) to allow application operators to provision and manage XRs. When we talk about using XRs it’s typically implied that the XR is being used via a claim. Claims are almost identical to their corresponding XRs. It helps to think of a claim as an application team’s interface to an XR. You could also think of claims as the public (app team) facing part of the opinionated platform API, while XRs are the private (platform team) facing part.

A claim for the XPostgreSQLInstance XR above would look like this:

 1apiVersion: database.example.org/v1alpha1
 2kind: PostgreSQLInstance
 3metadata:
 4  namespace: default
 5  name: my-db
 6spec:
 7  parameters:
 8    storageGB: 20
 9  compositionRef:
10    name: production
11  writeConnectionSecretToRef:
12    name: my-db-connection-details

There are three key differences between an XR and a claim:

1. Claims are namespaced, while XRs (and Managed Resources) are cluster scoped.
2. Claims are of a different kind than the XR - by convention the XR’s kind without the proceeding X. For example a PostgreSQLInstance claims an XPostgreSQLInstance.
3. An active claim contains a reference to its corresponding XR, while an XR contains both a reference to the claim an array of references to the managed resources it composes.

Not all XRs offer a claim - doing so is optional. See the XRD section of the Composition reference to learn how to offer a claim.

Claims may seem a little superfluous at first, but they enable some handy scenarios, including:

• Private XRs. Sometimes a platform team might not want a type of XR to be directly consumed by their application teams. For example because the XR represents ‘supporting’ infrastructure - consider the above VPC XNetwork XR. App teams might create PostgreSQLInstance claims that reference (i.e. consume) an XNetwork, but they shouldn’t be creating their own. Similarly, some kinds of XR might be intended only for ’nested’ use - intended only to be composed by other XRs.

• Global XRs. Not all infrastructure is conceptually namespaced. Say your organisation uses team scoped namespaces. A PostgreSQLInstance that belongs to Team A should probably be part of the team-a namespace - you’d represent this by creating a PostgreSQLInstance claim in that namespace. On the other hand the XNetwork XR we mentioned previously could be referenced (i.e. used) by XRs from many different namespaces - it doesn’t exist to serve a particular team.

• Pre-provisioned XRs. Finally, separating claims from XRs allows a platform team to pre-provision certain kinds of XR. Typically an XR is created on-demand in response to the creation of a claim, but it’s also possible for a claim to instead request an existing XR. This can allow application teams to instantly claim infrastructure like database instances that would otherwise take minutes to provision on-demand.