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Module 1 — Install Crossplane in your vcluster

Your pair:

Before you can use Crossplane to provision anything, you need to install it. In this module you will connect to your vcluster and install the upstream Crossplane Helm chart.

1.1 Connect to your vcluster​

From any terminal with kubectl and the vcluster CLI, connect to your pair's vcluster. Replace <pair-id> with your actual pair (e.g. fancy-lemon).

vcluster connect <pair-id> -n participant-<pair-id>

vcluster connect updates your current KUBECONFIG context so that subsequent kubectl / helm commands land inside your vcluster — not the management cluster. You can verify:

kubectl config current-context
# should look like: vcluster_<pair-id>_participant-<pair-id>_...
kubectl get ns

You should see a clean vcluster with only the standard system namespaces.

Leaving the vcluster

Press Ctrl+C in the terminal running vcluster connect to release the context and return to the management cluster. You can re-connect at any time.

1.2 Install the Crossplane Helm chart​

Add the upstream Crossplane Helm repository and install the chart into a dedicated namespace:

helm repo add crossplane-stable https://charts.crossplane.io/stable
helm repo update crossplane-stable

helm install crossplane crossplane-stable/crossplane \
  --namespace crossplane-system \
  --create-namespace \
  --wait

The --wait flag makes Helm block until the crossplane and crossplane-rbac-manager Deployments are Available. On a workshop-sized vcluster this typically takes 30–60 seconds.

Confirm both pods are Running:

kubectl -n crossplane-system get pods

Expected output (roughly):

NAME                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
crossplane-7b4d9f8c9d-abcde                1/1     Running   0          45s
crossplane-rbac-manager-6c8f7d5b4c-fghij   1/1     Running   0          45s

1.3 Verify with the workshop checker​

Click the button below. The workshop's checker will reach into your vcluster, find the crossplane Deployment in crossplane-system, and confirm it reports condition Available=True.

When the check turns green, you're ready for module 2.

Troubleshooting​

Check says "crossplane Deployment not found" : Either you ran helm install against the management cluster instead of your vcluster, or the release failed. Re-run vcluster connect <pair-id> -n participant-<pair-id> and confirm kubectl config current-context points at your vcluster before retrying.

Check says "not yet Available" : Helm finished but the pod is still starting. Wait ~30 seconds and click the check again.

Check says "could not get secret vc-<pair-id>" : Your pair ID in the URL doesn't match an existing vcluster. Double-check the URL is /p/<your-pair-id>/....