etcd Cheatsheet

etcdctl Commands

# Install etcdctl.
$ apt install etcd-client

# List keys.
$ etcdctl get "" --prefix --keys-only

# List members.
$ etcdctl member list --cacert /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/ca.crt --cert /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/peer.crt --key /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/peer.key

# hexdump
$ etcdctl get /registry/secrets/default/secret-name | hexdump -C

# Check status.
$ etcdctl endpoint status --cacert /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/ca.crt --cert /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/healthcheck-client.crt --key /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/healthcheck-client.key --write-out=table --endpoints=10.200.0.2:2379,10.200.0.3:2379,10.200.0.4:2379

# To wipe etcd data
$ etcdctl del "" --prefix

Use cases

• used in K8s behind the api servers.
• used by Cilium as the kvstore; cilium agents will connect to etcd; since Cilium 1.6 it can use a new CRD-based backend for security identities instead of using a kvstore.

Under the hood

• written in Go.
• using the Raft consensus algorithm.
• the client does not need to know what etcd node is the leader (i.e. kube-apiserver only talks to the etcd on the same node):
  • etcd internally forwards all requests that needs consensus (e.g. writes) to the leader.
  • Requests that do not require consensus (e.g. serialized reads) can be processed by any cluster member.

Note

• kubeadm reset will not delete any etcd data if external etcd is used. This means that if you run kubeadm init again using the same etcd endpoints, you will see state from previous clusters.