How to Use Confluent for Kubernetes to Manage Resources Outside of Kubernetes

Confluent for Kubernetes (CfK) can serve as a GitOps control plane for managing Confluent Platform resources, including topics, schemas, connectors, and RBAC bindings, even when the Confluent cluster runs outside Kubernetes. By storing declarative resource definitions in version control and deploying them through CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Argo CD, Flux CD, or Kustomize, organizations can enforce review, approval, auditing, and repeatable deployment processes without sharing administrator credentials. The demonstration uses cp-demo for a preconfigured Confluent Platform cluster and Kind for Kubernetes, where CfK uses separately managed Kubernetes secrets for authentication and TLS, a KafkaRestClass for cluster connection settings, and custom resources to provision a topic, Avro schema, Elasticsearch sink connector, and ResourceOwner permissions for the KafkaDevelopers group. Verification through Kubernetes, Control Center, and the Confluent CLI confirms that the resources and permissions are created successfully, illustrating how this approach can support self-service topic and connector management across multiple environments while reducing administrators’ operational workload.

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