shoot_operations.md

Trigger shoot operations

You can trigger a few explicit operations by annotating the Shoot with an operation annotation. This might allow you to induct certain behavior without the need to change the Shoot specification. Some of the operations can also not be caused by changing something in the shoot specification because they can't properly be reflected here.

Please note: If .spec.maintenance.confineSpecUpdateRollout=true then the only way to trigger a shoot reconciliation is by setting the reconcile operation, see below.

Immediate reconciliation

Annotate the shoot with gardener.cloud/operation=reconcile to make the gardenlet start a reconciliation operation without changing the shoot spec and possibly without being in its maintenance time window:

kubectl -n garden-<project-name> annotate shoot <shoot-name> gardener.cloud/operation=reconcile

Immediate maintenance

Annotate the shoot with gardener.cloud/operation=maintain to make the gardener-controller-manager start maintaining your shoot immediately (possibly without being in its maintenance time window). If no reconciliation starts then nothing needed to be maintained:

kubectl -n garden-<project-name> annotate shoot <shoot-name> gardener.cloud/operation=maintain

Retry failed operation

Annotate the shoot with gardener.cloud/operation=retry to make the gardenlet start a new reconciliation loop on a failed shoot. Failed shoots are only reconciled again if a new Gardener version is deployed, the shoot specification is changed or this annotation is set

kubectl -n garden-<project-name> annotate shoot <shoot-name> gardener.cloud/operation=retry

Rotate kubeconfig credentials

Annotate the shoot with gardener.cloud/operation=rotate-kubeconfig-credentials to make the gardenlet exchange the credentials in your shoot cluster's kubeconfig. Please note that only the token (and basic auth password, if enabled) are exchanged. The cluster CAs remain the same.

kubectl -n garden-<project-name> annotate shoot <shoot-name> gardener.cloud/operation=rotate-kubeconfig-credentials

Restart systemd services on particular worker nodes

It is possible to make Gardener restart particular systemd services on your shoot worker nodes if needed. The annotation is not set on the Shoot resource but directly on the Node object you want to target. For example, the following will restart both the kubelet and the docker services:

kubectl annotate node <node-name> worker.gardener.cloud/restart-systemd-services=kubelet,docker

It may take up to a minute until the service is restarted. The annotation will be removed from the Node object after all specified systemd services have been restarted. It will also be removed even if the restart of one or more services failed.

ℹ️ In the example mentioned above, you could additionally verify when/whether the kubelet restarted by using kubectl describe node <node-name> and looking for such a Starting kubelet event.