A sample PostgreSQL operator built as part of the Building Kubernetes Operators Course. This operator demonstrates production best practices learned through the course labs.
This operator was built following the labs and lessons from the Building Kubernetes Operators Course. It demonstrates advanced operator concepts including:
- Full CRUD operations for PostgreSQL databases
- Stateful application management
- Backup and restore functionality
- Multi-tenancy support
- Operator composition patterns
- Webhooks (validating and mutating)
- Comprehensive testing strategies
- Production best practices (RBAC, security, HA, performance)
This operator was built using the course materials from: https://github.com/piyushjajoo/k8s-operators-course
The course provides comprehensive, hands-on training for building Kubernetes operators using Kubebuilder, following production best practices. This postgres-operator serves as the primary example throughout Modules 3-8, demonstrating operator development patterns and best practices learned through the course labs.
A Kubernetes operator for managing PostgreSQL database instances. This operator provides:
- Database Lifecycle Management: Create, update, and delete PostgreSQL databases
- Backup & Restore: Automated backup scheduling and point-in-time restore capabilities
- Multi-Tenancy: Support for cluster-scoped and namespace-scoped database resources
- High Availability: Rolling updates, data consistency checks, and stateful application patterns
- Production Best Practices: RBAC, security hardening, webhooks, comprehensive testing, and observability
Built progressively through Modules 3-8 of the Building Kubernetes Operators Course, this operator demonstrates best practices and patterns for building Kubernetes operators. Note: This is a sample operator built for learning purposes and should not be used in production without additional hardening and testing.
- Go 1.24+
- kubectl
- Docker or Podman
- kind v0.29+
- Kubebuilder 4.7+
Build and push your image to the location specified by IMG:
make docker-build docker-push IMG=<some-registry>/postgres-operator:tagNOTE: This image ought to be published in the personal registry you specified. And it is required to have access to pull the image from the working environment. Make sure you have the proper permission to the registry if the above commands don’t work.
Install the CRDs into the cluster:
make installDeploy the Manager to the cluster with the image specified by IMG:
make deploy IMG=<some-registry>/postgres-operator:tagNOTE: If you encounter RBAC errors, you may need to grant yourself cluster-admin privileges or be logged in as admin.
Create instances of your solution You can apply the samples (examples) from the config/sample:
kubectl apply -k config/samples/NOTE: Ensure that the samples has default values to test it out.
Delete the instances (CRs) from the cluster:
kubectl delete -k config/samples/Delete the APIs(CRDs) from the cluster:
make uninstallUnDeploy the controller from the cluster:
make undeployFollowing the options to release and provide this solution to the users.
- Build the installer for the image built and published in the registry:
make build-installer IMG=<some-registry>/postgres-operator:tagNOTE: The makefile target mentioned above generates an 'install.yaml' file in the dist directory. This file contains all the resources built with Kustomize, which are necessary to install this project without its dependencies.
- Using the installer
Users can just run 'kubectl apply -f ' to install the project, i.e.:
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<org>/postgres-operator/<tag or branch>/dist/install.yaml- Build the chart using the optional helm plugin
kubebuilder edit --plugins=helm/v1-alpha- See that a chart was generated under 'dist/chart', and users can obtain this solution from there.
NOTE: If you change the project, you need to update the Helm Chart using the same command above to sync the latest changes. Furthermore, if you create webhooks, you need to use the above command with the '--force' flag and manually ensure that any custom configuration previously added to 'dist/chart/values.yaml' or 'dist/chart/manager/manager.yaml' is manually re-applied afterwards.
// TODO(user): Add detailed information on how you would like others to contribute to this project
NOTE: Run make help for more information on all potential make targets
More information can be found via the Kubebuilder Documentation
Copyright 2025.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.