patch-operator VS kops

TitanSoft's imagepullsecret-patcher is a single-binary solution to replicating and using an image pull secret across all namespaces. It is not actively maintained, but the tool is simple enough that a small team should be able to patch and maintain a fork if needed. If you want to stick to other maintained open source tools, a reasonable solution can also be put together using external secrets operator. If you are operating a cluster at scale, you may already be using this. Red Hat's patch-operator can be used to attach the imported secrets to your service accounts across all namespaces, though there are some quirks to be wary of, due to the lack of a defined patch strategy for imagePullSecrets on service accounts.

kops

curl -LO https://github.com/kubernetes/kops/releases/download/$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/kubernetes/kops/releases/latest | grep tag_name | cut -d '"' -f 4)/kops-linux-amd64

The general problem of patching resource definitions that are not fully under your control has also been recognized for some time. This is true of default resources created and updated by cluster maintenance tools (e.g. kOps), or by public helm charts that you use to install common services and operators (e.g. nginx-ingress, cert-manager, and so on). High quality charts will allow you to override the configuration of important components such as service account references, but some simpler charts offer much less configuration.

The kops documentation is not very clear about this.

Very fast progress and great article with lots of useful information. I found myself nodding a lot having recently seen GitLab Dedicated https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/subscriptions/gitlab_dedicated/ being developed that had my similar challenges. I wonder what other people think of Kops https://kops.sigs.k8s.io/

note: I work with kube on a daily basis. All current clusters under my care use a managed backplane service though there are a number of small (3+ years-old) clusters that I still keep an eye on that were initialized using kops.

kOps with your own instances.

Companies run their own clusters (sometimes for cost reasons), using tools like kops, and kubeadm to set up their own clusters.