This page provides an overview of admission controllers.
An admission controller is a piece of code that intercepts requests to the Kubernetes API server prior to persistence of the resource, but after the request is authenticated and authorized.
Several important features of Kubernetes require an admission controller to be enabled in order to properly support the feature. As a result, a Kubernetes API server that is not properly configured with the right set of admission controllers is an incomplete server that will not support all the features you expect.
Admission controllers are code within the Kubernetes API server that check the data arriving in a request to modify a resource.
Admission controllers apply to requests that create, delete, or modify objects. Admission controllers can also block custom verbs, such as a request to connect to a pod via an API server proxy. Admission controllers do not (and cannot) block requests to read (get, watch or list) objects, because reads bypass the admission control layer.
Admission control mechanisms may be validating, mutating, or both. Mutating controllers may modify the data for the resource being modified; validating controllers may not.
The admission controllers in Kubernetes 1.33 consist of the list below, are compiled into the kube-apiserver
binary, and may only be configured by the cluster administrator.
Within the full list, there are three special controllers: MutatingAdmissionWebhook, ValidatingAdmissionWebhook, and ValidatingAdmissionPolicy. The two webhook controllers execute the mutating and validating (respectively) admission control webhooks which are configured in the API. ValidatingAdmissionPolicy provides a way to embed declarative validation code within the API, without relying on any external HTTP callouts.
You can use these three admission controllers to customize cluster behavior at admission time.
The admission control process proceeds in two phases. In the first phase, mutating admission controllers are run. In the second phase, validating admission controllers are run. Note again that some of the controllers are both.
If any of the controllers in either phase reject the request, the entire request is rejected immediately and an error is returned to the end-user.
Finally, in addition to sometimes mutating the object in question, admission controllers may sometimes have side effects, that is, mutate related resources as part of request processing. Incrementing quota usage is the canonical example of why this is necessary. Any such side-effect needs a corresponding reclamation or reconciliation process, as a given admission controller does not know for sure that a given request will pass all of the other admission controllers.
The ordering of these calls can be seen below.
Several important features of Kubernetes require an admission controller to be enabled in order to properly support the feature. As a result, a Kubernetes API server that is not properly configured with the right set of admission controllers is an incomplete server and will not support all the features you expect.
The Kubernetes API server flag enable-admission-plugins
takes a comma-delimited list of admission control plugins to invoke prior to modifying objects in the cluster. For example, the following command line enables the NamespaceLifecycle
and the LimitRanger
admission control plugins:
kube-apiserver --enable-admission-plugins=NamespaceLifecycle,LimitRanger ...
The Kubernetes API server flag disable-admission-plugins
takes a comma-delimited list of admission control plugins to be disabled, even if they are in the list of plugins enabled by default.
kube-apiserver --disable-admission-plugins=PodNodeSelector,AlwaysDeny ...
To see which admission plugins are enabled:
kube-apiserver -h | grep enable-admission-plugins
In Kubernetes 1.33, the default ones are:
CertificateApproval, CertificateSigning, CertificateSubjectRestriction, DefaultIngressClass, DefaultStorageClass, DefaultTolerationSeconds, LimitRanger, MutatingAdmissionWebhook, NamespaceLifecycle, PersistentVolumeClaimResize, PodSecurity, Priority, ResourceQuota, RuntimeClass, ServiceAccount, StorageObjectInUseProtection, TaintNodesByCondition, ValidatingAdmissionPolicy, ValidatingAdmissionWebhook
Kubernetes v1.13 [deprecated]
Type: Validating.
This admission controller allows all pods into the cluster. It is deprecated because its behavior is the same as if there were no admission controller at all.
Kubernetes v1.13 [deprecated]
Type: Validating.
Rejects all requests. AlwaysDeny is deprecated as it has no real meaning.
Type: Mutating and Validating.
This admission controller modifies every new Pod to force the image pull policy to Always
. This is useful in a multitenant cluster so that users can be assured that their private images can only be used by those who have the credentials to pull them. Without this admission controller, once an image has been pulled to a node, any pod from any user can use it by knowing the image's name (assuming the Pod is scheduled onto the right node), without any authorization check against the image. When this admission controller is enabled, images are always pulled prior to starting containers, which means valid credentials are required.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller observes requests to approve CertificateSigningRequest resources and performs additional authorization checks to ensure the approving user has permission to approve certificate requests with the spec.signerName
requested on the CertificateSigningRequest resource.
See Certificate Signing Requests for more information on the permissions required to perform different actions on CertificateSigningRequest resources.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller observes updates to the status.certificate
field of CertificateSigningRequest resources and performs an additional authorization checks to ensure the signing user has permission to sign certificate requests with the spec.signerName
requested on the CertificateSigningRequest resource.
See Certificate Signing Requests for more information on the permissions required to perform different actions on CertificateSigningRequest resources.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller observes creation of CertificateSigningRequest resources that have a spec.signerName
of kubernetes.io/kube-apiserver-client
. It rejects any request that specifies a 'group' (or 'organization attribute') of system:masters
.
Type: Mutating.
This admission controller observes creation of Ingress
objects that do not request any specific ingress class and automatically adds a default ingress class to them. This way, users that do not request any special ingress class do not need to care about them at all and they will get the default one.
This admission controller does not do anything when no default ingress class is configured. When more than one ingress class is marked as default, it rejects any creation of Ingress
with an error and an administrator must revisit their IngressClass
objects and mark only one as default (with the annotation "ingressclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class"). This admission controller ignores any Ingress
updates; it acts only on creation.
See the Ingress documentation for more about ingress classes and how to mark one as default.
Type: Mutating.
This admission controller observes creation of PersistentVolumeClaim
objects that do not request any specific storage class and automatically adds a default storage class to them. This way, users that do not request any special storage class do not need to care about them at all and they will get the default one.
This admission controller does nothing when no default StorageClass
exists. When more than one storage class is marked as default, and you then create a PersistentVolumeClaim
with no storageClassName
set, Kubernetes uses the most recently created default StorageClass
. When a PersistentVolumeClaim
is created with a specified volumeName
, it remains in a pending state if the static volume's storageClassName
does not match the storageClassName
on the PersistentVolumeClaim
after any default StorageClass is applied to it. This admission controller ignores any PersistentVolumeClaim
updates; it acts only on creation.
See persistent volume documentation about persistent volume claims and storage classes and how to mark a storage class as default.
Type: Mutating.
This admission controller sets the default forgiveness toleration for pods to tolerate the taints notready:NoExecute
and unreachable:NoExecute
based on the k8s-apiserver input parameters default-not-ready-toleration-seconds
and default-unreachable-toleration-seconds
if the pods don't already have toleration for taints node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute
or node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute
. The default value for default-not-ready-toleration-seconds
and default-unreachable-toleration-seconds
is 5 minutes.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller rejects all net-new usage of the Service
field externalIPs
. This feature is very powerful (allows network traffic interception) and not well controlled by policy. When enabled, users of the cluster may not create new Services which use externalIPs
and may not add new values to externalIPs
on existing Service
objects. Existing uses of externalIPs
are not affected, and users may remove values from externalIPs
on existing Service
objects.
Most users do not need this feature at all, and cluster admins should consider disabling it. Clusters that do need to use this feature should consider using some custom policy to manage usage of it.
This admission controller is disabled by default.
Kubernetes v1.13 [alpha]
Type: Validating.
This admission controller mitigates the problem where the API server gets flooded by requests to store new Events. The cluster admin can specify event rate limits by:
EventRateLimit
admission controller;EventRateLimit
configuration file from the file provided to the API server's command line flag --admission-control-config-file
:apiVersion:apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1kind:AdmissionConfigurationplugins:- name:EventRateLimitpath:eventconfig.yaml...
There are four types of limits that can be specified in the configuration:
Server
: All Event requests (creation or modifications) received by the API server share a single bucket.Namespace
: Each namespace has a dedicated bucket.User
: Each user is allocated a bucket.SourceAndObject
: A bucket is assigned by each combination of source and involved object of the event.Below is a sample eventconfig.yaml
for such a configuration:
apiVersion:eventratelimit.admission.k8s.io/v1alpha1kind:Configurationlimits:- type:Namespaceqps:50burst:100cacheSize:2000- type:Userqps:10burst:50
See the EventRateLimit Config API (v1alpha1) for more details.
This admission controller is disabled by default.
Type: Mutating.
This plug-in facilitates creation of dedicated nodes with extended resources. If operators want to create dedicated nodes with extended resources (like GPUs, FPGAs etc.), they are expected to taint the node with the extended resource name as the key. This admission controller, if enabled, automatically adds tolerations for such taints to pods requesting extended resources, so users don't have to manually add these tolerations.
This admission controller is disabled by default.
Type: Validating.
The ImagePolicyWebhook admission controller allows a backend webhook to make admission decisions.
This admission controller is disabled by default.
ImagePolicyWebhook uses a configuration file to set options for the behavior of the backend. This file may be json or yaml and has the following format:
imagePolicy:kubeConfigFile:/path/to/kubeconfig/for/backend# time in s to cache approvalallowTTL:50# time in s to cache denialdenyTTL:50# time in ms to wait between retriesretryBackoff:500# determines behavior if the webhook backend failsdefaultAllow:true
Reference the ImagePolicyWebhook configuration file from the file provided to the API server's command line flag --admission-control-config-file
:
apiVersion:apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1kind:AdmissionConfigurationplugins:- name:ImagePolicyWebhookpath:imagepolicyconfig.yaml...
Alternatively, you can embed the configuration directly in the file:
apiVersion:apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1kind:AdmissionConfigurationplugins:- name:ImagePolicyWebhookconfiguration:imagePolicy:kubeConfigFile:<path-to-kubeconfig-file>allowTTL:50denyTTL:50retryBackoff:500defaultAllow:true
The ImagePolicyWebhook config file must reference a kubeconfig formatted file which sets up the connection to the backend. It is required that the backend communicate over TLS.
The kubeconfig file's cluster
field must point to the remote service, and the user
field must contain the returned authorizer.
# clusters refers to the remote service.clusters:- name:name-of-remote-imagepolicy-servicecluster:certificate-authority:/path/to/ca.pem # CA for verifying the remote service.server:https://images.example.com/policy# URL of remote service to query. Must use 'https'.# users refers to the API server's webhook configuration.users:- name:name-of-api-serveruser:client-certificate:/path/to/cert.pem# cert for the webhook admission controller to useclient-key:/path/to/key.pem # key matching the cert
For additional HTTP configuration, refer to the kubeconfig documentation.
When faced with an admission decision, the API Server POSTs a JSON serialized imagepolicy.k8s.io/v1alpha1
ImageReview
object describing the action. This object contains fields describing the containers being admitted, as well as any pod annotations that match *.image-policy.k8s.io/*
.
apiVersion
field of the request to ensure correct deserialization. Additionally, the API Server must enable the imagepolicy.k8s.io/v1alpha1
API extensions group (--runtime-config=imagepolicy.k8s.io/v1alpha1=true
).An example request body:
{ "apiVersion": "imagepolicy.k8s.io/v1alpha1", "kind": "ImageReview", "spec": { "containers": [ { "image": "myrepo/myimage:v1" }, { "image": "myrepo/myimage@sha256:beb6bd6a68f114c1dc2ea4b28db81bdf91de202a9014972bec5e4d9171d90ed" } ], "annotations": { "mycluster.image-policy.k8s.io/ticket-1234": "break-glass" }, "namespace": "mynamespace" } }
The remote service is expected to fill the status
field of the request and respond to either allow or disallow access. The response body's spec
field is ignored, and may be omitted. A permissive response would return:
{ "apiVersion": "imagepolicy.k8s.io/v1alpha1", "kind": "ImageReview", "status": { "allowed": true } }
To disallow access, the service would return:
{ "apiVersion": "imagepolicy.k8s.io/v1alpha1", "kind": "ImageReview", "status": { "allowed": false, "reason": "image currently blacklisted" } }
For further documentation refer to the imagepolicy.v1alpha1
API.
All annotations on a Pod that match *.image-policy.k8s.io/*
are sent to the webhook. Sending annotations allows users who are aware of the image policy backend to send extra information to it, and for different backends implementations to accept different information.
Examples of information you might put here are:
In any case, the annotations are provided by the user and are not validated by Kubernetes in any way.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller denies any pod that defines AntiAffinity
topology key other than kubernetes.io/hostname
in requiredDuringSchedulingRequiredDuringExecution
.
This admission controller is disabled by default.
Type: Mutating and Validating.
This admission controller will observe the incoming request and ensure that it does not violate any of the constraints enumerated in the LimitRange
object in a Namespace
. If you are using LimitRange
objects in your Kubernetes deployment, you MUST use this admission controller to enforce those constraints. LimitRanger can also be used to apply default resource requests to Pods that don't specify any; currently, the default LimitRanger applies a 0.1 CPU requirement to all Pods in the default
namespace.
See the LimitRange API reference and the example of LimitRange for more details.
Type: Mutating.
This admission controller calls any mutating webhooks which match the request. Matching webhooks are called in serial; each one may modify the object if it desires.
This admission controller (as implied by the name) only runs in the mutating phase.
If a webhook called by this has side effects (for example, decrementing quota) it must have a reconciliation system, as it is not guaranteed that subsequent webhooks or validating admission controllers will permit the request to finish.
If you disable the MutatingAdmissionWebhook, you must also disable the MutatingWebhookConfiguration
object in the admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1
group/version via the --runtime-config
flag, both are on by default.
Type: Mutating.
This admission controller examines all incoming requests on namespaced resources and checks if the referenced namespace does exist. It creates a namespace if it cannot be found. This admission controller is useful in deployments that do not want to restrict creation of a namespace prior to its usage.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller checks all requests on namespaced resources other than Namespace
itself. If the namespace referenced from a request doesn't exist, the request is rejected.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller enforces that a Namespace
that is undergoing termination cannot have new objects created in it, and ensures that requests in a non-existent Namespace
are rejected. This admission controller also prevents deletion of three system reserved namespaces default
, kube-system
, kube-public
.
A Namespace
deletion kicks off a sequence of operations that remove all objects (pods, services, etc.) in that namespace. In order to enforce integrity of that process, we strongly recommend running this admission controller.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller limits the Node
and Pod
objects a kubelet can modify. In order to be limited by this admission controller, kubelets must use credentials in the system:nodes
group, with a username in the form system:node:<nodeName>
. Such kubelets will only be allowed to modify their own Node
API object, and only modify Pod
API objects that are bound to their node. kubelets are not allowed to update or remove taints from their Node
API object.
The NodeRestriction
admission plugin prevents kubelets from deleting their Node
API object, and enforces kubelet modification of labels under the kubernetes.io/
or k8s.io/
prefixes as follows:
node-restriction.kubernetes.io/
prefix. This label prefix is reserved for administrators to label their Node
objects for workload isolation purposes, and kubelets will not be allowed to modify labels with that prefix.kubernetes.io/hostname
kubernetes.io/arch
kubernetes.io/os
beta.kubernetes.io/instance-type
node.kubernetes.io/instance-type
failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/region
(deprecated)failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone
(deprecated)topology.kubernetes.io/region
topology.kubernetes.io/zone
kubelet.kubernetes.io/
-prefixed labelsnode.kubernetes.io/
-prefixed labelsUse of any other labels under the kubernetes.io
or k8s.io
prefixes by kubelets is reserved, and may be disallowed or allowed by the NodeRestriction
admission plugin in the future.
Future versions may add additional restrictions to ensure kubelets have the minimal set of permissions required to operate correctly.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller protects the access to the metadata.ownerReferences
of an object so that only users with delete permission to the object can change it. This admission controller also protects the access to metadata.ownerReferences[x].blockOwnerDeletion
of an object, so that only users with update permission to the finalizers
subresource of the referenced owner can change it.
Kubernetes v1.24 [stable]
Type: Validating.
This admission controller implements additional validations for checking incoming PersistentVolumeClaim
resize requests.
Enabling the PersistentVolumeClaimResize
admission controller is recommended. This admission controller prevents resizing of all claims by default unless a claim's StorageClass
explicitly enables resizing by setting allowVolumeExpansion
to true
.
For example: all PersistentVolumeClaim
s created from the following StorageClass
support volume expansion:
apiVersion:storage.k8s.io/v1kind:StorageClassmetadata:name:gluster-vol-defaultprovisioner:kubernetes.io/glusterfsparameters:resturl:"http://192.168.10.100:8080"restuser:""secretNamespace:""secretName:""allowVolumeExpansion:true
For more information about persistent volume claims, see PersistentVolumeClaims.
Kubernetes v1.5 [alpha]
Type: Validating.
This admission controller defaults and limits what node selectors may be used within a namespace by reading a namespace annotation and a global configuration.
This admission controller is disabled by default.
PodNodeSelector
uses a configuration file to set options for the behavior of the backend. Note that the configuration file format will move to a versioned file in a future release. This file may be json or yaml and has the following format:
podNodeSelectorPluginConfig:clusterDefaultNodeSelector:name-of-node-selectornamespace1:name-of-node-selectornamespace2:name-of-node-selector
Reference the PodNodeSelector
configuration file from the file provided to the API server's command line flag --admission-control-config-file
:
apiVersion:apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1kind:AdmissionConfigurationplugins:- name:PodNodeSelectorpath:podnodeselector.yaml...
PodNodeSelector
uses the annotation key scheduler.alpha.kubernetes.io/node-selector
to assign node selectors to namespaces.
apiVersion:v1kind:Namespacemetadata:annotations:scheduler.alpha.kubernetes.io/node-selector:name-of-node-selectorname:namespace3
This admission controller has the following behavior:
Namespace
has an annotation with a key scheduler.alpha.kubernetes.io/node-selector
, use its value as the node selector.clusterDefaultNodeSelector
defined in the PodNodeSelector
plugin configuration file as the node selector.Kubernetes v1.25 [stable]
Type: Validating.
The PodSecurity admission controller checks new Pods before they are admitted, determines if it should be admitted based on the requested security context and the restrictions on permitted Pod Security Standards for the namespace that the Pod would be in.
See the Pod Security Admission documentation for more information.
PodSecurity replaced an older admission controller named PodSecurityPolicy.
Kubernetes v1.7 [alpha]
Type: Mutating and Validating.
The PodTolerationRestriction admission controller verifies any conflict between tolerations of a pod and the tolerations of its namespace. It rejects the pod request if there is a conflict. It then merges the tolerations annotated on the namespace into the tolerations of the pod. The resulting tolerations are checked against a list of allowed tolerations annotated to the namespace. If the check succeeds, the pod request is admitted otherwise it is rejected.
If the namespace of the pod does not have any associated default tolerations or allowed tolerations annotated, the cluster-level default tolerations or cluster-level list of allowed tolerations are used instead if they are specified.
Tolerations to a namespace are assigned via the scheduler.alpha.kubernetes.io/defaultTolerations
annotation key. The list of allowed tolerations can be added via the scheduler.alpha.kubernetes.io/tolerationsWhitelist
annotation key.
Example for namespace annotations:
apiVersion:v1kind:Namespacemetadata:name:apps-that-need-nodes-exclusivelyannotations:scheduler.alpha.kubernetes.io/defaultTolerations:'[{"operator": "Exists", "effect": "NoSchedule", "key": "dedicated-node"}]'scheduler.alpha.kubernetes.io/tolerationsWhitelist:'[{"operator": "Exists", "effect": "NoSchedule", "key": "dedicated-node"}]'
This admission controller is disabled by default.
Kubernetes v1.33 []
Type: Mutating
The PodTopologyLabels admission controller mutates the pods/binding
subresources for all pods bound to a Node, adding topology labels matching those of the bound Node. This allows Node topology labels to be available as pod labels, which can be surfaced to running containers using the Downward API. The labels available as a result of this controller are the topology.kubernetes.io/region and topology.kuberentes.io/zone labels.
{{ pods/binding
subresource, these changes will propagate to pod labels as a result of this controller, overwriting labels with conflicting keys. {{
This admission controller is enabled when the PodTopologyLabelsAdmission
feature gate is enabled.
Type: Mutating and Validating.
The priority admission controller uses the priorityClassName
field and populates the integer value of the priority. If the priority class is not found, the Pod is rejected.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller will observe the incoming request and ensure that it does not violate any of the constraints enumerated in the ResourceQuota
object in a Namespace
. If you are using ResourceQuota
objects in your Kubernetes deployment, you MUST use this admission controller to enforce quota constraints.
See the ResourceQuota API reference and the example of Resource Quota for more details.
Type: Mutating and Validating.
If you define a RuntimeClass with Pod overhead configured, this admission controller checks incoming Pods. When enabled, this admission controller rejects any Pod create requests that have the overhead already set. For Pods that have a RuntimeClass configured and selected in their .spec
, this admission controller sets .spec.overhead
in the Pod based on the value defined in the corresponding RuntimeClass.
See also Pod Overhead for more information.
Type: Mutating and Validating.
This admission controller implements automation for serviceAccounts. The Kubernetes project strongly recommends enabling this admission controller. You should enable this admission controller if you intend to make any use of Kubernetes ServiceAccount
objects.
To enhance the security measures around Secrets, use separate namespaces to isolate access to mounted secrets.
Type: Mutating.
The StorageObjectInUseProtection
plugin adds the kubernetes.io/pvc-protection
or kubernetes.io/pv-protection
finalizers to newly created Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) or Persistent Volumes (PV). In case a user deletes a PVC or PV the PVC or PV is not removed until the finalizer is removed from the PVC or PV by PVC or PV Protection Controller. Refer to the Storage Object in Use Protection for more detailed information.
Type: Mutating.
This admission controller taints newly created Nodes as NotReady
and NoSchedule
. That tainting avoids a race condition that could cause Pods to be scheduled on new Nodes before their taints were updated to accurately reflect their reported conditions.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller implements the CEL validation for incoming matched requests. It is enabled when both feature gate validatingadmissionpolicy
and admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1alpha1
group/version are enabled. If any of the ValidatingAdmissionPolicy fails, the request fails.
Type: Validating.
This admission controller calls any validating webhooks which match the request. Matching webhooks are called in parallel; if any of them rejects the request, the request fails. This admission controller only runs in the validation phase; the webhooks it calls may not mutate the object, as opposed to the webhooks called by the MutatingAdmissionWebhook
admission controller.
If a webhook called by this has side effects (for example, decrementing quota) it must have a reconciliation system, as it is not guaranteed that subsequent webhooks or other validating admission controllers will permit the request to finish.
If you disable the ValidatingAdmissionWebhook, you must also disable the ValidatingWebhookConfiguration
object in the admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1
group/version via the --runtime-config
flag.
Yes. The recommended admission controllers are enabled by default (shown here), so you do not need to explicitly specify them. You can enable additional admission controllers beyond the default set using the --enable-admission-plugins
flag (order doesn't matter).