Provisioning a Kubernetes Cluster on OpenStack Using Cluster API (CAPI)

This is my first blog post. I spent this weekend going deep into CAPI + CAPO + ORC. This guide covers everything - installation, configuration, manifests, and the full flow explained simply. If you want to understand CAPI, this guide is for you. What Is Cluster API and Why Should You Care? Managing Kubernetes clusters manually is painful. You manually create infrastructure, install Kubernetes packages, SSH into VMs, run kubeadm init , and then run kubeadm join to join the worker nodes, set up CNI, etc. Cluster API (CAPI) solves this by treating cluster creation as a Kubernetes-native, declarative operation. Cluster API is a Kubernetes project that lets you manage Kubernetes clusters using Kubernetes-style APIs. Instead of running commands, you write YAML manifests and apply them to a "management cluster." CAPI controllers read those manifests and provision your cluster automatically — creating VMs, configuring networking, running kubeadm — all without you touching a single VM. Three co