Chainguard Image for kubernetes

Production-Grade Container Scheduling and Management

Chainguard Images are regularly-updated, minimal container images with low-to-zero CVEs.

Download this Image

This image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/kubernetes:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard registry.

Usage

Kubernetes, often referred to as K8s, is an open-source platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications. It provides key features such as service discovery, load balancing, storage orchestration, and self-healing.

Kubernetes builds upon years of experience running production workloads at scale within Google, leveraging concepts from the Borg system. It has since grown into a robust, production-grade system hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

For more information on how Kubernetes works and the community behind it, refer to:

• Kubernetes Documentation
• CNCF Kubernetes Project

Kubernetes Components

This image includes the following core Kubernetes components:

kube-scheduler:

Schedules pods to run on specific nodes based on resource availability and constraints. For more info

kube-proxy:

Manages network connectivity and load balancing between services. For more info

kube-controller-manager:

Runs various controllers that handle node management, pod replication, and more. For more info

kube-apiserver:

The central management entity that exposes the Kubernetes API, handles requests, and processes updates. For more info

Each component plays a critical role in managing the lifecycle and operation of a Kubernetes cluster. These components work together to ensure scalability, availability, and reliability of containerized applications.

kubernetes-pause:

Using the Chainguard kubernetes-pause image requires changing the containerd configuration on the nodes. If you've set up SSH access to the underlying nodes of the cluster, then you can edit the containerd configuration file directly.

If you don't have access to the nodes then you can use a plugin called kubectl-node-shell

In the containerd configuration on the node, the default sandbox_image needs to be replaced with the Chainguard pause image. Use the editor of your choice to replace the default pause image with the Chainguard pause image:

[plugins."io.containerd.grpc.v1.cri"]
sandbox_image = "cgr.dev/$ORGANIZATION/kubernetes-pause:latest"

After this, restart the containerd service:

sudo systemctl restart containerd

Checking the list of containers using the ctr command will show the pause container with the Chainguard pause image:

ctr -n k8s.io containers list

Contact Support

If you have a Zendesk account (typically set up for you by your Customer Success Manager) you can reach out to Chainguard's Customer Success team through our Zendesk portal.

What are Chainguard Images?

Chainguard Images are a collection of container images designed for security and minimalism.

Many Chainguard Images are distroless; they contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These images do not even contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Images are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Images include:

• Minimal design, with no unnecessary software bloat
• Automated nightly builds to ensure Images are completely up-to-date and contain all available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs (software bills of materials) attesting the provenance of all artifacts within the Image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

-dev Variants

As mentioned previously, Chainguard’s distroless Images have no shell or package manager by default. This is great for security, but sometimes you need these things, especially in builder images. For those cases, most (but not all) Chainguard Images come paired with a -dev variant which does include a shell and package manager.

Although the -dev image variants have similar security features as their distroless versions, such as complete SBOMs and signatures, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. The general recommendation is to use the -dev variants only to build the application and then copy all application artifacts into a distroless image, which will result in a final container image that has a minimal attack surface and won’t allow package installations or logins.

That being said, it’s worth noting that -dev variants of Chainguard Images are completely fine to run in production environments. After all, the -dev variants are still more secure than many popular container images based on fully-featured operating systems such as Debian and Ubuntu since they carry less software, follow a more frequent patch cadence, and offer attestations for what they include.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Images, we encourage you to visit Chainguard Academy, our documentation and education platform.