kubernetes/kops

Analysis updated 2026-06-24

★ 16,609GoAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 4/5Setup · hard

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((kops))
    Inputs
      Cluster spec YAML
      Cloud credentials
      SSH key
    Outputs
      Running Kubernetes cluster
      Cloud infrastructure
      Kubeconfig
    Use Cases
      Spin up a production cluster on AWS
      Upgrade an existing cluster
      Tear down a cluster cleanly
    Tech Stack
      Go
      Kubernetes
      AWS
      GCP

mindmap root((kops)) Inputs Cluster spec YAML Cloud credentials SSH key Outputs Running Kubernetes cluster Cloud infrastructure Kubeconfig Use Cases Spin up a production cluster on AWS Upgrade an existing cluster Tear down a cluster cleanly Tech Stack Go Kubernetes AWS GCP

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Stand up a production-grade Kubernetes cluster on AWS from a single command

USE CASE 2

Upgrade a running cluster to a newer Kubernetes version with minimal downtime

USE CASE 3

Manage cluster lifecycle including delete and rolling node replacement

USE CASE 4

Generate Terraform output to review infrastructure changes before applying

What is it built with?

GoKubernetesAWSGCPTerraform

How does it compare?

	kubernetes/kops	hyperledger/fabric	argoproj/argo-workflows
Stars	16,609	16,641	16,675
Language	Go	Go	Go
Setup difficulty	hard	hard	hard
Complexity	4/5	5/5	4/5
Audience	ops devops	developer	ops devops

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Needs a cloud account, IAM credentials, DNS or gossip setup, and an S3 state store before the first cluster can boot.

In plain English

kOps, short for Kubernetes Operations, is a command-line tool that makes it easy to create, manage, upgrade, and delete production-grade Kubernetes clusters on cloud platforms. Kubernetes is a system for running many software services together in containers, and setting it up correctly for real production use is notoriously complex. kOps handles all of that complexity for you, including provisioning the underlying cloud infrastructure automatically. Think of it as a one-stop tool for managing entire Kubernetes clusters, similar to how kubectl manages applications running inside a cluster. AWS and Google Cloud Platform are the officially supported cloud providers, with DigitalOcean, Hetzner, and OpenStack in beta, and Azure in early development. It is written in Go, part of the CNCF ecosystem, and maintained by the Kubernetes community with regular public office hours for users and contributors.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

Walk me through using kops to create a small Kubernetes cluster on AWS in eu-west-1

Prompt 2

Show me the kops command to upgrade a cluster to a newer Kubernetes minor version safely

Prompt 3

Write a kops cluster spec YAML for a 3-node cluster with one m5.large master and two worker nodes

Prompt 4

Compare kops to eksctl and explain when I would pick one over the other

Prompt 5

Generate the kops command sequence to delete a cluster and clean up AWS resources

Frequently asked questions

What is kops?

kOps is a command-line tool that creates, upgrades, and deletes production Kubernetes clusters on AWS, GCP, and other clouds, provisioning the underlying infrastructure for you.

What language is kops written in?

Mainly Go. The stack also includes Go, Kubernetes, AWS.

How hard is kops to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated hard, with roughly 1day+ to a first successful run.

Who is kops for?

Mainly ops devops.

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