Understanding Kubernetes: Part 27 Role and RoleBinding

📢 If you’ve been following our Kubernetes series 2025, welcome back! For new readers, check out Part 26: Preemption and Priority

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Introduction

Kubernetes Role and RoleBinding are essential components of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). They define permissions within a Kubernetes cluster, ensuring that users and applications only have the access they need.

What is a Role?

A Role is a namespaced Kubernetes object that defines a set of permissions within a specific namespace. It grants access to resources such as Pods, ConfigMaps, and Deployments based on verbs (actions) like get, list, create, delete, and update.

Example: Creating a Role

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
  name: pod-reader
  namespace: default
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["pods"]
  verbs: ["get", "list"]

This Role named pod-reader allows users to get and list Pods within the default namespace.

What is a RoleBinding?