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Provider Storage – Local Setup

This guide shows how to set up provider-storage locally using a kind cluster and a MinIO installation inside the cluster.
It is intended for development, testing, and demonstrations.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following installed on your machine:

Step 1: Create a kind cluster

kind create cluster --name storage-minio
kubectl get pods -A

Verify that the cluster is up and running before proceeding.

Step 2: Install Crossplane

Install Crossplane into the cluster using Helm:

helm repo add crossplane-stable https://charts.crossplane.io/stable
helm repo update
helm install crossplane
  --namespace crossplane-system
  --create-namespace crossplane-stable/crossplane
  --version 2.0.2 
  --set provider.defaultActivations={}

Apply a ManagedResourceActivationPolicy (MRAP) to only activate the resources needed for MinIO:

apiVersion: apiextensions.crossplane.io/v1alpha1
kind: ManagedResourceActivationPolicy
metadata:
  name: storage-minio
spec:
  activate:
  - buckets.minio.crossplane.io
  - policies.minio.crossplane.io
  - users.minio.crossplane.io
  - objects.kubernetes.crossplane.io

kubectl apply -f mrap.yaml

Step 3: Install MinIO Operator and Tenant

Install the MinIO Operator:

helm repo add minio-operator https://operator.min.io
helm install
   --namespace minio-operator
   --create-namespace operator minio-operator/operator

Create a small MinIO Tenant for testing. Save as values.yaml:

tenant:
  pools:
    - servers: 1
      name: pool-0
      volumesPerServer: 1
      size: 1Gi
  certificate:
    requestAutoCert: false

Install the tenant:

helm install   --values values.yaml   --namespace minio-tenant   --create-namespace minio-tenant minio-operator/tenant

Step 4: Install Provider Dependencies

Apply the provider dependency files from the repo (in order):

These configure the MinIO provider, Kubernetes provider, and required permissions.

Step 5: Install the Configuration Package

Finally, install the configuration package for MinIO:

apiVersion: pkg.crossplane.io/v1
kind: Configuration
metadata:
  name: storage-minio
spec:
  package: ghcr.io/versioneer-tech/provider-storage/minio:0.1.0

kubectl apply -f configuration.yaml

This installs the Crossplane Storage CRD and compositions.

Step 6: Create a Storage Claim

With everything installed, create a Storage claim in your namespace (workspace is recommended):

apiVersion: pkg.internal/v1beta1
kind: Storage
metadata:
  name: team-wonderland
  namespace: workspace
spec:
  principal: alice
  buckets:
    - bucketName: wonderland

Step 7: Verify the Setup

Check if the resource is ready

kubectl get storages -n workspace

Expected output:

NAME     SYNCED   READY   COMPOSITION        AGE
team-wonderland    True     True    storage-minio      2m

Inspect details:

kubectl describe storage team-wonderland -n workspace

Check the generated Secret

Each Storage claim produces a Secret with the principal’s name in the same namespace.
For example, the claim above creates a Secret alice in the workspace namespace.

kubectl get secret alice -n workspace -o yaml

Decode credentials if needed:

kubectl get secret alice -n workspace -o jsonpath='{.data.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}' | base64 -d; echo
kubectl get secret alice -n workspace -o jsonpath='{.data.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}' | base64 -d; echo

Use the credentials

aws s3 ls s3://alice   --endpoint-url http://minio-tenant-hl.minio-tenant.svc.cluster.local:9000

Summary

  • A kind cluster with Crossplane is created.
  • MinIO Operator and Tenant provide the S3 backend.
  • Provider dependencies are installed first (providers, configs, RBAC).
  • The storage-minio configuration package registers the CRD and compositions.
  • A Storage claim provisions buckets and credentials.
  • A Secret (named after the principal) contains S3-compatible credentials usable with CLI tools.