Kubernetes controllers for NATS
Three controllers deploy NATS clusters, own their auth plane, and manage and balance JetStream. Install all three, or only the one you need.
helm install nats-operator oci://ghcr.io/mikluko/nats-operator/charts/nats-operator \
--version <version> \
--namespace nats-operator --create-namespace
Needs Kubernetes 1.33, Helm 3.14 and nats-server 2.15.0, or later. Install covers the values, RBAC, upgrade and uninstall.
Deploys a NATS cluster from one NatsCluster, rolls it one server at a time, and joins NATS clusters into a supercluster or to a hub as leaves.
NatsCluster
Mints the JWT auth plane, a NATS operator with its accounts and users, distributes it to the servers, and writes each user’s credentials to a Secret.
NatsOperatorNatsSystemAccountNatsAccountNatsUser
Manages streams, consumers, key-value buckets and object stores, and balances JetStream leadership and placement, through a NatsConnection to any NATS cluster.
NatsStreamNatsConsumerNatsKeyValueNatsObjectStoreNatsBalancerNatsSystemBalancerNatsClusterEvacuation
Each controller has its own switch in the chart and its own ServiceAccount, ClusterRole and Deployment.
The JetStream controller works through a NatsConnection, so it manages JetStream on a NATS cluster it did not deploy.
Every kind is namespaced. A reference crosses into another namespace only where a NatsReferenceGrant there admits it.
Gateways join NATS clusters across Kubernetes clusters, and leaf nodes connect the edge to a hub.
Balance stream leaders and placement, move a stream to another NATS cluster, or retire a NATS cluster by evacuating it.
The controllers export OpenTelemetry metrics, record Kubernetes events, and report progress in status conditions.
The images and the chart are signed keylessly with cosign and carry a GitHub build provenance attestation.
The stories on this site are the end-to-end suite. The harness applies each story’s manifests to kind clusters and waits for the statuses its pages show.
Each story is a user’s problem, the manifests that solve it, and the status to expect.