Mastering Kubernetes Permissions in Amazon EKS: A Deep Dive into RBAC Roles and Best Practices

When managing workloads in Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service), configuring permissions properly is essential for security, stability, and resource governance. Kubernetes uses Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to manage permissions for different users, groups, and service accounts. Mastering RBAC ensures you can control who has access to which resources and what actions they can perform.

In this blog, I will provide a deep dive into how RBAC works, covering various scenarios, use cases, and detailed code examples. You will learn how to use Roles, ClusterRoles, RoleBindings, and ClusterRoleBindings effectively, along with best practices for secure permissions management in an Amazon EKS cluster.

Understanding Kubernetes Permissions in Amazon EKS

Kubernetes permissions are controlled by Roles and ClusterRoles, which specify the actions a subject (user, group, or service account) can perform on specific resources. RoleBindings and ClusterRoleBindings are used to associate these roles with subjects, effectively granting permissions.

Key RBAC Concepts:

• Subjects: Entities that request access to resources.